Dead Space

The Short


Pros
- Perfect blend of action/horror
- Grisly violence and gore ramp the tension up to insane levels
- Fantastic UI; everything is displayed in the game world. No HUD.
- Sound design is exceptional
- Unique method of dispatching enemies; "strategic dismemberment" rather than headshots
- Graphics are gorgeous and the steller art design leads to some true monstrosities
- Story is interesting and reminded me of Alien
- Perfect length single-player
- Controls on 360 work like a dream

Cons
- Lots of the game consists of people bossing you around to do things
- The end turns more "action" than "horror"
- The "baby" enemies are pretty tasteless
- Limited enemy variety
- Plot kind of goes a bit loco near the end
- Gave me actual nightmares. That's not allowed.

Word of warning: the game very much earns its "M" rating

A warning: This review contains screenshots and video that some might find disturbing. Trust me, the one above is just the beginning. 

The Long

People don't really make horror games anymore. The genre saw a complete shift since Resident Evil 4 showed up and turned it all on it's head, essentially turning "horror" games into "action games with scary elements." Which was probably for the best, considering the reason most horror games were actually, well, scary was the fact that they'd limit your ability to control your character, ramp up the gore, and limit your methods for fighting back. The game was scary because your character was underpowered, the game was intentionally designed for you to die, which meant it just generally felt unfair. Resident Evil 4 clearly saw this as a problem and switched it up, which was good from a gameplay standpoint but bad from a horror standpoint. Who is scared when you can blast zombies with a sniper rifle from three-hundred yards away?

Or rocket launchers. Real scary, guys. 

Dead Space literally came out of nowhere. It was designed by EA Redwood (which has since been rebranded Visceral Studios), saw little to no advertising, and released quietly onto the market. It didn't sell many copies initially, but it did see a massive spike in used sales (which prompted gamers to pick up Dead Space 2 when it came out...see EA? Used game sales help you) as well as extremely favorable review scores. Well, add this review to the mix, because I'm telling you right now this game is amazing.

The premise behind Dead Space is pretty much the same as the movie Alien. Isaac Clark, an engineer, is sent on a mission to investigate what is going on the U.S.G. Ishimura, a massive mining ship designed to "crack" a planet from orbit and extract it's precious minerals. Apparently everything on the Ishimura just went dark, so a small team of an engineer (you), two pilots, a military leader, and another engineer head down to try and figure out what is going on. After crash landing and finding the place completely deserted, things get...nasty.

Seriously, you should have just turned around and left

It turns out the hundreds of thousands of people on-board have been transformed into horrifying monsters called "Necromorphs," essentially re-animated corpses that have been twisted into really nasty things. They are fast, they are brutal, and they don't lumber about like idiots (hey there, Resident Evil 5!). They want you dead, and they will not hesitate to completely dismember you at a moment's notice.

Isaac (aka you) is separated from his team, and thus begins a long and dangerous journey to both restore power to the ship, find out what the heck happened, stop it from continuing, and get out safely. It's a bloody, violent story, filled with betrayals, deaths, and plenty of twists to keep you on your toes. While there are a few parts that are unbelievable (one Necromorph manages to infect an entire ship in like fifteen minutes? Really?), the tension just keeps ramping up until it reaches a near-unbearable level, closing out with an insane sequence and reveal that (while predictable) is still pretty shocking. Combined with fantastic voice acting (Isaac is silent but the rest of the crew, as well as the audio logs you find, can be quite chatty), the story is as compelling as it is shocking. It fits the genre well, and leaves you wanting more.

And there are some of these things. Gross. 

Aside from the story...where to begin? Well, I suppose I can start with the graphics. Dead Space looks amazing. The animations of the enemies are completely disturbing and fantastically executed. Isaac has a sort of heavy, thumping side to his movements that fits with all the mining equipment he's wearing/hauling around. The blood and other fluids the nasty creatures spew is particularly well rendered, making the disgusting enemies and environment even more horrific. I have literally no nitpicks with the graphics, and I will say the lighting in this game is something particularly worth mentioning. Lighting in games (especially horror games) is a delicate thing that has to be done completely right or else the player will just not notice it. Dead Space does it all better than any other game I've seen (with the exception of its own sequel, Dead Space 2) and it just proceeds as a fantastic compliment to the graphics. Incredible stuff.

Perhaps my favorite feature, however, is the HUD. Or rather, the lack of one. See, Dead Space has NO onscreen HUD. Everything you need to know is displayed directly in the game world, meaning no arbitrary menues ever (unless you do a complete, hard pause with "Start"). See that bar on Isaac's back? That's your health. See the blue half-circle next to it? That's your statis gauge. When you raise a weapon to fire it projects a small hologram with the ammo you have left. Menues such as inventory, shops, workbenches for upgrades, elevators; everything is displayed in-game via the world's holographic technologies. It's something you really wouldn't think much of, but it really provides an unparalleled level of immersion. Remember Metro 2033? Where the entire UI is set in-game? They took it from this, and guess what? It works great in both of those games. The best part in Dead Space is the fact that going to a store doesn't pause the game (even though it locks your character in place). So if there are still enemies nearby quickly trying to "hide" in a store to pause the game will only result in you getting your face gnawed off. 

I really suggest blasting that thing. 

