Twinkle...Twinkle...Little Star...
Taking a deep breath and clutching your weapon, if it can pass as a weapon, you take a few steps through the door: The sound of your boots reverberating through the hall as they hit the gritty metallic floor under-foot. Separated from your team, you stay in undependable contact through video and audio feeds via your RIG. You can feel the fear, but dieing from fright would be a God-Send right now...
Thus the feelings a player may have after the opening scenes of Dead Space. A completely new franchise in the Survival Horror World, Dead Space already has the odds stacked against it. I have been a fan of Survival Horror since the original Resident Evil way back when PSOne games used those bigger-than-DVD-size cases for their games. Since that time, the Survival Horror genre has been dominated by Resident Evil, and Silent Hill. Sure, there have been other games taking that foray into horror, but none have made it out alive against these two titans. As if that was not enough, it then turns up that Dead Space is and EA game. Its fate has already been sealed, then? Don't be so sure...
First, a little back story: Dead Space takes place hundreds of years in the future. Earth's fossil fuels and natural resources have been depleted in this dire time, but Space Travel has been invented and is utilized to remedy the situation. A mining process, known as "Planet Cracking", has been invented: The process involves taking Celestial bodies, namely other planets, splitting it into pieces, and stripping it of all minerals and resources. These materials are then transported back to Earth for processing and consumption. A fleet of star ships does this; the biggest ship the USG Ishimura, which also has the highest number of successful planet cracks than any other ship in the fleet. On a routine mission, the Ishimura loses contact with central command, causing an engineering team to be sent out to investigate and repair any problems on the ship.
Players experience Dead Space through Isaac Clarke, a systems engineer and part of the maintenance crew sent to repair the Ishimura. The first feeling I got when finally put in control of the game was of awe; the game makes it feel as if you are there. It is a third person shooter, but there is no HUD interface to get in the way. Everything is done and displayed on you, or rather your RIG: The suit you are wearing. Health is displayed by a vertical bar going up your RIG where your spine would be. Map and inventory menus can be brought up and browsed, but events are still happening in real time while you are doing this. Hitting the left trigger to bring up your weapon immediately closes all menus, in the event an unforeseen visitor strolls in.
Communication with your two other crew members is done through audio and video feeds in your RIG: When in audio, you see a small icon, but just hear their voice, as if they were speaking in your ears through a helmet. Again, it is in real time, so they can be talking to you calmly while you are fighting for your life. When in a video feed, a computerized 2D image of the person you are speaking to appears in front of you. Again, bringing up your weapon pushes this image off to the side: It is still running and you can still hear the person talking, but they are out of the way in case a little defense is needed.
Exploring in the initial three minutes, you find that the Ishimura is in tough shape: Many critical systems are damaged, and the repairs aren't helped any by the fact that you are separated from your team, there are no Ishimura crew members in sight, and there are these strange monsters attacking you and your crew members. Needless to say, all Hell breaks loose, and does so pretty quick.
One thing that becomes painfully obvious right in the beginning is this: Isaac is not a hero. He's not going to stick plasma grenades enemies foreheads or run up from behind and melee them in the back; stepping off of your ship and onto the Ishimura, you do not even have a weapon. As you progress through the game, you will make use of various engineering tools and such that will serve as weapons. Aside from the first tool you find to serve as a weapon, the rest of your arsenal, as well as other items, are accessed through finding blueprints scattered throughout the Ishimura. Once a blue print is found, it can be uploaded and then purchased from one of any number of stores, also scattered through out the ship.
Weapons, your RIG, and other gear can be upgraded at work benches as well; these upgrades follow the Node system, familiar from Final Fantasy X, but on a much smaller scale. Each weapon has a map of sorts that must be filled in by using Power Nodes, which can be found hidden in certain areas, or given for defeating particular enemies. Utilizing these nodes allows the player to upgrade features like reload speed, damage, and capacity on weapons, or in the case of your RIG, health and Oxygen. Certain weapons do better against certain enemies, so this level of customization allows the player to tweak their weapon in the way they see fit.
