Good Use of Dead Space

By Randy Marr
 
   One of the best games of last year was Dead Space. It managed to prove that a good action-based game doesn't have to sacrifice horror, and that a game can be scary without forsaking good gameplay. Resident Evil hasn't been able to balance those aspects properly, and Silent Hill has never really played well, despite being steeped in terror. But EA Redwood (now Visceral Games) managed to find a wonderful harmony between both, and the reason? It's in the details.

   While playing Dead Space, I always found myself in wonder of every tiny detail they squeezed in. Isaac's head looks around as you navigate the in-game inventory menu, there's no sound in the vacuum of space (except for the sounds he makes inside his suit), and the frantic nature of his injured grunts and groans. Details like those really help to draw you into that world, which is what makes video games better at scaring you than movies: you're controlling your character. It helps remove that barrier of safety because the monsters are after you.

   Even Dead Space: Extraction, the "Guided First Person Shooter" (a fancy term for on-rails, or light-gun shooter) has its share of small details. You played that game from the first person perspective, and when the character you were playing as would talk, his audio sounded slightly different; it sounded the way it does when you talk, how you hear internal noise and it sounds a little louder. It was a great effect that helped put the player in the seat of this incredibly sculpted experience (buggy as it was).

   I will leave you now with Visceral Games' niftiest little detail found in both games, but be warned that it is a spoiler so if you've yet to finish either titles... well I wouldn't investigate these too much. Ready? Alright: take the first letter of each chapter title in both games to get a secret message. (It's not "Drink Your Ovaltine, I Promise.)

Dead Space:

New Arrivals
Intensive Care
Course Correction
Obliteration Imminent
Lethal Devotion
Environmental Hazard

Into the Void
Search and Rescue

Dead on Arrival
End of Days
Alternate Solutions
Dead Space

Dead Space: Extraction:

World's Apart
Another Day at the Office
Return to the Megavents
Rendezvous with Fate
Emergency Care
Nowhere to Hide

Life and Death
In The Hearts of Men
Escaping the Ishimura
Secrets and Salvation