Dead Space

"The perfect game equivalent of a B-list movie"

EA expertly captures the look and feel of B-grade horror with Dead Space. A group of technicians responding to a mining ship's distress call encounter goofy-looking monsters, inane plot twists, and random cliches (or tropes, if you prefer). Defined by such shortcomings, Dead Space becomes a rather creative title in its own right.

Like many bad horror movies, Dead Space does a lot of things well in the first quarter. When you're first learning the ropes, you'll be startled by the enemies' habit of popping out unexpectedly or pretending to be dead. You'll be intrigued by the various destruction and interested in piecing together the events. However, once the initial excitement fades, the general game gets, well, boring up until far later in the game around the last third or quarter. Much of this problem is because story threads seem to stagnate. Once you've resolved the immediate: "Oh, this place has gone to hell because zombies took over" along with hints that an object/action/whatever might be to blame, you're pulled away from the entire investigation by a series of unrelated missions required to bring the space-station online, etc. Although I can understand why these missions might be necessary, they amount to being little more than a distraction. Likewise, an early encounter with a survivor is put on hiatus through the majority of these missions and, at times, you'll forget he exists at all. Not to mention that your character's girlfriend, Nicole, who plays a very prominent role in your character even being there in the first place and occupies a long opening video is barely touched upon again by any of the other characters.

The action/gameplay suffers from the same problems. Early on, you'll encounter what basically amounts to a Nemesis knock-off who spurs some heart-pounding chase scenes (assuming you don't just keep blowing his legs off or freezing him to buy time). However, after that, there's really nothing spurring you on through the game for next hour or so. Given that you only regularly encounter 3 enemy types (a garden variety zombie.... errr, necromorph who moves toward you so it can use a melee attack, a legless/tailed necromorph who crawls and jumps toward you so it can use a melee attack , and the baby-faced chihuahua-sized lurker who can attack from a distance but will often try to move toward you so it can use its grab attack), combat can get monotonous quickly. In addition, all three have no difference in texturing, appearance, etc, between units of their same type (excluding when you see dark-skinned versions, which are actually a slightly different type that happens to be faster and more durable). The only difference is which corridor you're fighting in and -when you're lucky- the environment itself, as a few fights take place on a slowly moving lift, a vacuum, or zero-gravity. Towards the end of the game, a few of the enemy types also begin to reoccur more frequently but still nowhere near as often as the first three types. The previously zero gravity and vacuum areas are a nice touch, but are sadly underused. For instance, you very rarely climb around outside the ship. Instead the vacuum areas are generally limited to decompressed chambers, thanks to a hole in the side of the station, and zero-g chambers are usually just areas where the gravity is turned off for some reason.

The controls are passable. Unfortunately, you can only use your weapons while in aim mode which makes taking down the rare large mob somewhat difficult. Two melee attacks take the place of the firing keys outside of the aiming mode, R1 is a roundhouse punch with a very small vertical striking area (tapping R1 again during it will unleash a slightly more versatile backhand attack, which can hit slightly lower objects) while R2 unleashes a somewhat high somewhat slow stomp. The punch, being somewhat weak, is generally only good for distracting an enemy long enough to help you move back while the stomp can actually do decent damage against grounded opponents although they can still hit you back. The stasis attack, which has limited energy, will temporarily freeze enemies and objects but is terribly inaccurate at close range (somehow flying through a few enemies). Although it's a fairly useful attack, you'll very rarely ever need it because most enemies are fairly easy to dispatch and the limited number of uses encourage you to save it for certain puzzles so you can avoid using a recharge pack. The zero-g jump can only be used in special designated zero-g zones, ordinarily the triangle button is just a hotkey for your inventory. Jumping is a very under-utilized feature, in terms of evasion, as it's only available for one boss fight and even then you can just tank through the damage. The last control is the Kinesis module (obviously short for telekinesis), which allows you to remotely move objects while in aiming mode and is required to move some larger objects to solve puzzles. Since the unit has unlimited energy, it's also useful for throwing certain objects at enemies and testing whether an enemy is still undead (as opposed to just being dead).