The controls are stellar: In a sense, they just work. Maybe I am still too used to the old holding the square button in order to run, but I never had any qualms about Dead Space's controls, and within a minute I knew pretty much what everything did. Holding the left bumper and using the stick allowed you to run, while you could still control the camera with the right stick. The map could be brought up through the inventory and objective menu, but it was also automatically quick-keyed to the back button. However, the thing that I liked the absolute most was the fact that clicking the right stick in made a blue line appear for a second or two, indicating the direction of your current objective. This was awesome, and eliminated the need to swap back and forth from the map to the game that was so common in other Survival Horror games.
The third person, over the shoulder view also works exceedingly well in this game. I spent the first few minutes trying to figure out if there was a quick turn: There was not. While this may upset some, it makes sense, and adds much more menace when you heard noises and have to turn yourself to double-check behind you if there is something following you. The controls and camera work in tandem with eachother, setting the dark foreboding mood, and adding to the feeling of being right there with Isaac. Coupled with the sound and superb graphics, you can feel as if something is ready to jump out and attack at any time.
Combat is...interesting; enemies are not weakened by head or body shots. Quite conversely, in the first level I capped many enemies to the head to little or no effect. The player needs to dismember enemies in order to attempt to slow them down. Most of the time, even on easy, I separated the enemy from its legs, turned to face another enemy, while the first dragged its way over to me with its hands and grabbed my ankle. It involves not only aiming quickly, but also accurately; many times I've aimed for an enemies arm, only to have the shot go wide and hit the beast harmlessly in the body. You get the hang of it, but knowing the fact that even a dismembered enemy can still come at you gets your heart pounding during a battle.
And then the addition of Zero-G environments throws everything you think you knew for a loop. Certain areas of the ship are Zero-G: There is no gravity, or the gravity in the room has been disabled. Body parts float around in the air, causes you to jump when you turn to see a dismembered torso floating behind you. Enemies that normally drag themselves along the floor hurl themselves at you, flying through the air faster than you would like. The controls are normal in Zero-G: Isaac's boots keep him rooted to the surface he is on. However, the ability to make large Zero-G leaps is awesome. It is a little disorienting to make a leap and wind up rooted to the ceiling, looking at the room you were just standing in upside down, but it is not as bad as one might think. And lets face it, jumping around in Zero-G is just plain fun, and you get an achievement for it!
Enemy AI, I found, was hit and miss. Running out of a room and into a safe hallway in order to take a breather, I was greeted by the same enemies climbing through the air vents and into the hallway to continue the chase. Then there were times where I could feel the enemy into coming after me through the doorway to another room, only to have the door close on the enemy, cleaving them in half vertically. One thing for sure is that they are relentless: If there is some way they can continue after you, they will.
Melee combat, however, is painful. As I said earlier, Isaac is not a hero, and it is clear he has no Close-Combat training. Keep an enemy across the room from you, and you can take shots until you dismember it. Get an enemy to sneak up on you, and all you can do is press the fire button to have Isaac swing wildly in an over-zealous melee attempt. These strikes do almost nothing, and don't even stop the enemy long enough so that you can turn and run. While I have read that some take this as a shortcoming, imagine yourself in this predicament: With no training and never having the need to do any sort of combat, then you would do exactly that; swing wildly without much affect.
The visuals in Dead Space are gorgeously grotesque: Whether you are admiring the dried blood on the metallic walls of the Ishimura, or staring at the face of a monster that you let get to close, the detail will astound you. What I really liked was the attention to detail on Isaac's suit: As it gets upgraded, the visuals on it change. The same can be said about the weapons, and the implementation of communication through your RIG is not only a nice effect, but really cool how it supplements the gameplay. I really appreciate little touches like Isaac moving his head as you cycle through items in your inventory screen, and each deck on the Ishimura has its own style defined through the visuals: It could be the white medical deck with its medical instruments and sick beds, the poster-laden entertainment deck with its couches and lounge areas, or the bland mining deck with its mining tools and gritty textures, you can tell exactly where you are by the visuals presented to you.
