Dead Space is good, really really good. The game is plain fun to play. If it weren't for a few setbacks in game design and story, this could have been epic. Dead Space starts off well. The UI design choices and the amount of immersion they are trying to go for works. There is no HUD, your important information (life bar and stasis bar) are on the back of your suit. The menus are all done in game and real time. The graphics are great and the atmosphere works. However all is not well in the Ishimura. The immersion is broken several times by the game. There are many times where there is a "cut scene" playing and you can move around completely, but not. There is a moment early in the game where you see a scientist in a room getting attacked by a monster. There are doors directly to this room and my first instinct was to try to save him. But the doors won't open. They aren't "locked", the door actually says "Stand by." Really? The door knows I'm in a faked cut scene? Awesome. This happens every time there is a fake cut scene. Also during these there is probably a character talking. In the case of MGS4 where you could move around the room during a cut scene you could still here what was being discussed. In this case, unless you have the sound turned way up or are looking directly at the character talking, you won't hear them. So instead of looking around a room, you are forced to stare at them, JUST LIKE A CUT SCENE! Only instead they aren't forcing us to watch something, but they really are.
The enemy design isn't very inspired. They aren't really cool looking, other than the Brute. It is pounded into your head that you are supposed to shoot of the limbs (told to you about three different times, in three different ways) and even that isn't that interesting. Shooting off legs don't really help, only shooting off the arms. Heads don't seem to count at all. So all you do is shoot arms off (for the most part) over and over again. There is one enemy that this way of killing it really is beneficial, but for the most part all your are doing is saving ammo.
The weapons in the game are pretty interesting. There are different types and the can all be upgraded, along with your suit and other powers. The problem is that there isn't an immediate effect to this. It's difficult to see how spending these precious nodes (and they are precious, but there isn't many of them) helps you out. I was able to upgrade exactly one weapon all the way my first play through. That is it. While I'm sure the upgrades helped, it wasn't anything that cool. In Force Unleashed the upgrades are immediately available and cool. Not the case here.
The final thing that I wish they would have done was change the main character. Isaac is supposed to be an everyman type of character (if for some reason you didn't get that, like me, the final cutscene confirms this) but he doesn't look like one. The suit you wear makes you look sort of like a bad ass. Not an everyman. The missions you do never has that feeling of "Wow, I can't believe I just did that." This is something that was littered throughout Uncharted.
While there are things I wish were changed, the experience of playing Dead Space is a good one.
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