Dead Space tells the story of a crew answering a distress call from an inter-stellar mining ship, the Ishimura. Upon a bumpy arrival, they soon find that the faeces have hit the fan and this gigantic space vessel has been overrun by a hyper aggressive and dangerous alien lifeform known as the necromorphs. These fiendish beast feast on and reanimate dead flesh. You play as engineer Isaac Clarke, who needs to use his mechanical know-how to somehow get his backside off the ship in one piece, as well as try to find his missing love interest Nicole, who was stationed on the Ishimura. The story is told through a series of radio conversations as well as audio and text logs that you pick up along the way. While not an original delivery, it’s handled extremely well, as details are only fed to you bit-by-bit, giving you incentive to keep going.
Dead Space doesn’t have the freshest of premises, as just about every horror/space movie from Alien to Event Horizon has lent some inspiration. Not to mention the mecurial Resident Evil 4 and parts of the series are an obvious inspiration. However, Dead Space ought to be given credit for how well it uses the horror conventions and for taking mainly the good aspects and refining a few to make them even better. The result is one of the scariest and most atmospherically intense games in recent memory. And that extends beyond the survival horror genre.
Just wait till there are seven of them.
It’s the atmosphere that is created by Dead Space that makes the game. Whether it be finding a rogue crew member trying to put themselves out of their misery, the power flicking on and off, necromorphs creeping by or radio chatter, Dead Space may not be new but it comes off extremely well. Not to mention, a mixture of excellent graphics both from technical and a directional perspective make this game really damn creepy. While the game does aim to ‘startle’ more than genuinely scare sometimes, and you can see some of them coming, there are a number of genuine scares and shocking moments that will really make Dead Space stick with you.
In a way, the game is somewhat cruel. Throughout the game’s twelve chapters, Isaac is constantly sent on repair jobs through different parts of the ship, even though you always know that alien onslaughts are waiting around the corner. There may not be anything remarkable about the game’s objectives, as they devolve into key hunts with a few clever puzzles along the way, but dismissing the gameplay on this basis would be missing the point. It’s not the objective itself that makes the game, but the journey to get to it.
You are equipped with some interesting weapons that probably were once used as mining and engineering tools. The weapons are quite fun, so long as you have the ammo to use them. Furthermore, you have a detailed tech-tree for each to upgrade, and you’re going to want to do so wisely. The actual combat in Dead Space focuses on the dismembering the limbs of the necromorph. So you’ve got to stop the moving, as body and head shots aren’t particularly effective. There are a large variety of enemies, though only a handful of bosses, each is a formidable challenge. Still, each enemy is a challenge in itself, as not all are disposed by simply cutting off their limbs.
Ah, my head!
The combat is solid, though purposefully limited in its control. In doing so, you can feel the desperation in Isaac's movements as he fights (or runs) for survival around every corner. Utilising the similar over-the-shoulder controls to Resident Evil 4, Dead Space has an advantage in that you can move while shooting but flaw in that it doesn’t include a quick turn. Apart from this minor flaw, the limiting controls enhance the experience by creating a sense of urgency and vulnerability, rather than take away from it. Given some of the puzzles and use of the setting in the game, it was a shame that combat is sometimes forced upon you too heavily. For a while it’s quite an intense experience to fight off a dozen or so necromorphs, though on higher difficulties, the forced repetition that comes with failure takes away from the intensity and can become a frustration.
Two aspects that set Dead Space apart are the use of zero-gravity and decompressed environments. Zero-G allows you to jump across rooms to any surface flat surface, while the decompressed environments require you to balance speed and the amount of air that you have left. These elements are often combined with some minor puzzles and are implemented extremely well. They aren’t overused and they add a great aesthetic and gameplay dimension to the game. Other minor tools at your disposal at the stasis gun, that allows you to slow down objects, including enemies and broken doors, and a kinesis gun that allows you to pick up and move heavy objects, as well as shoot projectiles.
To immerse the player into the chilling atmosphere, the developers have almost completely forsaken the HUD. Instead, all menus are accessed in real time, while the use of healing items has been short-cut to the face buttons. Apart from not having a short cut for air or stasis refills, this design works very well. The in-game map wasn’t particularly good to look at, but the level design was good enough that we never really had to reference it. That and it’s more fun to venture into the unknown. The only downer to the design was the some environments were visited more than once. The main issue with this is that the supposedly massive Ishimura seems smaller than it is.
Damn, you got some big cockroaches.
Across its twelve chapters, Dead Space will take anywhere from 12-18 hours to complete, depending on the difficulty setting. To really get a grip on what is happening with the story and to fully upgrade and utilise your weaponry, you’re going to have to play through a couple of times. Unfortunately, you can’t change your difficulty in subsequent play throughs, and the game is quite heavily scripted, so an edge to the game is lost through the inherent predictability. It's an area that future horror games ought to work on.
As mentioned, the game looks superb, both from a technical perspective and from an artistic perspective and it makes the game stand head and shoulders above the pack. The atmosphere that is created is truly frightening. It will leave you guessing what’s around every corner and give a real feeling of isolation and remoteness. Not to mention, extremely violent and has some very gory and shocking death scenes. The only oddity to graphics were some at times, jittery enemy animations which made them seem unnatural. Otherwise, the game is a phenomenally chilling game to look at. The audio presentation of the game does its job with aplomb. You may hear something, but will never quite be sure of what it is. While it does rely a little on the startling element, the atmosphere never lets up, be it in the confined corridors of the Ishimura, or the muted sounds in a decompressed environment.
There have not been many quality survival-horror games since Resident Evil 4, let alone in this HD generation. However, in Dead Space you have the most intense and well-built horror game in recent memory. Sure, it may not be an original premise and have some debatable design choices but for those who are willing to take these issues into account and immerse themselves in the confines of the Ishimura will find one of the most memorable and impressionable gaming experiences of the year. And not to mention, one that nails just about everything that it tries. Dead Space is intense, intriguing, scary and most of all, will stick with you for some time to come.
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