This level of dedication to its mythology also shows in the weapons. As an engineer, Isaac doesn't really pick up guns or other weapons, and the Ishimura is a mining ship so it isn't exactly stocked with heavy artillery. Instead, Isaac has to make do with the various mining tools left onboard the ship to mow down the monsters. Your first weapon is a plasma cutter (which is also probably the best weapon in the game), a "gun" used for mining that can fire in either a horizontal or vertical line. You pick up other stuff too: a line gun that cuts a straight arch forward, a buzzsaw that holds a spinning blade out a distance and can be directed about (this is a particularly nasty weapon to use on your enemies), an industrial flamethrower, and others. You do get a "gun" at one point, but it's vastly inferior to the mining tools you find, as I will now explain.

The idea behind Dead Space's shooting is also unique. In most games (including horror games) your goal is to aim for the head. Not so in Dead Space. Shooting off an enemies head usually just pisses them off, making them a harder foe. Dead Space's system (which they coined the lovely term "strategic dismemberment") is to shoot arms and legs off the horrors until they stop moving. Which is exactly why the plasma cutter is the best gun in the game: you can shoot horizontally or vertically on a whim (and there's an achievement for beating the whole game using only it, which is actually pretty easy). This system really mixes stuff up, but it also forces harder decisions than just "aim for the head:" do you go for legs which are harder but slow enemies slightly, or the arms which are their main means of attack? 

But always aim for the glowing weak point

All this is combined with controls that are both tight and somewhat hindering, but intentionally so. Remember what I said above? About how the genre's staple is intentionally weakening your character (usually through poor controls) in order to cheaply "ramp up the tension?" Dead Space's only real way that it does this is with it's UI: not being able to pause can prove difficult, it's totally possible to get into some camera angles where you can't see Isaac's health, he move a little clunkier than a more agile person would (but it's totally believable), and you can't see ammo unless you either go into a menu or raise a weapon. But as for the shooting, it's spot on. You can move and shoot (again, suck on it Resident Evil 5), strafe, and make pretty precise shots. They manage to do this and keep the game difficult and intense by cranking the enemies up to eleven. Like I said: they are extremely fast, very deadly (at the beginning you have two hits, tops, before you are dead) and come out of nowhere. Rather than having to gimp its enemies due to hindering gameplay (just look at how slow the zombies or enemies are in the original Resident Evil or Silent Hill games) it catered the enemies to work with the tight controls. That, my friends, is called being a good game developer. 

I forgot to mention that in space there is no sound save your breathing. And since your enemies don't breath...you won't hear them sneaking up on you. At all. 

So it has beautiful graphics, steller art design, awesome sound, great controls, and is a most excellent action game. So here is the real clincher: is it actually scary? With all this action and fast paced shooting, is it possible to be legitimately scared in this game? Resident Evil 4 was white-knuckle tension at its finest, but it really wasn't scary enough to stick with you. The old Silent Hill games (especially 2 and 3) gave me some serious heeby-jeebies, but they did it at the cost of clunky tank controls and poor combat. How does Dead Space fare?

You've been warned: this video is pure nightmare fuel. Even at poor quality. I saw 5:50 in game and had to turn it off afterwards.

Dead Space is both tense and scary. The beginning parts especially, where you are unarmed and have no idea what is going on, is particularly nerve-wracking. The game knows when to quiet down, cut back on the enemies, and throw you into scenes of total creepiness. It's these quite parts of Dead Space that are truly horrific, often coupled with witnessing the aftermath of things better left unsaid. Even near the end, where you get equipped enough to blow through most enemies without too much trouble, there is one particular part of the game where you visit an area you've never been before, and what you see there is just...brrrr. Creepy. 

The horrible looking monsters help, too. 

So...problems? What don't I like about this game? Well, the story is interesting but it usually consists of one of the two remaining members of your team radioing you and saying "Oh crap! This thing just broke! Quick, you go fix it while I wait here to turn it on!" And after you fix it they say "Oh no! It still isn't working! Now go here and fix this next!" Which gets old real fast.

The enemies also don't show much variety. You have your standard running guys, ones that crawl on the ground and have tails, these weird mutant baby things (which are super tasteless, by the way, and they get worse in Dead Space 2), some big fat ones like the one above, the wall guys, and a few others. By the end of the game they basically recycle the enemies but instead color them a sort of gangrene-looking black (meaning they are harder) which is nice they are more difficult but you use pretty much the same tactics to take them down. 

Aside from that, I really have little to say bad about Dead Space. I've had friends try it on my recommendation and then quit (the tension and violence is certainly too much for some, if not many), but if you can handle the extreme violence and horror you are looking at simply the best in modern horror/action games (and yes, I think it's a better game than its sequel, but you'll have to read that game's review to find out more about that). Anything I can complain about is nitpicking, because as a whole every part of this game fits together wonderfully to create one of the best games I've ever played. 

Oh, and one more thing: the game only has single player and is about 6-8 hours long, but beating it gives the option to play on "Insane." Let me tell you: this is the single most nerve-wracking thing I've ever done (except Dead Space 2's "Hardcore" mode, which gives you only two saves to beat the entire game with). You die in single hits at the beginning, even with the best armor. By the end you've upped it to about three hits, but enemies are significantly tougher and more aggressive. I takes an already tense game and turns it insane (hence the name of the difficulty) and is like playing a totally new game. The game also has a New Game + mode for those who like that, though you are limited to replaying on the same difficulty. 

Falcon...PUNCH!

I'm pretty sure you can get the game new for $20. It is worth the full $60. I've played it both on Xbox 360 and PC (the PC version released with some issues that have since been fixed) and suggest playing it with a gamepad either way. If I were to give it a star rating, it would be five out of five. 

And since I promised in my warning to show you something that would give you nightmares, here's a design illustration for the standard Necromorph.

This picture still freaks me out.