Dead Space

"The next big thing on the Survival Horror scene is... Okay, I guess..."

In a completely unprecedented move, EA decided to stop flogging its sports franchises and film tie-ins to death and actually release an original title that isn't a sequel and has the potential to become a new, more respected franchise that would appeal to hardcore gamers. Well, I say original, Dead Space is merely an amalgamation of several different games; Resident Evil 4, Doom 3 and Metroid Prime immediately spring to mind when you play it, but hey, at least they're trying something a bit new and interesting.

Dead Space is a survival horror game that takes place on a dark, desolate space station called the Ishimura. You play as a mining engineer named Isaac Clarke who is part of a team sent to investigate the sudden lack of communication from the Ishimura and, in a futile attempt at making you actually care about the character, his wife was trapped on board. Upon arrival you set about exploring with your two superiors; a panicky woman who doesn't trust anyone and Hammond, the bad-ass black guy. Inevitably everything goes wrong and you're attacked by weird alien things and after running away, are then given tasks throughout the game by your superiors whilst they hide in a cupboard, crying. The story pretty much lacks any real originality and is predictable the whole way, not to mention confusing at times. There's the standard questionable motives, shocking revelation and someone betrays you... Yawn... Also the attempt at making you care and feel for the main character Isaac fails as soon as you realise that he never speaks or expresses emotion, he is merely a mindless robot with all the depth of an evaporating puddle.

Dead Space borrows the claustrophobic “over-the-shoulder” camera from Resident Evil 4 and uses it to quite good effect to build atmosphere and tension, though sometimes it prevents you from actually seeing any of the enemies attacking you. It's a real shame that Dead Space didn't borrow the fast movement and fluid quick turn mechanics from RE4, since moving Isaac around is extremely clumsy and difficult and makes fighting fast moving enemies far harder than they need to be; not being able to turn around quickly is a pretty big issue with Dead Space.

The innovative feature of Dead Space is the much heralded “dismemberment” mechanic, where, rather than just blasting enemies in the face, you have to shoot their legs and arms off to kill them faster and do more damage and in fact, shooting enemies in the face can cause them to morph into more powerful and deadly forms. Unfortunately, for about 70% of the enemies, all you need to do is shoot their legs off and then curb stomp them when they're on the floor and as a result, combat gets rather repetitive. The coolest feature is probably the weapons, instead of pistols, machine guns and shotguns, you have to use the tools of Isaac's trade. This means things like the Plasma Cutter which is normally used for blasting large rocks apart, and the Ripper, which is kind of like a saw used to cut stuff up. Each of them has a useful alternative method of firing, for example, the Plasma Cutter can fire in a vertical beam or horizontally, allowing for more precision when dismembering enemies. Its rather refreshing and fun to use something other than the typical guns found in every other survival horror game and it lifts Dead Space above being a bland and generic experience.

The actual enemies are rather creepy and well designed, many of them being like large fleshy bags with claws on them and it is rather startling to have one jump out at you and start tearing your face off. The only real problem with them is the repetition, there are only about five different kinds of enemies and you will be facing the same ones over and over throughout much of the game, though each of them do have a tougher dark coloured alter-ego. As for bosses, they are very few and far between and don't really amount to anything more than a big insect-like lump with massive tentacles, though the battles against them are incredibly epic.

Progression through the game is very linear, with almost no chance or reason to explore of the beaten path. In addition to this, clicking in the right stick will show up a beam of light pointing to your next objective, this kind of takes you out of the experience and you will come to rely on it and I often found myself sticking rigidly the path of light. It is useful, but I think having access to it at all times is definitely detrimental to the games' atmosphere. Dead Space is somewhat formulaic; usually you will be told to go and collect a certain item to power up a certain computer, or go and restore an elevator to power and typically, whenever you feel as though you are making progress towards escaping the Ishimura, something else goes wrong and you are given yet more glorified fetch quests to undertake.

Survival Horror games are all about atmosphere and immersion, and unfortunately I often found myself sighing with annoyance at a task I was given and many times I just wanted to get to the end. While the game is fun in parts, many sections are laborious and seem rather drawn out. There isn't much imagination or variation in your objectives to make for a truly immersive, fun and scary game. As for the hype about Dead Space being very atmospheric and scary, yes, you are alone on a dark space ship with flickering lights, but it isn't particularly frightening and the aforementioned flaws in the gameplay keep you withdrawn from the experience. There are no original ideas to keep the player scared, just some monsters that look like they're dead sometimes jump up at you, and this gag is so overused that you are more surprised when something doesn't leap out at you and start clawing your neck.

