Wrote this for another site a few weeks ago, figured you all might enjoy it, as well.
Platforms: Xbox 360, PC, PS3 (reviewed version)
ESRB: Mature
Genre: Third-person shooter (no matter how hard it tries not to be)
Dead Space is something of an oddity, really. If you break it down, it's not much more than equal shares of Doom 3, Ravenholm, and Resident Evil 4 tossed into an EA-brand blender, but the whole thing really comes together to be more than the sum of its parts. Every idea, mechanic, and other tinkering in the game seems nicked from someplace else: The anti-gravity portions immediately made me think of the Battle Room, the camera angles and laser sights still have that Leon Kennedy-like musk to them, and I'll be damned if the dismemberment feature wasn't the result of an EA employee playing Doom 3 while another one watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail's not-really-funny-anymore Black Knight scene in the same room. So yeah, it's really more or less a typical EA game, a Frankenstein's Monster of various successful properties. Dead Space, though, manages to do something special, particularly by choosing to copy the right things and implementing them well.
So, Dead Space. The opening sequence finds me staring at the back of Isaac [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov] Clarke [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke]'s (very funny, EA) head, crashing a ship into a bigger ship that pulls planets apart, and putting on a helmet before I can look at my main character's face. Oh, and he was also watching a holographic video of his girlfriend or wife or whatever before crashing, and the ***** does bother you at points during the game, but you never get a chance to give a damn about her for any reason beyond "she opens doors for me," and you never get a chance to give two shits about Isaac's character either, given that he doesn't have any. I have nothing against a silent protagonist, but the trade-off is that you can't expect me to give a fuck about him. Between Isaac's constantly unnerving ability to not be surprised, and his perfectly steady aim, I can safely assume that Isaac Clarke is a robot. His aim doesn't shake at all, but I guess I can't complain about that, given that it's often helpful when trying to dismember enemies.
Yep, dismemberment goes a long way in Dead Space. Headshots don't do much against your usual enemies in Dead Space, and can in fact quicken your death, given that most Necromorphs will start swinging their arms about in a rather disorderly and violent manner upon getting brained. This, combined with the relative lack of space to run about in (all but one chapter of the game takes place on a large, but very cramped spaceship) can lead to some quick deaths if you don't unlearn the headshot. You shouldn't just go pumping rounds into their torso, especially against one particular kind of enemy. No, in Dead Space, arms and legs are what must go, and it works brilliantly. It never gets old to shoot a Necromorph's legs off, run up, and stomp the ever-loving hell out of him.
That particular strategy only takes for the basic, praying mantis-style Necromorphs, though. Eventually you'll be killing and re-killing babies, torsos that have been grafted to the walls that launch smaller babies, torsos that still have arms and can move about, larger foes made up of several bodies, and the occasional small swarm of spidery bits of skin that obscure your health meter while Isaac flails about like someone dropped an ice cube down his shirt. "But Rai!" cry the children, "How could they obscure your health meter?"
See, kids, Dead Space lacks any sort of heads-up display. Your health meter is displayed in the spine of Isaac's RIG suit, your ammo count is displayed in numbers displayed on your gun when you raise it, and instead of an in-game compass, (and in what is probably the game's single burst of genuine creativity) Isaac is able to display a little blue holographic line that shows the path to your next objective. The nonstandard HUD never outright breaks the game (while aiming, the over-the-shoulder view places your spine, and as a result your health meter, at the lower-left portion of the screen), but it bears mentioning that not everyone can afford a massive widescreen TV (and a massive TV is a requirement if you want to read those goddamn text log files), so on my little budget thirteen-inch CRT, I often had difficulty telling if my Plasma Cutter, for example, was loaded with 9, 8, or 6 shots, and also had quite some difficulty reading my relatively important oxygen meter. Immersion is all well and good, but the ability to opt for a traditional HUD would have been a very welcome one.
At the end of it, though, Dead Space, for all its typical EA production value, is fun, something that a lot of developers, EA included, have trouble nailing down. Each Necromorph is distinct and requires a very different strategy to take down, so when you're stuffed into a room with a menagerie of them, it becomes an intense shoot-out that favors precision over the usual Rambo-style bullet confetti, and the end result is simply tense, nail-biting fun, although I get the odd feeling that this was a happy accident, and not what the development team was aiming for.
