The first time I ever saw Dead Space, I was impressed. I had never played a survival horror game before, and I'm the kind of guy who pisses their pants at the least scary things possible. I went out and got the game anyway, and, quite frankly, I was not impressed.
The game, if you don't already know, is the story of Isaac Clarke, a mechanic who is stranded on a derelict ship and has to go though hordes of kind of undead, kind of alien, critters. The story isn't bad, in fact, it's pretty good, but if you cared about that, you could save 40 bucks and go buy Alien on DVD.
The game presents itself great, with graphics which we have come to expect from the potent hardware of this generation. The game runs well, loading times aren't unreasonable, and the voice acting is fine. So far, so good.
Carrying on with the positives, the gameplay is solid 3rd person shooting, and 'strategic dismemberment' is just as fun as it sounds. However, the whole survival horror thing begins to break down. So far in the game. I've run out of ammo a grand total of once, and I promptly checked the nearest crate. Problem solved. I've never had to really run, instead, Isaac can just stand his ground and hit the stasis button over and over if he gets overwhelmed.
And here's the one thing that lowers the game from great but flawed, and into just plain old 'pretty good'. THE GAME IS NOT SCARY IN THE LEAST! 'Manos: The Hands of Fate' made me quiver, but in this game, nothing particularly scary happens. It just goes through the motions of the horror genre: blood everywhere, plentiful air ducts crawling with bugs, and always being cut off from your friends when you get close. In what is advertised as a horror game, this is unacceptable.
To wrap this up, Dead Space says that it's survival horror, but that can be generalized to 'creepy' action. It's a good rental, but games like System Shock 2(and its' spiritual successor, Bioshock) still trump it easily.
The game, if you don't already know, is the story of Isaac Clarke, a mechanic who is stranded on a derelict ship and has to go though hordes of kind of undead, kind of alien, critters. The story isn't bad, in fact, it's pretty good, but if you cared about that, you could save 40 bucks and go buy Alien on DVD.
The game presents itself great, with graphics which we have come to expect from the potent hardware of this generation. The game runs well, loading times aren't unreasonable, and the voice acting is fine. So far, so good.
Carrying on with the positives, the gameplay is solid 3rd person shooting, and 'strategic dismemberment' is just as fun as it sounds. However, the whole survival horror thing begins to break down. So far in the game. I've run out of ammo a grand total of once, and I promptly checked the nearest crate. Problem solved. I've never had to really run, instead, Isaac can just stand his ground and hit the stasis button over and over if he gets overwhelmed.
And here's the one thing that lowers the game from great but flawed, and into just plain old 'pretty good'. THE GAME IS NOT SCARY IN THE LEAST! 'Manos: The Hands of Fate' made me quiver, but in this game, nothing particularly scary happens. It just goes through the motions of the horror genre: blood everywhere, plentiful air ducts crawling with bugs, and always being cut off from your friends when you get close. In what is advertised as a horror game, this is unacceptable.
To wrap this up, Dead Space says that it's survival horror, but that can be generalized to 'creepy' action. It's a good rental, but games like System Shock 2(and its' spiritual successor, Bioshock) still trump it easily.