Dead Space is not a survival game. I wouldn’t even go so far as to call it a horror game. It fits in these genres the way that Resident Evil 4 does, with loose ties, but ultimately it is something else. I would call RE4 action horror, but I think Dead Space goes a bit beyond that. I feel that Dead Space channels BioShock more than any other recent release. It’s an environmental shooter, a game where the setting defines the experience more than anything else.

The vast majority of the game takes place aboard the planet cracker ship Ishimura. The artistic style of the ship is outstanding and I feel that the design is wholly unique. This aesthetic is consistently used and applies to both the interior and outerior of the Ishimura, as well as the few other craft we see, the colony, and the character designs themselves.

Isaac Clarke, the engineer protagonist, has the freshest look I have seen in a very long time, and somehow still manages to make it look bad ass. This is where Dead Space really excels. There is absolutely no HUD nor a conventional menu that takes you of the game. Everything you need to know is displayed on Isaac’s outfit, his rig, or displayed as a hologram from it or his current equipment. Health is represented by a bar that runs along the spine, and there is circular meter that represents remaining stasis charge. When you’re in a vacuum, your remaining air is displayed as a holographic panel near the oxygen tank behind your neck; ammo is similarly only displayed when your weapon is up in the ready position, and it projects directly from it. You inventory, data logs, etc. is displayed from a large projector only our chest, and the third person camera simply zooms in a bit on it so you can clearly see all the information. Same thing goes for video logs and transmissions you receive, and it’s cool because you can rotate the camera around these flat projections and just really immerses you there on the ship. You can get jumped any time these menus are open and it’s no respite from the tension. What really makes the rig stand out is that it is obviously a utility outfit and it reminds us that we are not playing as a hardened space marine, but rather the guy that’s just here to fix the communications array.

Tools take precedence over weapons in Dead Space. You fight with plasma cutters, saws, force guns, etc., all things that make perfect sense aboard a mining vessel. The exception is the pulse rifle, but with a ship this size out in deep space, they need a security detail. All of your weapons can be upgraded by using power nodes to augment them at work benches found throughout the ship. These nodes are found occasionally in access panels, after killing a particularly nasty enemy and can also be purchased from the store. The upgraded affect damage, reload speed, capacity, etc. You really feel like a killing machine once you level there bad boys up. You can also improve your stasis and kenesis abilities as well as your rig, health and air supply.

Dead Space is too forgiving to be a survival game. There are save stations available every few moments, and underlying them is a checkpoint system that seems to autosave before every encounter, meaning no matter where you die, you won’t lose any real progress at all. This takes away a but from the intensity, but at the same time I find it to have been the right choice. With a game like this, scares only work on you once; why play through the same startle every time you die. If you get killed, the game puts you right back in the action so you can hopefully fight better this time and get on to new thrills. With that being said, this game is not very scary. It has it’s moments, and I certainly let out a few yelps and jumped to my feet at least once, but it’s really not too horrific which is a bit of a disappointment. It makes up for that with immersive intensity; I may not be shaking in my boots, but that doesn’t mean I’m not on the edge of my seat, creeping around every corner. The atmosphere is excellent and you feel like the ship is alive; you can feel the ghostly presence of all the crew that just a short time ago was walking its halls.

In line with the lack of scares, is a lack of difficulty. I played on hard mode right off the bat, but once I got into the game I wished impossible mode was unlocked from the start. Even without upgrading my health until the final stage, I never had too much trouble at all. There are so many health packs available to you, that I had a stock pile in storage by the end of the game. Ammo was tighter, but I never really ran out until the final chapters, and even then I managed just fine with what I had. On top of that, there are automated stores throughout that sell additional health packs and ammo, but I never even needed to buy any. With the extra cash I was able to upgrade my rig with more armor and inventory slots which confounded the ease even more. When you buy a new rig, the shop opens up and you walk into a tight chamber that seals shut behind you. When it finished and the doors open, you are treated to the new look of your suit, equipped with more armored ribbing and a variation of your glowing visor. It’s a really great touch. Even the bosses in Dead Space are not tough. In fact, they are often far easier than any room that is ambushed by just a few enemies. Although the pattern to defeating these monstrosities is easily identified, finishing them off is no less enjoyable. The developers found a way to make boss battles still epic, but remove the frustration of them. The final boss is pretty much a cake walk, but the battle is still awesome, thanks particularly to one aspect of it, but I’ll leave you hanging on that one.

The lack of frustration over difficulty does have the benefit of freeing you up a bit to really admire how beautiful the game is. Some of the best things to see are the action sequences when you are killed by each of the game’s enemies, and also when an enemy latches on to you and have to rapidly tap (A) to shake it off and then get rewarded with a brutally awesome sequence of Isaac beating the shit out of it in one way or another. Honestly, dying is one of the best things about Dead Space.

The gameplay centers on the idea of strategic dismemberment, another profoundly excellent aspect of Dead Space. Not only do you have to shoot enemies that pop out of nowhere, you have to do it in a rather calm and collected way. Popping faces with head shots or just firing like mad into the center of mass of one of these necromorphs will not do much more than slow them down, which sometimes is just the thing you need, but if you want to inflict real damage, you’ve got to rip their limbs off. The glorious thing about this is the uniqueness of each weapon; it’s almost like a puzzle where you have to fit the output of each weapon to the size and orientation of the enemies’ limbs. This is especially emphasized by the default weapon whose alternate fire merely switches the orientation of the projectile energy from vertical to horizontal and vice versa, allowing you to maximize the efficiency of your shot. The other weapons have their place too. The large tentacles with weak spots located in large sacs are easily destroyed by the heavy hitter contact beam, the small child enemies who sprout three tentacles are easily dispatched with a single shot by the line cutter which emits a long projectile that can cleanly cut each growth. My favorite is probably using the line cutter which is long enough to remove both legs, and then switching to the plasma cutter to take off the more isolated arms.

Outside of fighting, there is little else besides just exploring the ship, which is a good thing since that is the best part of the game. The rest consists of getting to point A to collect item B and taking it to location C to fix some aspect of the ship. It’s simple and that’s fine. There are no complex puzzles, just flipping a few
switches here and there and the like. If your lost, Isaac’s rig can even project a line along the floor in the right direction to go. Somehow, this does nothing to take away from the game. There are a few mini game type events that I easily chose not to partake in on my first run, simply so as to not take away from the mood. Other than that there are zero gravity areas and vacuum areas that are so few and far apart that each time they are refreshing. Nothing really felt tedious in Dead Space, or tacked on, with the possible exception of manning a turret to blast asteroids, but even that was acceptable in the sense of reality of a space ship. The game paces well, and lasts a great length of time. The story falters a bit, but even so I found it intriguing and wished to know more throughout.

Comparable to: BioShock, Resident Evil 4
Verdict: A must buy

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