See, Dead Space is billed as a survival-horror game, but it never really makes good on either survival or horror. A good survival-horror game tries to make you dread whatever's around the next turn, but between Doom 3's monster closets and Resident Evil's intent to make every windowpane a prelude to a dog attack, that's simply not enough anymore, but it's the only thing that Dead Space really tries to pull off. The only time the game ever genuinely disturbed me was when was put in a corridor with a woman who was standing there, sobbing, and not responding when you enter the room. A few seconds later, though, I remembered I was playing a game, so I threw some corpses at her and went on my way. Dead Space fails irredeemably when it comes to horror.
What about survival, though? Any game can be scary when you're low on resources against an oppressive and numerous enemy (fucking Unreal), but EA didn't get that concept, so dead enemies will drop health packs and ammunition at every turn. To just drop ammunition in general isn't enough, though: crates, lockers, and dead enemies will only drop ammo for weapons you're currently holding, ensuring that you've got a steady supply of shots to kill things with, and thus drops the problem with survival, and turning it into another third-person shooter. I don't think EA ever realized exactly why the Merchant in Resident Evil 4 never sold ammunition. The end result is less Alien, more Aliens. Less talk, more action. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Dead Space pulls off more or less what Project Snowblind did in '05, and stands as an example of how simply drawing from a number of different sources and polishing the result to a slick finish can end up being genuinely fun. Dead Space might be a bit too far up its own ass to realize that it's more action-y than a self-respecting survival-horror game should be, but when Dead Space is good, it's very good indeed.
THE VERDICT
Better than:
This is actually a bit of a draw, but Dead Space is a bit better about inventories and doesn't pair you up with a retard for the entire game.
Not as good as:
***** all you like about how it's not "true" Silent Hill, but it's a good deal closer to survival-horror than everything else I've been seeing recently. You try fighting those smoke-breathing fuckers when you're out of bullets.
If you like it, you might like:
Because Dead Space rips it off in every way it can without being too overt as a rip-off.
Platforms: Xbox 360, PC, PS3 (reviewed version)
ESRB: Mature
Genre: Third-person shooter (no matter how hard it tries not to be)
Dead Space is something of an oddity, really. If you break it down, it's not much more than equal shares of Doom 3, Ravenholm, and Resident Evil 4 tossed into an EA-brand blender, but the whole thing really comes together to be more than the sum of its parts. Every idea, mechanic, and other tinkering in the game seems nicked from someplace else: The anti-gravity portions immediately made me think of the Battle Room, the camera angles and laser sights still have that Leon Kennedy-like musk to them, and I'll be damned if the dismemberment feature wasn't the result of an EA employee playing Doom 3 while another one watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail's not-really-funny-anymore Black Knight scene in the same room. So yeah, it's really more or less a typical EA game, a Frankenstein's Monster of various successful properties. Dead Space, though, manages to do something special, particularly by choosing to copy the right things and implementing them well.
So, Dead Space. The opening sequence finds me staring at the back of Isaac [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov] Clarke [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke]'s (very funny, EA) head, crashing a ship into a bigger ship that pulls planets apart, and putting on a helmet before I can look at my main character's face. Oh, and he was also watching a holographic video of his girlfriend or wife or whatever before crashing, and the ***** does bother you at points during the game, but you never get a chance to give a damn about her for any reason beyond "she opens doors for me," and you never get a chance to give two shits about Isaac's character either, given that he doesn't have any. I have nothing against a silent protagonist, but the trade-off is that you can't expect me to give a fuck about him. Between Isaac's constantly unnerving ability to not be surprised, and his perfectly steady aim, I can safely assume that Isaac Clarke is a robot. His aim doesn't shake at all, but I guess I can't complain about that, given that it's often helpful when trying to dismember enemies.
