Hi, I am Sid. This is my first review on this site, so if you have any comments please make them known to me and I shall take them into account and make my next review to your tastes...if this was a perfect world.
Dead Space is produced by Electronic Arts, who I haven’t trusted due to their shoddy name being used to sell shoddy games…such as every James Bond tie-in game after Goldeneye, which is still, in my opinion, the greatest film-tie in video game ever. But why am I talking about my views on Goldeneye when I should really be telling you, the reader of whom holds slight interest over my opinion, about Dead Space? I will review it now. But let me just get this out in the open: Goldeneye rocked. That is it.
Dead Space is not for the faint hearted and not for anyone under the age of 18. Did you hear that negligent mother of six? This game is for the adults, not the kiddies who should be playing the Ubisoft-licensed crap. This is a pretty violent game, and also frequently scary…well, not as such scary, more jump-out-of-your-seat type frights; the type of scares which everybody believes should invoke terror on the player because developers and writers have lost all imaginative flair when it comes to making the player/observer wet themselves and check the cupboards for monsters for the next six weeks.
The story is reminiscent of Alien in the sense that you are on a seemingly abandoned ship named the USG Ishimura (not to be mistaken with the Nostromo from Alien) and that the source of all the goings-on is all due to something found on a planet nearby. You play as an engineer, Isaac Clarke, who has managed to get himself into this sticky situation after picking up a distress call.
If you are a sci-fi boffin, you will have noticed that Isaac Clarke’s name is actually made from a combination of Isaac Asimov, the author of I, Robot among other books, and Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both great authors inspire a relatively bland character. Much like a few of the greatest faces of gaming such as Link from the Legend of Zelda series and Gordon Freeman from the Half Life games, Isaac Clarke is a mute. You might think he is just a suit of armour controlled by some robot or something and you wouldn’t be wrong in some respects (he does take his helmet off at two points in the game, but he still doesn’t spout any dialogue), but he is a pretty awesome robot at that. He is on this mission to find out the cause of the blackout on this massive ship, and also to find his girlfriend, Nicole Brennan, who was one of the people on there at the time of the blackout. What he and his comrades discover, however, is that the crew have transformed into horrific, murderous foes that want to rip them limb from limb. Funny I should mention that noun: ‘limb’. Limbs, or the destruction of this essential part of the human anatomy, play a vital part in the dispatching of your foes.
The combat system is a lot more original than the story, believe me. You know in most games these days where the skull of the enemy is where the bullet is to be inserted? Well, Visceral Games have thrown that out the metaphorical window. To kill the enemies requires strategic dismemberment. You heard me: strategic. To kill an enemy, you have to stop them reaching you not by destroying the brain, but by destroying the limbs. For instance, a Necromorph (not to be mistaken with the Xenomorph from Alien) runs at you: what do you do? Headshots are ineffective, but a shot to the leg can chop it clean off, causing said enemy to topple over and crawl towards you; you aren’t finished yet! One swift shot to its arm and it should just flop to the ground as dead as the human body it has inhabited! In this respect, the combat has caused my thumb to appear in the northern direction; to those not familiar with the directions of a compass, that means up. Thumbs up to Visceral Games, for making survival horror more than just disposable, headless enemies. Legs, arms, hands, heads; these can all be amputated with darkly hilarious consequences. Limbless enemies are in, maggot infested craniums out!
The environment in which you must dispose of the Necromorphs is pretty varied considering you’re walking through the same metal tomb for ten hours. You will make your escape through a medical ward, a dining hall, a locker room, and even the planet in which the monstrosities originated from before you can escape the nightmare for good. And boy, don’t those ten hours mean a lot. Every minute goes by means an extra minute in which you’re either surviving or getting gnawed on by a tentacle-wielding infant. Yes, you might just question your morality over the killing of infants during this game, but call me the worst thing since Hitler, it’s justified if you see what you are defending yourself against.
The story’s not going to blow you away, but it’s decent enough. As mentioned previously, it’s inspired by Ridley Scott’s film and also various other sci-fi related works, such as Event Horizon (expedition to planet unearths something alien, alien entity starts to ravage the ship). The characters could have been so much more fleshed out. Isaac is pretty hard to care for, even when he is searching frantically for his beloved, but the real stars are the enemies. If you saw one of them in your house late at night, I bet you would die of fright. They are contorted versions of what they used to be before (humans!) but with an extra set of arms with what look suspiciously like blades attached to them. They run, crawl, jump, fly and pop out at predictable and unpredictable moments. Think the decontamination areas are safe? Think again. You hear the sirens? Get ready with your Plasma Cutter…the Necromorphs are out for blood…and they want you.
Thinking about combat, I must tell you about the weapons. Some may say that there are too few (there are eight overall, each various in power, awesomeness and looks) but I think that that number is fine! Those people that complained never saw the upgrade system, which is pretty complex yet patience is needed, as you have to do a sort-of fetch quest for devices to upgrade your weapons with. They are scarcely distributed throughout the ship, which can cause irritation, BUT they can be bought in the in-game store, but with a heavy price tag. In my opinion, the best weapon has got to be the Line Gun. A laser is shot at the approaching enemy, but this laser can stretch across the width of a corridor, separating any enemy torso from its lower body. Sweet. The combat system is visibly copied from another successful horror game, Resident Evil 4 (which is one of my favourite games ever!), but this imitation has been done in other games, such as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, so it is easy to forgive Visceral Games for copying that landmark videogame. You only really need one weapon in this game, and that is the Plasma Cutter. The others are there to add variety, and they're still pretty awesome to use, and the result of using them is very satisfying, but the emphasis is based on the Plasma Cutter. There is even an achievement which is obtainable by using that weapon, and ONLY that weapon, throughout the whole game. Trust me, it isn't as hard as it sounds, just stock up on a lot of Plasma Energy.
There is also the zero gravity aspect, which EA has been gloating about since the announcement of this fine game. Their statement that 33% of Dead Space would feature zero-G is a bit of an overstatement, but these elements of game-play are smoothly transitioned, meaning that you sometimes may not even notice you’re approaching a zero-gravity area until all the sounds blurs out and you can only hear Isaac’s muffled breathing. Fascinating, and also frequently frightening.
So, to sum it all up, Dead Space gets my recommendation. It’s very gory (the death animations especially), it is frightening for those with a nervous disposition, and it can also raise some laughs…but in a rather sadistic way. The characters won’t really draw you in unless you go for the faceless type (just remembered how many women love Batman, will take that comment back), and the story isn’t as such original more than it is a tribute to the great science fiction films of old. But that may be even more of a reason to get it. Just buy it before Dead Space 2 reaches shelves.