In space no-one can hear you scream, in front of the monitor they might though. (Dead Space (PC))

Member Name: Hexxen

Product:	Dead Space (PC)
Date:	18/01/09 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Atmospheric, Action-Packed, Sci-Fi Horror

Disadvantages: Lack of Variety at times

Bringing the mutant hordes to the screamless depths of space, Dead Space breathes some needed life into the Survival Horror genre. The biggest surprise is this little gem actually comes from the overly ambitious sims-milking EA who have had much critiscism in the past but i think this is definitely on the right track to pushing them into a different light.

Anyways back to the game, anyone who has played Resident Evil 4 will feel quite at home with this game. The camera angle is in the exact same spot sort of a locked third person "over the shoulder view", you have shops with multiple upgrades to your gear and a lot of customisability through power nodes which you pick up by exploring and off the bigger beasties and aiming is incredibly similar to anything resident evil. Expect lots of laser sight precision.

This game uses atmosphere absolutely amazingly, i have been playing this recently after christmas and when im up late at night donning my headphones in the dark you start to appreciate that this is really going out of it's way to make you jump out of your skin every 10-15 seconds and lets just say it may well have succeeded a few times! You have all sorts of nasties jumping out of ceilings, air-ducts, through windows, through doors, floating round in zero g waiting to slowly work it's momentum to try and bite your extremities off. You name it, they will try and do it.

Monster wise they are quite a diverse bunch of aliens, mutating anyone they've touched and adopting forms from humans they kill like some sort of twisted battle trophy it pathes the way for a few different species. The normal soldier type ones which are the most human resembling ones, they run on two legs with a fair bit of speed behind them. Small dog like creatures that have 3 tentacles growing out of their head that like to shoot poison darts. Massive slow fat scourge aliens that when killed explode letting out a multitude of little bugs ready to jump all over your armoured Rig suit. Also something that goes by the name of "Leviathan" but i shall not spoil that surprise!

Weapons are quite diverse you have the normal array of Plasma pistols/rifles, A saw blade launcher which can keep the blades midair for you to control for a few seconds to the Flamethrower just to keep them nice and crispy. Each has quite a distinct use and i found to keep ammo up you really have to diversify between using the 5-6 different weapons and to not deplete your supplies too much. On top of this you have a statis projector, which basicly allows you to slow down time for whatever you blast with it for a small amount of time. This is used in quite a few puzzles but at the same time you can use it to stop enemies in their tracks for a few seconds while you aim up your shot or give yourself a break. There also is a telekinesis portion to your Rig suit too, which greatly resembles the "Gravity-gun" in Half Life 2. You can pick up a lot of the mundane items around the game and manipulate them, as you can expect this also plays a role in puzzle solving but you can use it in some quite unique ways to pull advantages in combat too.

This brings me to one point that is quite bizarre to me after playing a lot of shooter-esque games but here in Dead Space, headshots are a thing of the past and limb amputation is the new name of the game. Stopping these aliens, is literally impossibly without trying to sever their legs, tentacles, arms or whatever they may have hanging from their bodies (ooer! would certainly do the trick i guess!). The only way they will keel over and stop their mad advance to rip your young hero's face off is to stop them forcibly removing all the limbs. Quite a novel idea and a bit of a shake up, you soon get used to taking off legs instead of heads after a little while.

The story i would hate to spoil too much because for me that is what these games is all about, enduring these many horrors for the sake of knowing what happens. In a nutshell, Isaac and his crew are sent through space to repair and help a "planet-cracker" class mining ship called the Ishimura. Coincidentally, Isaac's nearest and dearest girlfriend Nicole is a member of the crew, as they dock they soon see that the ship has been overrun with hellish horrors and the crew has been completely ravaged, mutated and god knows what. It progresses with you trying to get your crew off of the Ishimura in one piece, while trying to contain and do anything you can for the remaining crew members aswell as sending any aliens back to hell.

I actually really enjoyed this game, it was a lot of fun. I am a big survival horror game genre fan and this really does fit in with it's Resident Evil counterparts very well. Anyone who enjoyed RE4 like i mentioned earlier on in the review would do well by checking this out till the 5th one arrives and likewise for anyone who has played this and not those it's a good introduction to this style of gaming. The main downside i found to this was the missions weren't quite as diverse as i'd have liked, it is "directed" into chapters and each chapter has a main goal for example; turning the engines back on or rerouting power to certain systems. Of course you get a lot of story development throughout but it feels like all your doing is carrying and fetching for the greater part of it. With a bit more variety i think it would have been a lot better, that said lets hope this is the start of a nice new franchise for EA and that we'll see some more Dead Space games with lots of fresh new ideas.

Last thought, anyone who enjoys horror, survival horror games or Resident Evil 4 would have a lot of fun picking this up.

Summary: A fresh new look at an increasingly tired genre