One of the biggest problems I had with Dead Space was that I was constantly thinking about other games that I had seen certain features in before. This feeling came up again when I discovered that Isaac is given the ability to collect money and upgrade his equipment and purchase new weapons and items from stores scattered throughout the ship. This feature, along with the abundance of med packs and ammo drops, is the biggest stake I could drive through the heart of Dead Space because, you see, Dead Space is clearly trying to be a more traditional and frightening Survival Horror game while using the best elements from Resident Evil 4. RE4 was far more action-orientated, meaning that ammo pick ups and health items were far more necessary to make it through the game. If Dead Space wanted to be scary, it needed to give you barely any weapons and hardly any ammo or healing items and really keep you on edge. You needed to dread going round that corner or through that dark corridor on the Ishimura, but that is hard when you have five different weapons with about one hundred rounds for each along with six Large Med Packs. There is nothing to warrant the constant ammo and health pick ups.

To say Dead Space is completely devoid of originality would be a harsh judgement indeed, some of the best sequences in the game come during the zero gravity sections of the ship. As you would expect, in zero gravity Isaac can fly around from surface to surface, using his gravity boots to stick to them. This enables for some really clever and cool puzzles and not to mention some intense and difficult battles against enemies far more agile in zero G than you. Also, Isaac finds a Stasis and Kinesis modules and these enable him to slow down objects and enemies and basically use the Force to move objects around respectively. Slowing down an enemy and casually blasting its limbs off or forcing it onto a gravity panel to smash it into the ceiling is very fun and a nice distraction from the standard dismemberment combat, and killing an enemy by firing tables at it with Kinesis as just as fun as it sounds. The only slight niggle is that you are forced to use Kinesis for EVERYTHING! Need to pull a lever? Use Kinesis, need to install a battery? Kinesis, need to move a chair? Kinesis. You could just like, use your arms to do all of these.

It would take an extremely nitpicking reviewer to find anything wrong with the graphics or sound in Dead Space. Being very nitpicking myself I would like to point out that Kendra's hair sucks! Joking aside, other than her dull hair, the graphics in Dead Space are largely outstanding, everything is very well detailed, the lighting is fantastic and the textures are extremely well rendered; on an HD TV you can see the mesh of the material Isaac's suit is made from. The enemies look really good and very fleshy, as if they could conceivably exist and they are well animated, with creeping, lurking gaits. Overall, the graphics are definitely one of the highlights of Dead Space.

One of the coolest aspects of the game is that it never takes you out of the experience with cutscenes or a heads-up display. All your health and Stasis energy is displayed on the back of Isaac's suit, adding realism and immersion to the game. In addition to this, opening the menu will not pause the game, but will bring up an inventory screen hologram for you to examine on the fly, and being a hologram, you can move the camera all the way around it. The 3D menus are extremely cool and a genuinely brilliant design idea, adding to the sci-fi theme of the game nicely.

Dead Space sounds great as well, the music is very minimalist, only being noticeable when under attack from a swarm of monsters and this sets the desolate, lonely tone of the game nicely. The sound effects of the different tools Isaac gets in his arsenal are fantastic and listening to them rip through the meaty enemies is an immensely satisfying experience. The howls and screams of the alien monsters are visceral and it sounds really amazing if played with 5.1 surround sound, almost as if you're inside the Ishimura itself. The voice acting in the game is very well done, particularly from your two commanders, there is no wooden or particularly painful voice acting, though the many audio logs you find sound a bit absurd since almost all of them involve the speaker being attacked by an alien halfway through a sentence, cue lots of screaming.

The important thing to take away from Dead Space is the potential it has to start a really great series, though with EA, that probably won't happen. It looks great and sounds great and it plays ok as well, but I was left distinctly underwhelmed. There is nothing massively new or original about Dead Space and its main new feature, the dismemberment of enemies can be quite annoying at times, especially when all you need to do is take their legs away and stomp them. The game is very linear and your hand is held the entire way through, making much of the whole “horror” element redundant. Your objectives mainly seem to be laborious fetch quests where you must destroy four of a certain creature, or find a data board for a computer or some sort of key and they don't often have much creativity. Don't expect to get blown away by Dead Space or think you're playing the next big thing, or the pinnacle of the survival horror genre. Resident Evil and Silent Hill can breathe a sigh of relief, because, in my opinion at least, when you strip it down to its fundamentals, Dead Space is distinctly average.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/11/09

Game Release: Dead Space (EU, 10/24/08)