Dead Space review

In Space, no one can hear you scream..except aliens..and stuff.

One of the most anticipated titles of the year, Dead Space, finally hit stores on
October 14th, 2008. Fans of survival horror have been highly anticipating (or loathing, depending on your opinions of the publisher) EA's first foray into the genre. Winning Best of awards at E3 put this title up to some lofty expectations, and I'm happy to say that the game completely lives up to the hype. With the perfect mix of survival horror along with incredible graphics, insanely good sound effects and voice acting, and a compelling story, you're more than getting your money's worth when you decide to finally play this spectacular title. 

Graphics - 9/10

Call me a jerk, but the only thing restricting me from rating this higher is that it relies on dark environments, which look fantastic. With that out of the way, the first thing you'll notice is the incredible quality placed on every single thing you encounter. The game loads with the player in a chair, in control of the main character Isaac while a few other crew members discussing the mission. From this moment, you get to see how much time the development team spent working on the environment, using bump mapping, specular lighting, incredible models, lifelike character design, the detail on the faces and so much more. For fans of it, there's even a lens flare that occurs if you tilt the camera to a certain angle. Somehow, that was one of the most jaw dropping moments to me. The thing that's more incredible however is that even though you spend most of your journey on on spaceship (or as the game calls them, a planetcrasher), each room has its own sense of life about it. The bulk of the journey takes you through different chapters, each showcasing a new location on the ship, but you never feel like you're just walking through just another corridor. Even when it comes to the short, almost forgetable hallways, you'll quickly find yourself easily distinguishing which environments you've already visited and which ones are completely new. The next area of the graphics that needs to be covered is how much detail has gone into the mutants/aliens that you face, along with your crew, corpses, etc. The game does tend to recycle the corpses that you come across, but that's completely forgivable considering that they're just decals, even if you can interact with them. Isaac himself sports this really unique look that really captures the feeling of you just being a human instead of one of the steroid injected characters from a game like Gears of War, or the weaker people from Resident Evil or Silent Hill. It's a nice touch that all of the inventories, shops, etc use an in game holographic effect, meaning that while you're looking through them, you could move the right stick and notice that the menus rotate, inhibiting your view, but further immersing the player in the experience as you notice that Isaac is completely engrossed in them. Every single monster that the player encounters though they have basic types, all feel different and look incredibly threatening.

Sound – 10/10.

The sound quality in this game is simply amazing. I’ve been using a 5.1 speaker setup, and it makes ridiculously good use of it. The environmental sounds are absolutely marvelous, especially when it comes to truly immersing the player in the feeling of being trapped above an eerie abandoned space craft, occasionally throwing out subtle sounds out there just to mess with your head, such as a chair falling down behind you, or the buzzing electric sound from a malfunctioning light. What’s more important is the shrieks of the enemies, each one creative and helping the player to detect how threatened they should be at any given moment when you hear a howl down the hallway. You can even detect how close your opponent is from the sound of their footsteps, and if they’ve noticed you yet or not. Another impressive touch is how, at least if you’re using a quality sound setup, when you least expect it, you can almost hear the dull roar of engines, or the lurching sound of an elevator in the distance because of the perfect balance between the bass and treble. As previously mentioned, the voice acting is done fantastically, from the audio logs of a frightened, now dead crew member, to the actors and actresses that voice the important characters in the story. Forget the days of B-movie acting, this game helps to set a new precedent in the genre that others are going to have a hard time following. Aside from that, the only other thing worth noting is how distinct each weapon you gain sounds from each other, which helps to determine one from another aside from the obvious rate of fire and power differences.

Controls – 10/10.

This is the department that plagues many survival horror games. Some studios, such as Capcom, have this belief that controlling like a tank helps to immerse the player in the experience, which I feel is completely untrue after playing this game. Dead Space takes the groundbreaking RE4 control scheme and adds a bit of it’s own flare to give you a feeling that you’re in control of your experience, leaving you to fight the mutants and not the controls. The most useful thing of all is the fact that using the left stick controls your movement, with just as any modern game does, but the most creative thing in my opinion is the fact that rotating the right stick rotates the camera. Keep in mind that this is a third person game, so it’s a bit different from the experience provided in FPS games. Rotating the camera literally rotates it around Isaac, allowing you to view him from different angles, which is a bit confusing at first but quickly begins to feel natural. Keeping the left sticks function in mind, if you wish to move around to a certain location, you rotate the camera and continue to move forward, which becomes useful because not only does it help you to prepare to strafe around a corner, but it also allows you to keep an eye out for any sneaky enemies approaching from behind. Aside from the obvious guns that the player earns, which uses the standard 3rd person combat control scheme (hold a button to aim and press another to fire), you’ve also got two extra powers, kinesis and stasis, which are simple to use (aim and tap another button), while in zero g environments, you aim and tap yet another button to fly towards another location. There’s a button to access the inventory, and another to use any medical kit that you have, keeping you from having to constantly draw up the screen. 

Gameplay – 9/10

I must say, I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable of a game this was. While at first the controls were a little off putting, due to them being a hybrid of first and third person styles, I quickly found myself swapping out to the appropriate weapon, using stasis and kinesis, while using health packs when I was low on hp. While the game does have you on board of a desolate craft, it keeps the gameplay and storyline engaging enough, which helps to alleviate that feeling of dread that holds back some people from playing the game and prevents the story from dragging. Even though I kept up with the information surrounding the title, I was completely surprised by the fact that the game had an rpg element, in the form of upgrading your suit, powers and weapons, which is highly dependent on credits found in the environment. Something this game quickly teaches the player is that in order to be highly successful, you don’t need every single weapon, you could use one or two, along with your powers and proper inventory management and finish the game with ease. Going back to the entire inventory management, this ties into the upgrade system, which allows the player to increase the slots available to them in the inventory by finding upgrade schematics hidden along the ship, then saving enough credits to level up your rig. To sum up how I feel about all of that, I was amazed at how well they managed to implement all of those elements without ruining the survival feel of the game. Knowing that you might have to sacrifice some air tanks in order to stock up on health and ammo truly makes you consider what type of challenges could be lurking around the corner. I would also like to bring something that actually stood out to me about the game, which… I’m not sure is a good thing or a bad thing. The save points in the world are spaced out so that, while you could backtrack to find one, if you keep pressing your way through, you seem to come across another one every 15 minutes. While it was useful, I found it very odd. For those who don’t want to save, the game also has a checkpoint system in place that allows you to resume from what equates to the beginning of the challenge that you just came up against. The storyline is compelling and has an interesting wrap-up, which could possibly leave the game open to a sequel.

Overall – 9/10

Dead Space is a must have. The total game takes about 12-15 hours on the normal difficulty, which upon completion awards you with different items and another difficulty, allowing you to go back into the game more powerful. The graphics and sound come together to create an experience that you wouldn’t have a problem showing a non-gamer, while the action is frequent enough to keep both the player and their onlookers engaged. The storyline is fantastic, especially for survival horror that’s in space, so that’s definitely worth a mention. The only reason I would count off is that there is a plot twist that actually made me sit there and stare for a moment, not in shock but because I couldn’t believe the game took that direction, and there’s a few moments at the end of the game, especially the last boss that I felt could have been more engaging. Overall, I’m completely happy with my purchase and can easily see myself going back through it again before the end of the year, and I would highly advise any gamers, hardcore or not to pick it up.