Dead Space

"This Game Makes Bioshock look like Friday the 13th on the NES"

And I stand by that. I got Dead Space for Christmas and I hoped it would be one of the most thrilling, intense, scariest, bloodiest games out there, and do you know what?

I was right.

GRAPHICS-10/10

This game+HDTV=awesome. I'm telling you, there's nothing better than seeing your enemy slice your body in half in high definition quality. Even on a regular TV the graphics are polished. The graphics are just stunning. Absolutely stunning. Light and shadow effects were spot on; made the game very realistic. The colors are vibrant as well as the ship lights. I love the blue light your plasma gun gives off, as well as your suit. Sort of reminds me of Splinter Cell with the goggles. The amount of blood and gore in this game is more than I expected to see, and I thought Resident Evil 4 was gruesome. This game completely takes the detail to the next level. Blood spatter, flailing limbs, intestines, etc., all that good stuff. Try using the saw cutter on an alien while playing on an HDTV. Blood everywhere. Utter bloodbath. Incredibly detailed, and after playing some of the MOH games EA recently spat out, I'm impressed with the graphics. Ship surroundings are very sophisticated and polished.

SOUND-10/10

Bone chilling, mind rendering, blood curling, tattered and torn experience. Whenever you walk through the ship, you'll usually hear tapping, pipes breaking, clanking, and the like. It just provides more suspense and realism. For once, I was glad to play in a place where my surroundings sounded like...well, my surroundings. They're just realistic. I also love hearing the squish sound when you beat the crap out of an alien by giving them a taste of your boots. It makes your hair stand up on end. Music's good too. Love the matrix-style suspense music when an alien shows up. It always has me jump in my seat when I hear that brass section. But the sounds from the aliens are simply, again, bone chilling. I've never heard anything like it. I mean I've heard monster roars in videogames, but nothing like this. It just adds to the intensity when you hear some ugly mutilated alien coming your way, let alone SEE one coming your way. Terrifying AND good sounding. My only complaint (not sure if it might be my TV but don't take my word for it) is whenever you hear an NPC talk right in front of you (not as a video comm), it seems sort of static-like/radio-like when you walk away. Whether or not that's just how the game is made or my tv, I'm not sure. Either way, that's pretty much my only complaint for sound.

CONTROL- 8/10

My only genuine complaint is the control. For some reason the controls seem slightly sluggish, but once you play for a bit, you get used to it and you learn to compensate. The fact there's not a jump button kind of sucks, but then again, you're traveling in hallways most of the time so there's nowhere TO jump. My other complaint is the button combos. Now, when you reload your weapon, it's sort of like Resident Evil 4, when you aim and hit R2+O or something like that to reload a weapon. Now I can see where they were going with this, but in the heat of battle, when you have 5 aliens beating the snot out of you and you need to reload quickly, often times you'll accidentally hit the Kenisis button or something and waste energy. Knowing the controls by heart is essential in this case. There's button combos for everything though like gravity jumping and using abilities, etc., and there's quite a few to remember, and it's like trying to enter a cheat code for some. Controls could have been a little better, BUT, it is at least playable and not TOO complex.

FUN FACTOR & GAMEPLAY-78/10

We've seen horror games, and we've seen them in space. But nothing like this. Best game I've ever played so far. If this turns into a franchise, it might have competition with Resident Evil, my other favorite survival horror series. Hard mode is not too difficult, but if you don't know what you're doing if you start on Hard, good luck. It's definitely not a typical run of the mill survival horror game. This one goes all the way. And I mean ALL the way. I've never seen so much carnage and brutality in a videogame. The audio logs you pick up, for example, are bone chilling when you hear them, but in fact, they're sort of like pieces to the puzzle as to why there's an alien horde on board the ship, and a certain artifact that's on board as well. Combat is never the same twice. You'll need to be creative as to how to take down the aliens. Shoot them in the limbs and they're down for the count as well as use Kenisis to hurl objects at them (even bodies!). Planning out a takedown is encouraged, though depending on what difficulty you're on, you'd either run into a room, guns blazing, or take it nice and slow. You start out with a Plasma cutter and as you progress, you're able to collect more weapons and upgrade them. My personal favorite is the remote control saw blade: now THAT'S hot.

CONCLUSION-

Play this at night.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/26/08

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