Dead Space

Dead Space had a lot to overcome when finding a niche among the horror giants like silent hill and resident evil. EA took this challenge seriously and really did a good job. In fact, this is probably the first time i see EA do a good job for years, so they may just bring my hope with the company again. This game really puts you in and holds you till the end.

The story of this game may seem generic, another space zombies shooter. but its not just that. the plot slowly revealing as you control Isaac Clarke, the engineer that is probably the only person with an armour in the whole space army, whose face we never see. one could even think he is a robot, but he is not. The plot turns and twists in the ways even hardened horror gamer wouldn't expect. and the best part - it follows a logic path. it is not your usual go there and slay them all story, you have logical explanation for going into every part of the spaceship Ishimura. the ship itself is a character. its decks filled with stuff thrown around and dead bodies, its halls with dust floating around everything around helps you get into the atmosphere of claustrophobic horror disaster. and you would not say that this ship is small, no, its huge, but it still gives you the creeps of getting cornered by enemies at any moment. Not to give too much away, but you also get to walk at another ship as well as on the ground, so the environments wary. the only thing bad about environments i could say is coming back to same place. though it is logical and follows the storyline very well, going back to the same place just doesn't feel the same.

The immersion in this game is huge. This is helped a lot by having no HUD. everything is displayed with holoraphic effects. and i do mean everything. your health is on your back, as well as air when you enter vacuum, ammo is displayed on your weapon, shops, map, pickups, objects to use, everything appears as a holographic projection. this makes it much more easier for the game to suck the player in and make him forget that hes sitting in a comfortable chair in warm house. you will feel fear, you will get angry at the characters, you will curse the ship.

The gameplay itself is both rich and lacking. This may be due porting it from consoles, but the mouse aim seems to be late reaction. it gets better when you aim, but menu navigation is better done with keyboard. still the aiming gets off sometimes because precision is lacking. Our Isaac cannot crouch of jump, which makes him very restricted. he can however run, and run you will. whether it will be a monster chasing you, or your running out of air in vacuum you will be running. the lifts serve as a tentsion builders, sometimes you stay in the way too long and then begin to think something will happen. sadly in most cases its actually the fault of loading the room. when you open the door the next room is loaded, so there is no loading screen, except between chapters, but that is normal. the problem with this is, that sometimes there is a monster right behind you and your standing in front of the door like an idiot waiting for the room to load. now my laptop is not known for fast loading so i don't complain there and people with fast computers probably don't even notice, but i cant imagine the horrors of this lading for console users. There is also a store and an upgrade. basically all i used a store is to sell off extra resources and buy power nodes and new armor (yes you can actually buy yourself a new suit while running to turn on ships hydroponics so you could breathe. at upgrade bench you can put your power nodes to use to upgrade your weapons or armour or special abilities. all of that is also done in holograms, as well as the map. and it does not pause the game. i have been attacked from the back multiple times while browsing the store, so be careful. you also have telekinesis and stasis modules in your suit. those are very useful throughout the game. telekinesis will be used in almost every chapter for story reasons, but its much more fun to use it to throw explosive canisters into running enemies. stasis on the other hand is used to slow down the enemies and machines. without it you would ahve hard time shooting all those alien squid. it also helps you get through mechanisms like malfunctioning door without dieing. the game however is very generous here and give you many tips when to use what, so even a new gamer would understand it.

When you walk throughout the ship you can enter zero-gravity modes. that will help you with lifting or just get you monster flying in your way. normally your magnetic boots hold you down, but you can jump to walls and the whole room turns for your perspective. it gets very confusing, especially in the larger areas, so i did not stay there for long. one problem i had is that in the chapter down on the planet there was a zero gravity room. zero gravity on a planet, seriously. you can also enter vacuum, which can be zero gravity or not, depending on situation. you only have limited air supply, which you can increase with upgrading your rig or buying air cans. but its generally good not to stay without air for long.

weaponry is quite small. you have 6 weapons. though calling them weapons is generous as only 2 are real weapons - pulse rifle and flamethrower. but much more useful are mining equipment like line gun and pulse miner that help you cut enemies limbs off easy. you can upgrade each weapon, so your choices where to go are many. and there is no way to upgrade all in one game. best i could manage was fully upgrade 3 weapons in one gameplay. now the monsters have a high variety of ways to attack you, and some weapons work better against certain monsters, so you have to be always ready. ammunition also takes a lot of space inside your rig, so you cant be carrying tons of ammo and just blast your way through. I would suggest focusing on couple guns throughout most of the game though and let the upgrades make up for speciality. you have to also remmeber that most damage is done to the limbs of monsters, so you have multiple fast moving targets instead of the usual headshot style gameplay. cutting the legs of monster and seeing it crawl to you is just a twisted view. You can use meele. but that is limited to either ripper, that is a saw, or punching, which i found totally useless, or kicking, which works against boxes, not enemies. but its nice that we at least have that possibility present. especially when you run out of ammo.

The sound in this game is perfect. from the tiniest noises inside the walls to pickup sounds. from telekinesis waves to monsters grown. from voice acting to weapon sound. all the sounds in this game is top quality, therefore i suggest playing it with good quality headphones and you wont be sorry. the graphics are also amazingly brilliant design. i usually play on low graphics due to my computer being slow, but this i could play on high and experience barely any stutter. and the graphics are indeed amazing, from the beams of traction to spacewalk. you can even see particles begin sucked out when you enter vacuum. monsters are very well done as well as character costumes, though the armour could use a bit more variety in its look. weapon beams, monsters falling, you could just cue some Beethoven music and watch it play. its that beautiful.

Generally the game just has that magic feeling about itself. it really can compete with the old horror giants and the sequal we have now shows it will. this is a gem that every horror loving gamer should play. beside the controlling problems and other minor bugs the game is quite fluid. i never had the game crash, get stuck, have monster or character stuck somewhere. there is however a trick sometimes when monster is bound to a room, you could just stand on the doorway and shot him and he cannot attack back. but those occasions are very rare.

In the general sense, i give this game a strong 9.