Up for some really scary mind numbing stuff? Dead Space fits the bill to a tee. Developed by EA, Dead Space is actually an amazingly good title for franchise killers EA. It is seen as a shift to producing quality new IPs at EA. Having had the chance to finally sink in some time to this game, here's my short review of it:
Dead Space pretty much closely follows any survival horror in space convention with a setting set in a derelict space station. Something has gone horribly wrong in the USS Ishimura, a space mining colony ship. You play as Isaac, an engineer that has been sent to the Ishimura to investigate the sudden lack of any communication with the ship.
Obviously things don’t go as planned and you and the crew of your engineering ship crash into the Ishimura and end up stranded there. The Ishimura’s crew has completely vanished and some sort of alien species has overrun the station.
The story won’t win any awards. It’s as clichéd as any horror game gets but the setting in space has not seen a horror themed game in recent times. This fact makes this one a refreshing change of pace.
Dead Space is essentially a horror themed shooter with an interesting limb dismemberment mechanic. Instead of popping enemies with your gun, you use your plasma cutter to cut off limbs off the creepies. You will need to cut off limbs to kill them off and shooting them in the face won’t do any damage. This mechanic forces you to avoid spamming fire on monsters and makes you aim your shots.
It creates tension as you try your best to aim and dismember limbs off the monsters as they rush towards you. You can buy new weapons off a vending machine(ala Bioshock) that are available in the Ishimura. You get to collect credits around the abandoned ship and enemies. For some odd reasons the enemies seem to carry credits that you can grab after killing them. Yeah its a game, game mechanics may not make much sense in reality.
Apart from buying new weapons(that may or may not be that useful), you can upgrade the weapons you have(and your suit) to improve things like ammo capacity, reload times, damage done and firing speed. You upgrade using power nodes that you collect(these are quite rare) and using readily available work benches(like the store mechanic) you can pick different upgrade paths. It’s not as deep as say an RPG title, but it does give you a sense of becoming more powerful as you progress through the levels.
Level progression is linear and broken down into chapters. Each level has a set of objectives that you must accomplish. These range from repair a certain thing, find a particular item, turn on the power on a certain switch etc. Considering you’re an engineer, there is a lot of repairing and solving lots of problems that may seem contrived but getting there is half the fun. This isn’t really a deep puzzle game so there isn’t much challenge in the whole pushing levers and repairing things schtick the game throws at you.
Dead Space on the PC has all the symptoms of a bad console port. The game was simply not made for the PC and complaints range from janky and kludgy control that you wrestle with to do what you want, to the clumsy camera controls that sometimes give you a hard time when all you want is to look at that monster that is running menacingly towards you. The over the shoulder camera might have worked well on the console but on the PC it feels like a rather odd position to control your character from that I never felt comfortable with.
The consolised save point system never was much of an issue as the save points were placed in strategic locations around the progression of a level. I never felt like I had to replay large chunks of the game because I died. Inventory management is a little difficult to get to grasps too because of the awkward controls. While the virtual hud that pops up in front of your character looks cool, controlling selection of items was just unintuitive.
Level design seems pretty straight forward with plenty of corridors and rooms interspersed in a level. Breaking the monotony of level design are some areas with zero G(no gravity). In these sections you can point at any area you want to go to and fly in zero G towards it. Up becomes down and it leads to new gameplay options that I felt were never fulfilled.
Dead Space is one of the best visually and aurally designed game I have seen in a while. It’s no Crysis in terms of graphical pizzazz but the sheer detail and attention put into recreating this derelict space station is quite amazing. From the steam spewing from vents to the blood splattered walls, the visual design is a spot on representation of the destroyed beauty setting of the space station.
What's more amazing is the brilliant use of sound in Dead Space. The sound alone freaked me out so much, I had to exit out of the game to take a break. Moving around the station, you will hear the clanging of metal, the roar of monsters and the screams of a non existent crew. The environmental sound continuously crept me out and made me stay constantly on the edge.
Most of the time, nothing happens and I relaxed. Then as I move into a new hallway, there is a chorus of screeching violin music that rises up to a crescendo and nothing happens. This constant anticipation of something around the corner really increases the tension in the game. Plenty of credit must go to the team that designed the sound in this game.
Dead Space is a hauntingly frightening experience that will freak the hell out of you. It is unfortunate that it is a mediocre port that wasn’t designed to work flawlessly with a mouse and keyboard. If you have an XBOX360 controller, it feels a lot better. If you love horror themed games, Dead Space is a must play!
The Good
- Great visual design
- The sound and music in this game is one of the best in any game
- Great pacing
- Interesting limb dismemberment shooter mechanic makes things fresh
The Bad
- Awful mouse and keyboard controls
- Repetitive objectives
Rating: 3/5
Retail Price: RM129
Retail availability: pcgame.com.my
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