Dead Space Review

It’s amazing what you can do with some darkness,

outer-space, & crazy amounts of morphed humans

By GrathiusXR

©2008 Arthur Kotsopoulos:

Dead Space: A review about Outer Space and Aliens, perhaps 2 of the most overused concepts in video game history. They are concepts that are almost always poorly executed, always cliched, and always over the top in every way. Yet somehow EA Redwood have managed to take these 2 concepts, mix them together and craft a truly unbelievable experience.

From the opening cutscene in where you first set eyes on the huge mining vessel the Planet Cracker: USG Ishimura, on-which just about all of the game takes place, you know that you are going to be in for one heck of a disturbing and gut wrenching ride. You play as Isaac Clarke, an engineer that works for a giant mining company with various mining ships stationed throughout the galaxy.

After receiving a distress call from the USG Ishimura you, along with Kendra Daniels, Zach Hammond, and 2 others of the C.E.C, set out on the assumption that the ship is having certain mechanical failures, but oh how wrong you all were.

From the moment that you attempt to dock the ship things take a turn for the worst, the ships pilot makes a crucial decision in trying to land, which pays out and everyone makes it out safe. In a sense this intro sort of feels similar to the intro to Doom 3. Except instead of things going smooth and right, everything goes horribly wrong and disastrous for all concerned.

Click on any image for larger full rez view:

5 minutes into the first level, you are all of a sudden separated from the rest of the team in a thrilling and intense chase as you try to escape from what you shall be encountering throughout the whole game, Necromorphs. These creatures are infected crew of the ship and their origins at first are unknown.

These creatures are agile, thin and furious. You find out right after the chase how to battle these creatures and it isn’t’ the typical shoot them X amount of times and thank you very much – you’re dead – Oh no, not so easy. “Dismemberment”, it is the only way to defeat them and the games main topic of choice. Dead Space is all about dismemberment, you can shoot them so many times in the body and they just won’t die.

Shoot both their legs off however and they start crawling towards you, shoot both their arms off instead and they will barge directly at you. The Necromorphs AI is that of the highest regard in a sense of they will work with what they have. Ammo is scarce throughout the levels so thought and strategy plays a great deal when encountering the Necromorphs, and in the later stages you encounter different variations which means you need to reconfigure your game plan.

Check out the initial entry and investigation: But keep a towel handy

Now these creatures didn’t just happen to pop their ugly faces out of nowhere. There is a very mysterious reason as to how they happened to be. EA take a page from the iD/Doom 3, 2K/Bioshock book and fleshed out the story through audio/video/text logs that are scattered throughout each level. Finding these logs is pretty easy and will extend your knowledge on what exactly is happening on the ship.

Along with these logs are ammo, health and recharge packs which are always understandably helpful, as there are times where you shall be very low on ammo and will have to either run away or melee your way to defeat the enemy.

This game rewards exploration. While the whole ship isn’t open to explore in the one level there are multiple paths that you can take to obtain ammo and such. So the game rewards you for exploring the ship, which is great.

Along with exploring there is a store that you encounter near the beginning of each level where you can buy ammo, different weapons, health packs and also air cans for when you participate in the zero gravity (Zero G) levels. Which are a nice touch to differentiate the gameplay. Schematics are scattered throughout each level as well, which unlock new things to buy at the store such as higher suit levels that grant greater armour, inventory slots, and different types of ammo.

Benches are scattered through each level that grant you the ability to use you power nodes found while exploring to upgrade aspects of your weapon, suit and 2 powers: stasis and kinsesis. Upgrade your health, weapon damage, reload time, duration of your stasis. Trust me, you will need to in the later stages as everything gets harder and a “lot” more frantic.

While all these are good and well, my main strife with the game is the fact that on a few missions you are required to backtrack to places you have already been to. This for me makes me feel that the Ishimura isn’t as big as it is made out to be. Luckily it’s the only thing wrong with the game as everything else with the game is perfect.

The audio is of the highest quality. Play the game using 5.1 and you can hear your characters heartbeat, you can hear the scratching in the vents you can hear everything. The graphics in this game are probably the best that i have seen in a long time, who said the Xbox 360 reached it’s peak ages ago?  The detail put into each character, enemy, and the environment is just amazing. Everything has been crafted to perfection.

No matter how hard you try to look you will not find anything wrong with this game. Even the HUD has been ingeniously crafted into the game. Your health meter is a tube that runs down your back, ammo is shown on the actual gun, pressing the Y button or the Back button brings up a holographic menu which has a map, inventory, current mission objectives and all the logs you have found.

It shows that EA Redwood have taken time and effort to make sure that this game is the best horror survival game out on the market, everything about it is just perfect. If easily offers over 10 hours of game time, and the fact that you are able to carry over all your previous game upgrades to a new game allows you to play again and will deepen your understanding of the story.

Dead Space isn’t for the light hearted, the level of gore involved is satisfying and will excite those hardcore fans, the storyline is fleshed out and isn’t cliched and there are new surprises in each level as you progress that will keep you on the edge of your seat. A game that truly must be experienced and a game that just may be the sleeper hit and GOTY for 2008.

More Dead Space Videos to check out:

“9.5/10

©2008 Arthur Kotsopoulos:

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Filed under: Console gaming, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 3rd Party Games, Xbox 360 Game Reviews, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | Dead Space, Dead Space review, EA, EA Redwood, Electronic Arts, Isaac Clarke, USG Ishimura