What happened on the Ishimura? (Dead Space (PC))

Member Name: Mutalisk

Product:	Dead Space (PC)
Date:	04/07/09 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tense, engaging, immersive, entertaining, stunning visuals, great models, character and level design

Disadvantages: Linear in terms of plot and locations,

Dead Space is a Sci-Fi Action Horror videogame from EA Games which has received critical acclaim for its outstanding graphics, eerie atmosphere, impressive physics engine and creative innovation.

***PLOT***

The player assumes the role of Isaac Clarke, an engineering officer onboard the USG Kellion, a repair ship responding to a distress call from the massive 'planet cracker' Mining vessel, The Ishimura.

Onboard the Kellion are Daniels, the Chief security officer, Hammond, a systems technician and computer scientist, Isaac himself, and a few landing support officers.

The game opens with the Kellion being forced to make an emergency crash-landing onboard the Ishimura after failing to effectively traverse the surrounding asteroid-belt.

Without spoilers, The crew of the Ishimura have been under brutal attack from a polymorphic, pseudo-chameleonic, alien viral infestation which has left the ship roamed by hordes of "Necromorphs," a violent, multi-limbed, bloodthirsty and insane mutant race.

It is up to Isaac and his crew to discover who sent the distress call and the current situation regarding the crew. Throughout the course of the game, Isaac is tortured by the voice and image of his girlfriend (a member of the Ishimura's crew) appearing on his R.I.G, an onboard computer built into Isaac's powerful, heavy-duty, multi-purpose engineering space-suit.

Isaac traverses the Ishimura using a fortunately still-intact railway system to travel from deck to deck.

***Physics***
As I mentioned, Dead Space has an excellent physics engine and much of the environment is largely destructible. Isaac's suit has a built-in kinesis module allowing him to move and throw almost any item on the ship. This comes in particularly handy throughout the many engineering duties he has to partake in, such as moving battery-cubes around and procuring items central to the ships internal systems, as well as ammo. Another function the kinesis module serves is throwing explosive barrels and heavy objects at enemies often causing organs to splatter up the walls. For those who have played it, the kinesis module functions in more-or-less the exact same capacity as the Gravity Cannon in Half-Life 2 but does is not overused or flaunted, although the physics engine is certainly on par with HL2.
Certain small portions of the game take place in great-looking zero-gravity. Upon moving into such areas, Isaac's gravity-boots will decompress allowing him to walk on walls, floors and ceilings, jumping from one to another as he completes engineering tasks and blasts Necromorphs to pieces, their many limbs floating realistically across the huge, monochromatic and often pentagonal zero-gravity chambers.
In a move detracting from the recent trend of slow motion 'bullet time,' Yet another feature of Isaac's suit is the stasis module, which slows the movement of anything it is directed at. While it is mainly for using to slow the movement of the necromorphs, making them easier to hack and blow to pieces, it is also often use to repair malfunctioning machinery. -- The stasis module can be recharged at various special stations.

Every single aspect of the physics looks absolutely stunning, and coupled with its amazingly rendered models makes for a fantastically impressive visual feast without showing off!



***Combat***
The reason Isaac is able to survive onboard the Ishimura for longer than five minutes, is due to his heavy-duty suit, which acts as excellent armour and supports his stasis and kinesis modules. It also contains on onboard computer called a R.I.G, which allows Isaac to communicate with the rest of his crew, as well as receiving transmissions from the Ishimura's crew, and read hologramatic notes and audio messages left on corpses throughout the game.
The idea for the suit seems to be derived from the idea of the Hazard Suit from Half-Life, as does the idea of having a silent protaganist. (This makes the communication a little one-sided, clunky and expositional, but doesnt detract from the general experience.
The game has done something very interesting with the heads-up-display. Firstly, the status of Isaac's (and crewmembers) health appears as an electronic bar module on their back, as does the status of Isaac's rechargable kinesis module, ammo reserves, and oxygen supply (which only appears in the tense, zero-oxygen portions of the game, often when crossing the outsides of the ship, or when airlocks have malfunctioned.) Walking toward ammo or other items also triggers a hologram to appear, to allow the player to decide whether or not to pick it up. (inventory-space is limited.)
Anyway, I digress; Isaac's suit can be upgraded in numerous ways throughout special B.E.N.C.H stations at the game using "Power Nodes" which are dotted around the ship, and you can also pay to enhance the suit generally, which changes its appearance in up to five different ways.