Each weapon has a normal and alternate firing mode. These modes can be switched by hitting R2 while in aiming mode. Some weapons almost feel like the alternate is an entirely different weapon. However, generally speaking, your default Plasma Cutter (gained 5 minutes into the game) is by far the most useful weapon and most of the others serve relatively little function. In addition, the game assigns ammo drops based on the weapons you currently have on you and the schematics you've unlocked so by only carrying one weapon and avoiding schematics (which unlock automatically a chapter or two after you could've obtained them) you can make sure that the drops will mostly be of the ammos you need. This feature basically turns carrying around the other guns into a penalty. All of the other weapons are either weaker or slower (only the rifle and flamethrower have a faster firing speed) than the plasma cutter in addition to being less precise. Since dismemberment is a major part of gameplay, as it allows both faster kills and increases the possibility of getting loot from necromorphs, you'll probably end up only using the plasma cutter for practicality's sake (as the only thing it's bad at is hitting tiny swarms of enemies which you can just freeze with stasis and run by anyway). The entire weapons system, quite frankly, shows somewhat shoddy design although the plasma cutter itself is a pretty cool weapon.

The other annoying aspect of the story are the stupid twists , some of which seem to have been inserted ONLY for the sake of having another twist. The most obvious plot twist also contains a fairly glaring plot hole. Then there are lesser plot twists which you somewhat suspected all along and another somewhat less obvious plot twist that just feels to come out of left field. Although some (if not all) the plot twists will make you groan, on the whole they really contribute to the overall experience. I was actually amazed, after reflecting on the entire game, just how well they captured the feel of just any generic scifi/horror film. In addition, some of the better elements and designs even resemble something as great as the Aliens franchise. Conceptually, the necromorphs do feel like xenomorphs at times, given their preference for sneaking around using air ducts, "gestating" (in some senses) using human hosts, and transforming the space station's environment. In addition, one of the enemy types is eerily similar to a facehugger in both looks and attack patterns. It's the little things like this that really make the game out to be something incredible.

The game's difficulty is a joke. Since the majority of enemies only have a melee attack, they pose no threat except when in massive swarms, when sneaking up on you, or while being supported by units with a ranged attack. At the hardest difficulty, some of the units can be nearly fatal should they get the jump on you but each of the moving units has a different warcry. The hardest difficulty, Impossible Mode, is only unlocked after you beat the game once on any difficulty. The only major gameplay difference, besides the enemies being slightly stronger, is an AI change which allows enemies to play dead after falling to the ground. However, you can easily confirm whether you've killed something by trying to use kinesis on it (which won't work on still active enemies) or just by shooting it again. At any rate, don't expect to die very often as a result of combat. The other big problem is that the opponents all basically have fixed spawn locations, so you'll know where the enemies will come from and which corridors have no enemies at all, meaning that the game is somewhat less suspenseful than it could be on a replay (not that there's a tremendous amount of suspense in the first place, since all of the early tricks that might give you a little jolt are just repeated throughout the rest of the game).

Dead Space has fairly low replay value. It only offers regular game modes (of varying difficulty), including a new game+ option which also has various rewards. To collect all of the game's trophies, you'll have to go through a minimum two and a half plays (the new game+ is necessary to get enough cash and resources to fully upgrade your gear, as enemies have fixed spawns and one playthrough is needed to unlock Impossible Mode which has to be completed to get the last trophy). Since there's no option to alter difficulty, the new game+ can't carry on items to Impossible mode.

As a whole, Dead Space is a fairly decent game. It offers a number of distinct elements, the gameplay isn't terrible, and the story is alright. However, there are just large portions of the game that get outright boring since you're just chasing down random objectives and really aren't facing opponents that can even threaten you. These objectives deviate from the main storyline and, when combined with the low difficulty, detract from an otherwise great title. Dead Space is great at what it does, but it's definitely not a game of the year.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/24/09

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