Yep, dismemberment goes a long way in Dead Space. Headshots don't do much against your usual enemies in Dead Space, and can in fact quicken your death, given that most Necromorphs will start swinging their arms about in a rather disorderly and violent manner upon getting brained. This, combined with the relative lack of space to run about in (all but one chapter of the game takes place on a large, but very cramped spaceship) can lead to some quick deaths if you don't unlearn the headshot. You shouldn't just go pumping rounds into their torso, especially against one particular kind of enemy. No, in Dead Space, arms and legs are what must go, and it works brilliantly. It never gets old to shoot a Necromorph's legs off, run up, and stomp the ever-loving hell out of him.
That particular strategy only takes for the basic, praying mantis-style Necromorphs, though. Eventually you'll be killing and re-killing babies, torsos that have been grafted to the walls that launch smaller babies, torsos that still have arms and can move about, larger foes made up of several bodies, and the occasional small swarm of spidery bits of skin that obscure your health meter while Isaac flails about like someone dropped an ice cube down his shirt. "But Rai!" cry the children, "How could they obscure your health meter?"
See, kids, Dead Space lacks any sort of heads-up display. Your health meter is displayed in the spine of Isaac's RIG suit, your ammo count is displayed in numbers displayed on your gun when you raise it, and instead of an in-game compass, (and in what is probably the game's single burst of genuine creativity) Isaac is able to display a little blue holographic line that shows the path to your next objective. The nonstandard HUD never outright breaks the game (while aiming, the over-the-shoulder view places your spine, and as a result your health meter, at the lower-left portion of the screen), but it bears mentioning that not everyone can afford a massive widescreen TV (and a massive TV is a requirement if you want to read those goddamn text log files), so on my little budget thirteen-inch CRT, I often had difficulty telling if my Plasma Cutter, for example, was loaded with 9, 8, or 6 shots, and also had quite some difficulty reading my relatively important oxygen meter. Immersion is all well and good, but the ability to opt for a traditional HUD would have been a very welcome one.
At the end of it, though, Dead Space, for all its typical EA production value, is fun, something that a lot of developers, EA included, have trouble nailing down. Each Necromorph is distinct and requires a very different strategy to take down, so when you're stuffed into a room with a menagerie of them, it becomes an intense shoot-out that favors precision over the usual Rambo-style bullet confetti, and the end result is simply tense, nail-biting fun, although I get the odd feeling that this was a happy accident, and not what the development team was aiming for.
See, Dead Space is billed as a survival-horror game, but it never really makes good on either survival or horror. A good survival-horror game tries to make you dread whatever's around the next turn, but between Doom 3's monster closets and Resident Evil's intent to make every windowpane a prelude to a dog attack, that's simply not enough anymore, but it's the only thing that Dead Space really tries to pull off. The only time the game ever genuinely disturbed me was when was put in a corridor with a woman who was standing there, sobbing, and not responding when you enter the room. A few seconds later, though, I remembered I was playing a game, so I threw some corpses at her and went on my way. Dead Space fails irredeemably when it comes to horror.
What about survival, though? Any game can be scary when you're low on resources against an oppressive and numerous enemy (fucking Unreal), but EA didn't get that concept, so dead enemies will drop health packs and ammunition at every turn. To just drop ammunition in general isn't enough, though: crates, lockers, and dead enemies will only drop ammo for weapons you're currently holding, ensuring that you've got a steady supply of shots to kill things with, and thus drops the problem with survival, and turning it into another third-person shooter. I don't think EA ever realized exactly why the Merchant in Resident Evil 4 never sold ammunition. The end result is less Alien, more Aliens. Less talk, more action. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Dead Space pulls off more or less what Project Snowblind did in '05, and stands as an example of how simply drawing from a number of different sources and polishing the result to a slick finish can end up being genuinely fun. Dead Space might be a bit too far up its own ass to realize that it's more action-y than a self-respecting survival-horror game should be, but when Dead Space is good, it's very good indeed.
THE VERDICT
Better than:
This is actually a bit of a draw, but Dead Space is a bit better about inventories and doesn't pair you up with a retard for the entire game.
Not as good as:
***** all you like about how it's not "true" Silent Hill, but it's a good deal closer to survival-horror than everything else I've been seeing recently. You try fighting those smoke-breathing fuckers when you're out of bullets.
If you like it, you might like:
Because Dead Space rips it off in every way it can without being too overt as a rip-off.
