You May Enjoy This Game. I, However, Hate It.
At the end of the day, a review is an opinion of the person writing the review, the reviewer. And the gameplay, features, graphics, and everything slammed onto the video game disc is what sways the reviewer's opinion one way or another. For Dead Space, everything the game had I didn't like. The production values and pretty graphics were nice, but the gameplay and survival horror aspect of the game, I found, unappealing. All this is coming from probably one of the biggest Resident Evil fanboys out there. I realize I'm one of the very few gamers out there who didn't enjoy this game, but I wholeheartedly regret dropping $60 down on it. This is one of those games that I completely dislike, but I feel confident that many other people will find a great time to be had here, but I can't. I'm sure by now you can tell I hate this game. Read on to see why!
In Dead Space you play as Isaac Clark, and you are on the USG Ishimura. When on this planet cracking space ship you encounter some technical difficulties landing Clark in one of the most frightening things he'll ever experience. And it could be his last experience.
There are a few things in Dead Space that separate it from the rest of the crowd. First of all, the main gameplay mechanic is limb dismemberment. What I mean by that is that most of the necromorphs you fight, which are the alien plague that you have to fight off and figure out where they are coming from, have obvious arms and legs hanging off of the bloodied alien body. Body shots are more or less useless in Dead Space, and if you wanna do major damage you need to take out their limbs. The changes in the enemies are actually pretty cool when you take off their limbs. When blowing off their legs they'll crawl with their across the floor trying to take your legs off. Blowing off their arms will make them pretty much incapable of clawing your face off.
Another thing it does differently is the whole real time interface and HUD. Everything is done in real time. When you're using power nodes you've found to upgrade your weapons at a work bench, you can still get killed. When you're at the shop buying ammo, new guns, or medical packs, you can still get killed. The game doesn't pause when you do anything. Even though it works bounds beyond how the Resident Evil 5 real time inventory does, it' still not perfect. At least there is a button mapped to medical packs, but sometimes the game will use a med kit that is bigger or not big enough for the amount of health you need. Also, you can only carry around 4 guns at a time, all of these are mapped to the D-Pad, and as you change the slots, the guns change D-Pad slots, so you're always getting discombobulated. As time goes on and you upgrade everything, your inventory will get bigger.
The game will have you going everywhere, including backtracking. Most of the time, unless your very good at following game stories, you won't have a clue where or w hy you're going. The same could be said about Resident Evil, too. But in this game, to relieve some of that frustration, all you have to do is click R3, and literally a line appears on the bottom of your screen and tell you exactly where to go.
The game has some other features, such as stasis, which is basically slow motion, which you won't find yourself using too often. Another version of Bioshock's telekinesis, which, as you should know, allows you to pick things up and throw them around. And, most importantly, the frustrating as hell mechanic they threw into the game, zero-g. Some people will find it cool, but as far as I'm concerned the zero-g parts of the game are not fun at all. They produce some puzzles out of the concept, but basically what it is is you aim you're gun, and press the zero-g button. You will fly to that location. Literally fly and put your hands out. Also, the "no oxygen" part s of levels where you have a certain amount of air are more or less speed runs, making your run through those areas as fast as possible, usually using lots of trail and error of where you're suppose to go, and how to solve the occasional puzzle at hand.
I have many, many complaints about Dead Space. One is the ammo to enemy ratio. You're probably thinking "A Resident Evil fanboy complaining about lack of ammo, hahaha!" Yeah, well, in Resident Evil you're rarely required to kill any of the zombies in Resident Evil. In Dead Space, 9 out of 10 times you have to eliminate everybody before you can advance to the next kill room. Which is exactly what the game is, kill rooms after kill rooms. When you're carrying around four guns you'll be getting ammo for the guns in your bank, and sometimes you'll get ammo for weapons you don't even own yet.
The guns are also pretty damn inconsistent . When you first start the game, you have a plasma cutter, hands down the best gun in the game. It's perfect for dismemberment. But as the game goes on you get other guns that don't fit the games dismemberment mechanic. A few of the weapons, such as the contact beam, a huge laser you can charge up, a flamethrower, a weapon you will probably never use both because of it's extreme lack of ammo and it's weak power, a machine gun rifle, which isn't so great for taking off arms and legs. It often seems like for no reason that a bunch of the weapons are causing zero damage, maybe because there are a few of the enemies that don't even have limbs.
Most of the enemies are nothing special. You'll encounter dog-like aliens, just normal 4 limbed enemies, pregnant ones that have their water break if you hit them in the tummy, and of course, like every game has to have, small ass stupid enemies that you can't usually hit. After awhile you'll see the same exact enemies, just black, rather than a whitish color. Yes, they recycle them. Then you will have enemies near the end of the game that are just crazy fast, moving at insane speeds.
Final Decision
I don't really know what it says about a game when you have to force yourself to complete it. I literally had to force myself. I just don't like this game. In just didn't fit my taste, and I realize I'm one of the few who don't enjoy it, so I can probably recommend this to you, because you'll probably like it, I just don't. And that's the bottom line. The attempt at creating the bloody atmosphere just didn't do it for me like every Resident Evil game in the past did. As I wrote this review though, I realize many people will disagree with me.