Complementing these great visuals comes strong voice acting. Listening to audio/video communications, or picking up audio logs of Ishimura crew members, you can hear the feelings in the characters voice: Whether it be fear, confusion, or suspense. Even better than that, however, is the awesome sound effects. Skittering noises, the loud thunk as Isaac's boots hit solid ground after a Zero-G jump, or the wet sound of limbs being severed from a creature's torso, the sound effects draws you in even further. Often times I looked around my own room, just to make sure those sounds were coming from the game...
Unfortunately, the game is rather short; in one rental period players can expect to beat the game, possibly even more than once. I beat the game on easy just shy of nine hours. The game offers a "New Game +" mode that allows you to, after beating the game, start a new game with all the equipment and upgrades you had when you previously completed it. What I didn't like, however, was that your new game is locked on the same difficulty that it was before. For instance, I played through on easy the first time to see it and complete it. I went to continue with my upgrades, but had to do so on easy again. If I wanted to play on the unlocked "Impossible" difficulty, I needed to start over from scratch. I guess it forces players to experience each difficulty like the first time, but it seems rather useless to play through subsequent times on the same difficulty.
Achievements are fairly simple, as well: Some for beating the game, getting a certain amount of kills with a certain weapon, and still others for finding easy-to-get collectables. In a rental period, if a player does their homework, they can expect to grab over 600 points in one play through. Starting a new game very quickly, players can look to net another 50 points. The final two: Beating the game on the hardest difficulty, and fully upgrading all equipment, may take some time, but a die hard player should be able to nab all 1000 just on a rental, possibly with a 1-day late fee.
Dead Space was an awesome experience; everything about the game, from the way you control Isaac, to the audio and visuals, to the filler cut scenes is meant to draw you in and give you the feeling that you are there, plunking through the Ishimura right along with him. I can see it being the next big franchise in survival horror, and if they keep up with this pace, I wouldn't mind at all. A rather short play time, and an all-but useless replay feature were kind of upsetting, but they cannot take away from what the game is. For those interested in it, definitely rent it and venture through the Ishimura, because this game is a must play. Big time horror fans will want to pick this one up; for me the short gameplay warranted a rental first, but a definite buy when the price drops a bit. Play at night with the lights off, and tell me you didn't get scared!
Rating: 9.5/10.0 (Excellent)
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Taking a deep breath and clutching your weapon, if it can pass as a weapon, you take a few steps through the door: The sound of your boots reverberating through the hall as they hit the gritty metallic floor under-foot. Separated from your team, you stay in undependable contact through video and audio feeds via your RIG. You can feel the fear, but dieing from fright would be a God-Send right now...
Thus the feelings a player may have after the opening scenes of Dead Space. A completely new franchise in the Survival Horror World, Dead Space already has the odds stacked against it. I have been a fan of Survival Horror since the original Resident Evil way back when PSOne games used those bigger-than-DVD-size cases for their games. Since that time, the Survival Horror genre has been dominated by Resident Evil, and Silent Hill. Sure, there have been other games taking that foray into horror, but none have made it out alive against these two titans. As if that was not enough, it then turns up that Dead Space is and EA game. Its fate has already been sealed, then? Don't be so sure...
First, a little back story: Dead Space takes place hundreds of years in the future. Earth's fossil fuels and natural resources have been depleted in this dire time, but Space Travel has been invented and is utilized to remedy the situation. A mining process, known as "Planet Cracking", has been invented: The process involves taking Celestial bodies, namely other planets, splitting it into pieces, and stripping it of all minerals and resources. These materials are then transported back to Earth for processing and consumption. A fleet of star ships does this; the biggest ship the USG Ishimura, which also has the highest number of successful planet cracks than any other ship in the fleet. On a routine mission, the Ishimura loses contact with central command, causing an engineering team to be sent out to investigate and repair any problems on the ship.
Players experience Dead Space through Isaac Clarke, a systems engineer and part of the maintenance crew sent to repair the Ishimura. The first feeling I got when finally put in control of the game was of awe; the game makes it feel as if you are there. It is a third person shooter, but there is no HUD interface to get in the way. Everything is done and displayed on you, or rather your RIG: The suit you are wearing. Health is displayed by a vertical bar going up your RIG where your spine would be. Map and inventory menus can be brought up and browsed, but events are still happening in real time while you are doing this. Hitting the left trigger to bring up your weapon immediately closes all menus, in the event an unforeseen visitor strolls in.