Dead Space has a unique combat experience that came as a new and surprising challenge to even the most seasoned of gamers. -- The enemies in Deadspace, being a mishmash of emaciated rotting mutant corpses and animalistic alien lifeforms have a biology dissimilar to our own. Removing the head is simply not enough.(You have to 'unlearn' the headshot!!!) To properly dispose of one of these abominations, the player has to remove quite a few of their limbs, and often bisect their torsos in an orgy of blood and gore, entire rooms often drenched wall-to-wall by blood-dripping limbs, entrails and organs. Amazingly for the engine and rendering the game, the corpses of dead necromorphs to not fade away or disappear, which is very, very cool.
The player only finds one weapon initially, the plasma-cutter, a small pistol firing lines of blue plasma which cut through the enemies like a knife through hot butter, the crosshair being three vertical dots which can be flipped horizontally depending on the aim of the long-range cut the player wishes to make. Its power is comparable to that of a .44 magnum, or perhaps more accurately, a three-pronged crossbow. In relation to the other weapons however, the plasma cutter is certainly the "Old Faithful."

To procure further weaponry, the player must use on-board computers, similar to those seen in System Shock 2, in which the player must use credits found onboard to buy and sell ammo, weapons, and upgrade his suit and weapons. This adds a real sense of choice to what is otherwise a highly linear game-on-rails.

Other weapons include a pulse-rifle, which is difficult to sever limbs with but successfully holds enemies back, a flamethrower, a remote-buzzsaw and an energy rifle, all of which have clever and innovative alternative fire modes.

Weapons are upgraded with somewhat rare "Power Nodes" through the medium of complex upgrade trees at upgrade stations. Only one aspect of the weapon can be upgraded with one node, such as damage, speed, width of attack, range, etc. and much time can be spent enthusiastically tweaking your guns.

Should the player run out of ammo (God forbid!) TWO melee attacks are available, a sluggish and slow but strong lunge at the enemy with the arm, or a direct and hard stamp to the ground. The latter being particularly useful for dispatching dissected enemies by mercilessly crushing their heads underfoot.

Something which makes the game seem a bit linear, but also adds to its sense of intensity and urgency, is the fact that the player is only able to save at certain save-stations, rather than saving at will. This makes it all seem a bit arcade-ish but it works very well nonetheless.
The entire game is shown with an over-the-shoulder view, just like Gears of War or Resident Evil. The camera takes a while to get used to, but is really worth it, as looking at your character when he is under attack looks graphically amazing.

***ENEMIES***
I dont want to give away the coolest necromorph models, so lets just say that the hideous fleshy screaming zombie abominations that often run at you scratching and biting do not appear in a particularly diverse array, but remain very twisted and scary. It seems the developers chose more innovative combat style and excellent level design over enemy diversity. Isaac will face quite a few bosses however, which mostly cannot be killed through conventional means, and often have to be dispatched with a little more...novelty, sometimes through minigames or non-standard combat styles. One nice feature of the enemies is that they all have a special attack where they jump on the player, sucking the life-force out of him in one way or another, prompting the player to bash the USE key over and over again until they cease. These specials always look graphically stunning and add to the tense feel. There are many different ways to kill an enemy, some more useful than another, but each prompting different kinds of death. Something which Dead Space was praised for.

***ATMOSPHERE***
Dead Space has a really tense and eerie atmosphere, highly comparable in many ways, including characters, themes, and style, to the Sci-Fi Horror Movie, Event Horizon. The constant threat of attack this very well, and in the parts where there is no oxygen, its often necessary to make a mad rush to the other side, which again, speeds up the old heartbeat. The disemboweled corpses strewn across the ship would scare the pants off anyone, and the level design is very diverse and innovative, really giving the idea of a once fully-operational mining ship, with its juxtaposition of cramped corridors and huge open chambers. The lack of ammo also adds to a sense of urgency.

The game is very "Steampunk" in style, the clunkiness of Isaac's suit in particular gives a really unique and innovative injection of art into the game.

***GENERAL POINTS***
-Dead Space has four difficulty modes, which can unlock various items, including a cool new kind of suit.
-Some of the speech is a little unclear through the R.I.G. but this can be rectified with the subtitles option.
-System Specs follow:

Windows XP SP2 or Vista
Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz or equivalent
1GB RAM for XP, 2GB for Vista
7GB hard drive space
256MB video card w/ SM 3.0 (nVidia GeForce 6800/ ATI Radeon X1600 Pro)
DirectX 9.0c sound card
Keyboard
Mouse[3]

(System Specificiation source: Wikipedia) ...I know I know!

Summary: A game well worth playing, for fans of sci-fi, horror, and just gore in general!