(video courtesy of gamevideos.1up.com)
What is it?
Dead Space is a 3rd-person-shooter, action game Developed by Visceral Games of EA. The game puts you in the armored suit of Isaac, an Engineer sent with a small team to the ship known as the USG Ishimura to offer repairs. When the team arrives, however, you find the place has gone to hell because of some unknown alien source, causing the dead bodies of the Ishimura's crew to be reanimated as creatures known as "Necromorphs". It then becomes your job to find a way to repair your ship, and leave the Ishimura alive.
As Isaac, the player is far from helpless in this horrific world. His engineer's suit has a few very cool enhancements, such as: stasis (the ability to slow enemies or parts of the environment), kinesis module (a sort of telekinetic ability that allows the player to move and throw/shoot parts of the environment), air canisters to breathe outside, and magnetic boots that let Isaac to move around the rooms with zero gravity. His weapons (modified mining tools) are probably the most useful in the fight to escape.
The game starts you off with no weapon at all. The first time you encounter a necromorph, you are absolutely powerless to really defend yourself (except maybe to try to punch him with your arm). But once you receive your first weapon, the Plasma cutter, that sense of powerlessness is gone for the rest of the game. The method for success in Dead Space is quite simple: Shoot of their limbs; Don't die. If you can do that you might just survive the horrors of the Ishimura.
How did i feel about it?
Dead space did a lot of interesting things with it's game play mechanics that I just loved. Like many others who have reviewed this game, I found the Zero-G areas to be awesome puzzles and fight sequences. Figuring out which weapon was best for which type of gun was best suited for each type of necromorph was fun, though I'm under the impression that, though very difficult, it wouldn't be impossible to finish the game with nothing but the plasma cutter and your suit.
To be honest, at no point was I ever overly frightened by the game, and I'm usually one who is scared easily (I was afraid of E.T. as a young child). I think that is due to the fact that I learned very early, cutting off limbs was the fastest way to kill them. And you don't just hear it once. Practically everyone who as the means to tell you [your partners, audio logs, text logs, etc.] will tell you to do it. I'm almost positive that at some point when one of the necromorphs was attacking me, it too reminded me of it's fatal weakness and I just wasn't paying close enough to catch it.
Overall, the game has amazing set design. you quickly start to learn where the monsters pop out from (which is any texture on the wall/ceiling/floor that doesn't match the surrounding) and the game starts to play little mental tricks on you that make you expect something to be there, but most of the time it's nothing and you're looking around for no reason. The strange back story with the religion that was trying to get the relic that was causing the madness seemed rather throwaway to me. It was more than was needed, but didn't really add or detract from the rest of the game in any measurable way.
If Dead Space sounds interesting to you, I promise it will be worth your investment. If you think your fear might get the best of you, make your friend play it and watch over their shoulder. You might actually be helpful in seeing something he/she didn't.
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