Communication with your two other crew members is done through audio and video feeds in your RIG: When in audio, you see a small icon, but just hear their voice, as if they were speaking in your ears through a helmet. Again, it is in real time, so they can be talking to you calmly while you are fighting for your life. When in a video feed, a computerized 2D image of the person you are speaking to appears in front of you. Again, bringing up your weapon pushes this image off to the side: It is still running and you can still hear the person talking, but they are out of the way in case a little defense is needed.
Exploring in the initial three minutes, you find that the Ishimura is in tough shape: Many critical systems are damaged, and the repairs aren't helped any by the fact that you are separated from your team, there are no Ishimura crew members in sight, and there are these strange monsters attacking you and your crew members. Needless to say, all Hell breaks loose, and does so pretty quick.
One thing that becomes painfully obvious right in the beginning is this: Isaac is not a hero. He's not going to stick plasma grenades enemies foreheads or run up from behind and melee them in the back; stepping off of your ship and onto the Ishimura, you do not even have a weapon. As you progress through the game, you will make use of various engineering tools and such that will serve as weapons. Aside from the first tool you find to serve as a weapon, the rest of your arsenal, as well as other items, are accessed through finding blueprints scattered throughout the Ishimura. Once a blue print is found, it can be uploaded and then purchased from one of any number of stores, also scattered through out the ship.
Weapons, your RIG, and other gear can be upgraded at work benches as well; these upgrades follow the Node system, familiar from Final Fantasy X, but on a much smaller scale. Each weapon has a map of sorts that must be filled in by using Power Nodes, which can be found hidden in certain areas, or given for defeating particular enemies. Utilizing these nodes allows the player to upgrade features like reload speed, damage, and capacity on weapons, or in the case of your RIG, health and Oxygen. Certain weapons do better against certain enemies, so this level of customization allows the player to tweak their weapon in the way they see fit.
The controls are stellar: In a sense, they just work. Maybe I am still too used to the old holding the square button in order to run, but I never had any qualms about Dead Space's controls, and within a minute I knew pretty much what everything did. Holding the left bumper and using the stick allowed you to run, while you could still control the camera with the right stick. The map could be brought up through the inventory and objective menu, but it was also automatically quick-keyed to the back button. However, the thing that I liked the absolute most was the fact that clicking the right stick in made a blue line appear for a second or two, indicating the direction of your current objective. This was awesome, and eliminated the need to swap back and forth from the map to the game that was so common in other Survival Horror games.
The third person, over the shoulder view also works exceedingly well in this game. I spent the first few minutes trying to figure out if there was a quick turn: There was not. While this may upset some, it makes sense, and adds much more menace when you heard noises and have to turn yourself to double-check behind you if there is something following you. The controls and camera work in tandem with eachother, setting the dark foreboding mood, and adding to the feeling of being right there with Isaac. Coupled with the sound and superb graphics, you can feel as if something is ready to jump out and attack at any time.
Combat is...interesting; enemies are not weakened by head or body shots. Quite conversely, in the first level I capped many enemies to the head to little or no effect. The player needs to dismember enemies in order to attempt to slow them down. Most of the time, even on easy, I separated the enemy from its legs, turned to face another enemy, while the first dragged its way over to me with its hands and grabbed my ankle. It involves not only aiming quickly, but also accurately; many times I've aimed for an enemies arm, only to have the shot go wide and hit the beast harmlessly in the body. You get the hang of it, but knowing the fact that even a dismembered enemy can still come at you gets your heart pounding during a battle.
And then the addition of Zero-G environments throws everything you think you knew for a loop. Certain areas of the ship are Zero-G: There is no gravity, or the gravity in the room has been disabled. Body parts float around in the air, causes you to jump when you turn to see a dismembered torso floating behind you. Enemies that normally drag themselves along the floor hurl themselves at you, flying through the air faster than you would like. The controls are normal in Zero-G: Isaac's boots keep him rooted to the surface he is on. However, the ability to make large Zero-G leaps is awesome. It is a little disorienting to make a leap and wind up rooted to the ceiling, looking at the room you were just standing in upside down, but it is not as bad as one might think. And lets face it, jumping around in Zero-G is just plain fun, and you get an achievement for it!
