Dead Space

"Seamless and terrifying: A real winner."

There aren't many games like Dead Space out on the market right now, but the bottom line is that there should be. It's very seldom that a game so skillfully eliminates the wall between the player and the experience, but this is probably the game's greatest strength and main innovation, forming the core of DS's gameplay. On its own, just how well-done this is would merit DS as a very good game. However, around this core are solid visuals and controls, detail-laden and well-constructed story elements, and particularly spot-on sound design.

This is not to say that Dead Space is a perfect game. Especially in a genre so heavily milked as survival horror, the feeling of game play as rehashed is often an inevitability. This is perhaps DS's greatest susceptibility. If you've ever played a survival horror game before, you will almost certainly not do anything you've never done before. Locked doors still require especially tedious solutions, bosses are larger than life, and things will jump out at you (more than once). The difference however, is that DS never seems to lose its intensity, mostly due to the fact that the environment is so engrossing.

I wish it was no cliche to say that I could wish I could give the gameplay an eleven, but this is just the plain, unvarnished truth. The instant you gain control of Isaac, your on-screen protagonist, you are instantly thrown into the world of Dead Space. You have probably heard about the lack of a traditional HUD, and indeed, there is no HUD. Your health is displayed on the spine of Isaac's RIG- space suit, for lack of a better term- and divided into smaller sections for clarity. In good health, he runs well, stands up tall, and looks confident. As his health degrades, so does his appearance. Red health means he's a limping, panting mess.

Degrading that health, of course, would be the swarm of alien-mutants out to get you. The enemies are smart and ruthless, and especially in areas where there is no gravity, they tend to come at you from crafty angles you might not be considering. The AI will challenge you, especially on higher difficulty levels, forcing you to consider each encounter with a good mix of strategy and skill. Combat largely hinges on your ability to dismember enemies quickly, hitting them in the limbs as opposed to the head and torso. Accuracy and weapon selection becomes key. As you are only able to carry four guns as a time, and seeing as how Isaac is as good at melee combat as you might expect a scared engineer to be, each shot counts in a big way. But enemies who lose their legs only charge more slowly, and enemies without arms only try to kill you more creatively. Different kinds of enemies require different approaches as well, and what works well against some types of enemies will not work against others.

The environment offers some very nasty challenges as well. Space being a vacuum and the ship being in bedlam, you won't overcome every obstacle with a gun. In areas with no air, the RIG displays a timer. When it reaches zero, you suffocate. Air can be replenished with an item, just like health, but in survival-horror tradition, resources are relatively scarce and inventory space is limited. Another very excellent touch is that the menu that you enter to use these resources appears in real time. That means that if you have one hit left in you and you can't reach your health kit in time, you'll die when that hit comes. In large encounters, you might have to choose to run to get enough space to use a health item. Trying to heal while evading multiple enemies can be truly pulse-pounding.

The action is broken up by the occasional puzzle or quasi-platform sequence, but despite being relatively dry in relation to the rest of the game, I personally found them to be nice breaks for my nerves. None of them are terribly challenging or innovative, but they generally stay out of the realm of the annoying so if they are a black mark, it's a relatively small one. The puzzles generally require you to use one of your "modules"- either stasis or kinesis. Both of them are the primary devices of the puzzles but are also available to you and useful in combat. The stasis module has a limited number of charges, viewable on your RIG, and can slow enemies to a crawl so you can pick the limbs off tough or fast enemies. Kinesis can be used infinitely, and can grab and fire objects. If you've played Half-Life and are familiar with the gravity gun, then you can imagine what the kinesis module is like.

Another plus is that Dead Space never leaves you hanging out guessing. Simply press the right analog and you'll know exactly where you have to go. A blue line traces the path to your objective. No time is wasted, and you'll move right into the next encounter or puzzle. This is an understated but important feature, as the go-go pacing of the game would almost certainly suffer with the kind of downtime that games in the same genre occasionally present. No doubt, the game plays to its strengths.

One last aspect worth mentioning that I found enjoyable is the item shop and weapon upgrade system. Personally, I found it a nice tip of the hat to the Dino Crisis and RE4 systems of similar function. The item shop offers a selection of weapons, ammo, suit upgrades, and other useful things. The upgrade system requires you to augment your weapons, suit, and modules by using power nodes, hard to find items that are also found in the item shop for a hefty sum. You need a lot of nodes to fully upgrade your suit and weapons, so the ones you find will just not be enough. In short, you need money to make upgrades which means you cant spend your money on items or ammo. So in...shorter...the system rewards good shooting and staying healthy.

The verdict for the gameplay: a 10/10. Seriously.

Ok, so for looks, the game looks great. A lot of games nowadays have no difficulty showing strong visuals because of the hardware, and Dead Space delivers solidly. The tried and true Havok engine makes for great ragdoll effects, body parts fly and organs explode. The lighting is great, long creepy shadows, dark corridors, fluorescent and clinical, and the space-scapes visible outside the ship through hull breaches and windows are terrific. The weapons, especially the flamethrower and Ripper have cool looking effects. My big note for the visual department is the enemies. HOLY HELL THESE THINGS ARE UGLY. Yes. These are by far the ugliest, scariest freaks of recent memory. Big, obese bastards. Little nasty bastards. Really gross looking bastards. They're everywhere, they're not pleasant. The interiors of the ship look great for sure, the scenery is great, but it's populated by ugly, bloody, disturbing creatures and that's what you should be looking at. It gives you that much more of an incentive to kill them.

God they're ugly. Visuals score a 9/10.

Anyway, the sound design.

The other reviews you may have read probably talked at least a little about the audio and it was probably generally favorable. I really can't use words to describe the audio properly but I'll say this: my first play through was on a regular late 90's TV without a real sound system and I thought it was pretty satisfying. Later on, I had the good fortune to play on a big surround sound stereo and woofer deal and it was cinematic. If you have a good sound system, this game is totally worth playing on it. There's one alien type in particular- large, humanoid, ugly, likes to scream a lot. The screaming is nerve-shattering on large speakers. I can't do it justice in a paragraph. Other than that, there's a lot of tap-tapping, heavy-breathing, I've already said the atmosphere is great 20 times so I'll leave it

Audio scores: 9/10, probably 9.5 if you have a nice system.

And the story:

Well, to say as much of the story as I politely can, it's competent. I've heard "film-worthy", I've heard "engrossing" and I'll politely disagree. This is a fully functional story and has no really glaring points that I felt were unnecessary or weak, but it's not literature or anything. The silent protagonist angle, while adding once more to the immersion factor (because after all, Isaac is faceless and never speaks, it's easy to insert your own persona into the RIG) it doesn't lend itself to character development or motivation. I mean, the man is looking for his girlfriend and for the rest of the game is fighting for survival without ever inserting his own opinion or view of the situation. This is no Sound and the Fury, but then, nobody should be expecting that. The story does exactly what it's supposed to do, no more no less.

This perfectly adequate story therefore earns an 8/10.

The Summary:

This game is balls-to-the-wall, straight ahead, no messing around. It's intensity is well-crafted and undeniable, the horror aspect alternating between outright terror and subtle creepiness.Even if you aren't a fan of the genre you should play this game. It's worth a rental. If you have ever enjoyed survival horror you need to buy this, because the immersion factor is just incredible. Game developers, prospective or otherwise, go study this. It should be your textbook on how to execute atmosphere. Go out and get this, but remember, there's only one way to play it:

Lights out, dark room, sound up.

WOO.

Outstanding despite having a one-track mind: 9/10.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/09/09

Game Release: Dead Space (US, 10/13/08)