Dead Space

You’ll never look at your man cave quite the same again and those dark corners may need to be checked twice. Thought you were too old for a nightlight? Perhaps not.

True Sci-fi survival horror is finally here and not the zombie apocalypse, here’s the most powerful weapons on the market kind of ordeal. Every shot counts in Dead Space and if you screw up, it may be the last mistake you’ll ever make.

EA’s Visceral Games had a lot to prove with this game. The horror-survival genre is littered with other “bust” valued games because of stale content or simply week story-lines. However, Visceral Games is perhaps the first developer to truly nail what the genre is all about, and has finally brought a fun and scary game worth playing.

You are engineer Isaac Clarke, sent on a mission to repair the Ishimura’s communications. What you find is far from what you learned in debriefing. You arrive at the scene of a massacre and much to your horror, the crew has been mutilated and infected with an alien scourge.

What was once a simple repair mission has now become a fight for survival to get himself and the rest of his team off of the mutated ship and return a mysterious artifact to the nearby planet called “The Colony” at any cost.

The core of the game takes place in and around the truly massive ship originally supposed to be on a mining mission. You and your small team of three become separated shortly after the crash and stay in touch via the special tools in your suit.

Hammond,your team leader, realizes that many of the ship’s systems are failing, so he sends you off fixing them, so you all have a better chance of getting rescued. Hammond and Kendra periodically tap into your suit to guide or give advice to you throughout your missions, though they seem to be doing virtually nothing to help.

During these treks around the ship, you will come across various different text and audio logs that are scattered throughout the ship. Each one pieces together parts of the story that maybe didn’t make sense at first, while others simply answer the questions you’d been dying to ask. This was a nice, little touch that really helped weave together a rather confusing and drawn out story.

The one thing that really bothered me about the story was how you, Issac, never once talked, save for the screams here and there in the vent that you got killed. He was entirely mute throughout the entire game, making for very one-sided conversations where all you could ever do was listen and obey.

But why is Dead Space so scary? Before coming into the game, I’ve had my fair share of other, decent survival-horror themed games; though none really nabbed that sweet spot. Dead Space nailed this “spot” right in the middle thanks to its slow pace of combat. Yes, I said slow.

Hordes of zombies aren’t going to come rushing down the street to gobble you up like in Left 4 Dead, these aliens will hide and jump out at you when you least expect it. They’ll come crashing through walls and ceilings, or they’ll sneak up behind you and impale you in one fell swoop, which will effectively terminate Issac’s life and the controller you just flung across the room in fright!

In other cases, the eerie, bone-chilling sounds of the big, scary sounding ship will build up the suspense, causing you to frantically check every corner of the hall your walking through, expecting something to pop out at any moment. Or the soft, pitter-patter sound of alien footsteps bustling through the air vent above you.

Visceral Games proved that you don’t just need big, spooky monsters coming at you in large numbers to scare you. Your mind can simply be overtaken by the clever use of sound.

When combat does come into play, even that can be scary. The game utilizes a unique mechanism called ”strategic dismemberment,” in which the player must cut off limbs or sections of the Necromorphs to defeat them.

The aliens are extremely resilient to human weapons, like always, meaning you’ll need to kill each and every alien limb by limb. If you run out of ammo, you can use your suit’s telekinetic powers to pick up objects, such as alien severed arms and legs, and hurl them at your enemies. If all else fails, you could attempt to beat the poor alien to death with the butt of your weapon.

Most of the weapons you’ll have to choose from don’t stray too far from Issac’s profession, Engineering, meaning most of the weapons are technically mining tools.

For example, the core set of weapons available to you is a plasma cutter, rotary saw, a hydrazine torch used as a flamethrower. If you prefer a more powerful type of weapon, there is a military grade assault rifle and a high-powered energy beam called the contact beam to choose from.

Ammo for these weapons are harder to find across the ship however, so you need to balance out and plan when to best use each weapon.

Not all weapons however are used for the purpose of killing alien baddies. Isaac’s Stasis ability can be used to slow down enemies and objects temporarily, and a Kinesis module allows Isaac to pick up and throw items, which also allows him to impale the Necromorphs.

These two abilities are heavily used in most, if not all of the numerous puzzles you’ll often come across in the game. Dead Space also features vacuum and zero gravity environments that allow you to jump from wall to ceiling, or traverse the outside of the ship.

One of the most nippy things about Dead Space is the interface system. Easy and quick to use, everything is relayed to the player via holographic projections. When you want to look in your inventory or check up on an objective, the quick tap of a button will bring it right up. When done, the image will vanish and the entire TV screen is now freed up.

Closing Comments

With the clever use of a grim and gory atmosphere backed by the addition of a fantastic, but chilling soundtrack that cues in and out right when you don’t want it to, Dead Space will have you jumping out of your seat in sheer horror.

Dead Space was perhaps the most fun, yet horrific experience I’ve had on the current generation of consoles to date and is one I’ll never forget. For anyone looking for a good scare, this game is a must buy.