Enemy AI, I found, was hit and miss. Running out of a room and into a safe hallway in order to take a breather, I was greeted by the same enemies climbing through the air vents and into the hallway to continue the chase. Then there were times where I could feel the enemy into coming after me through the doorway to another room, only to have the door close on the enemy, cleaving them in half vertically. One thing for sure is that they are relentless: If there is some way they can continue after you, they will.
Melee combat, however, is painful. As I said earlier, Isaac is not a hero, and it is clear he has no Close-Combat training. Keep an enemy across the room from you, and you can take shots until you dismember it. Get an enemy to sneak up on you, and all you can do is press the fire button to have Isaac swing wildly in an over-zealous melee attempt. These strikes do almost nothing, and don't even stop the enemy long enough so that you can turn and run. While I have read that some take this as a shortcoming, imagine yourself in this predicament: With no training and never having the need to do any sort of combat, then you would do exactly that; swing wildly without much affect.
The visuals in Dead Space are gorgeously grotesque: Whether you are admiring the dried blood on the metallic walls of the Ishimura, or staring at the face of a monster that you let get to close, the detail will astound you. What I really liked was the attention to detail on Isaac's suit: As it gets upgraded, the visuals on it change. The same can be said about the weapons, and the implementation of communication through your RIG is not only a nice effect, but really cool how it supplements the gameplay. I really appreciate little touches like Isaac moving his head as you cycle through items in your inventory screen, and each deck on the Ishimura has its own style defined through the visuals: It could be the white medical deck with its medical instruments and sick beds, the poster-laden entertainment deck with its couches and lounge areas, or the bland mining deck with its mining tools and gritty textures, you can tell exactly where you are by the visuals presented to you.
Complementing these great visuals comes strong voice acting. Listening to audio/video communications, or picking up audio logs of Ishimura crew members, you can hear the feelings in the characters voice: Whether it be fear, confusion, or suspense. Even better than that, however, is the awesome sound effects. Skittering noises, the loud thunk as Isaac's boots hit solid ground after a Zero-G jump, or the wet sound of limbs being severed from a creature's torso, the sound effects draws you in even further. Often times I looked around my own room, just to make sure those sounds were coming from the game...
Unfortunately, the game is rather short; in one rental period players can expect to beat the game, possibly even more than once. I beat the game on easy just shy of nine hours. The game offers a "New Game +" mode that allows you to, after beating the game, start a new game with all the equipment and upgrades you had when you previously completed it. What I didn't like, however, was that your new game is locked on the same difficulty that it was before. For instance, I played through on easy the first time to see it and complete it. I went to continue with my upgrades, but had to do so on easy again. If I wanted to play on the unlocked "Impossible" difficulty, I needed to start over from scratch. I guess it forces players to experience each difficulty like the first time, but it seems rather useless to play through subsequent times on the same difficulty.
Achievements are fairly simple, as well: Some for beating the game, getting a certain amount of kills with a certain weapon, and still others for finding easy-to-get collectables. In a rental period, if a player does their homework, they can expect to grab over 600 points in one play through. Starting a new game very quickly, players can look to net another 50 points. The final two: Beating the game on the hardest difficulty, and fully upgrading all equipment, may take some time, but a die hard player should be able to nab all 1000 just on a rental, possibly with a 1-day late fee.
Dead Space was an awesome experience; everything about the game, from the way you control Isaac, to the audio and visuals, to the filler cut scenes is meant to draw you in and give you the feeling that you are there, plunking through the Ishimura right along with him. I can see it being the next big franchise in survival horror, and if they keep up with this pace, I wouldn't mind at all. A rather short play time, and an all-but useless replay feature were kind of upsetting, but they cannot take away from what the game is. For those interested in it, definitely rent it and venture through the Ishimura, because this game is a must play. Big time horror fans will want to pick this one up; for me the short gameplay warranted a rental first, but a definite buy when the price drops a bit. Play at night with the lights off, and tell me you didn't get scared!
Rating: 9.5/10.0 (Excellent)
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