So the story with Dead Space was that I bought it on the advice of a few good friends, who highly recommended it and praised it for its ridiculously scary atmosphere and all that. Me, being incredibly masculine and capable of breaking a building in half with my toe nail, scoffed at the idea that a game could scare me. I’ve trounced FEAR, Condemned, Final Fantasy X-2 and many others, and hell I write the damn ProMode article! I’m an uber gamer, as if something could scare me!
Well, I was wrong, I admit that I squealed like a girl. It’s not that the concept behind Dead Space is what gets me, it’s how its applying the concept with the atmosphere. Upon loading the game, initially I just thought it had cool graphics and seemed to be a pretty gory title which I’d enjoy, much like FEAR. So at the beginning of the game, the team boards the Ishimura and all that, and I follow them through some dark corridors and find that there’s no power at all. “HAH” I thought to myself, “I don’t fear darkness, it fears ME” and proceeded to act like a hardcore dude when in reality I was just a giddy geek. So you proceed through a corridor to get to the other end of the room, which is where the power switch is or something like that. I head in there, turn it on, and things start buzzing and freaking out, and the lights go out and get into some emergency one where there’s red lights flickering about. “HAH” I thought again, “this is pretty well done”, I got a tad edgy, because the sound in the game is frickin’ incredible in surround sound, really nailed it.
So anyway, this has all happened and the team on the other side has yelled at me, blaming me for things and wondering what just happened. It’s certainly not the fact that the ship is a flaming wreck guys, not at all. As they continue to blame me and be stupid, there’s weird crawling noises coming from the vents, and a big shadow drops from one of them behind one of the useless marines on the other side. I get a shiver down my spine as I see it get up and claw one of the marines to death with its giant shoulder spears and mouth with no jaw but has claws in it. Once this guy gets downed in agony, another one drops down and owns the other marine dude too, so there’s two shoulder spine jawless beast aliens pillaging my team, and they know I’m in the other room.
Now two things went through my head here. The first was how freaking cool the idea of shoulder spines were. I mean you get shouldered and you get impaled, that’s cool. The second was how utterly terrifying these things were and how LOUD they roared. The game seriously sends a chill down my spine with its shrieking roars and creaky sound effects.
So okay, I conceded defeat, I kinda freaked out there. Things were getting heated, sound was louder than God and I had no defence apart from a crappy hand sway which makes Isaac look drunk and stupid. The surviving dude on the other side yelled at me over the headset telling me to run for my life and not die and meet him somewhere, but considering that I don’t really care about him at all I just ran for my own life. So I ran through some tiny corridor with steam vents exploding and pipes everywhere, and hear the shrieking roar of the shoulder spine beast lord behind me. Oh God it’s in the same room, it’s following me! Heart kicks into high gear and begins pounding into my chest, and as I get to the end of the corridor I jump into the elevator and hit the close button. Shoulder demon face was right behind me and thankfully, the door kept him out...well, I thought it did. As I was regaining my ability to breathe without letting out high pitched squeals, Mr Shoulder Spine BREAKS THROUGH THE ELEVATOR WITH ITS JAWLESS FACE and attempts to eat me. It couldn’t reach thankfully and conceded defeat, but nonetheless my pants were soaked and I was coiled in the corner.
So I’m gonna stop there, as I shouldn’t spoil much more of the game anymore for people who haven’t played, but pretty much, I absolutely hate Dead Space for the sole reason that it scares the bejeezus out of me. I’m usually fairly tame with games but there is something about Dead Space that really hits the spot and turns me into a quivering and lonely child being chased by wolves...with spear shoulders. To finish the story though, I have finished the first level of the game and gone halfway through the second, however I haven’t moved forward at all since then. Call me a wimp but I concede...Dead Space is terrifying, and I hate it for that.
Until next time fellow Haters of Love (or Lovers of Hate), hate makes you powerful! UNLIMITED POWER BESTOWED UPON YOU BY THOR!
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I mean it's well done and small parts are scary, but mikezilla2 is right, it mainly relies on jump scares which stop being scary after they keep happening. The last game that I was scared from playing was REmake, but I was around 13? when i played it, which probably helped, and was yet to watch an MA movie. Love how parents follow the movie ratings like a bible, yet let me play Turok and other MA games when I was around 10. 
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