Dead Space

Review from George, George and George - Friday, 28 November 2008 @ 11:42am

Because I worked myself into a somewhat super pumped anticipation for this game, and the 9/10 reviews it was receiving only added to it, I had perceived expectations. Just like with a movie or book you are pants-wettingly looking forward to. And these weren’t extreme. Think more along the lines of: A story line that didn’t drone on and focus too much on personal relationships, inventive monsters, good controls and good atmosphere.

Most reviews I have read for this game are of how people found the game play, story and how they enjoyed it. And it touches lightly on each subject. Now, I had been looking forward to this game for a while. Dead Space was my big game for the year.

So instead of telling you ‘ The levels are good, at some point there’s a boss battle, and I spilt coffee on myself, therefore I rate this game as a 7.” I’m going give you an idea of what the game itself is about, and relay from the perspective of someone who was really looking forward to it, what I liked, what I didn’t and go more so into controls and the levels, rather than a general overview of the game.

No real reason to put this image here... It just looks cool.

So Dead Space follows four characters, who upon receiving a distress signal from a large mining ship, set out on a wondrous journey of chocolate and rainbows In Outer Space to repair the poor distressed ship. If you’d watched the anime bundled along with the game, you would know the distress signal was sent by a mining ship, the Ishimura, which was orbiting a small planet. And knowing us, we just had to colonize the planet, and find the most ominous, scariest looking artifact and beam it up onto the ship. The artifact, brought on the ship on the belief it contained precious religious information, did instead inhabit the minds of men, and drive them insane.

Oh, and it contained aliens. The artifact managed to manipulate the crew into ruining any chance they had of escaping, then killed them all.

After boarding Ishimura, it becomes quite clear that something has gone wrong. And it is anyone’s guess what. Maybe the blood stains and messages written in blood on the walls aren’t cluey enough, as a ‘locked door’ seems to be the only assumption the party can come to. This is until the useless member on the team dies, and you are chased to an elevator by a scary tall thing that can run. This part did make me jumpy, and the music score only added to the suspense, while the sudden appearance of a monster made you forget what you were doing and run in the wrong direction.

And this is where the game kicks off. Pretty much from the get-go you’re thrown in to an atmosphere of dark looming corridors and creepy music scores that really do make you feel uncomfortable. You spend most of your time tip toeing around to be ready for an attack, or bolting to the other side to get to a door before you’re killed.

Helping you navigate your way around the ship are a pair of annoying computer analysts who are constantly bossing you around via a static blue screen that constantly pops up when you don’t want it to. Or you can use your holographic map. That does take a little while to get used to, as it appears in 3d. Meaning if you want to look at a different part of it, you have to physically dance around a little.

You play as Systems Engineer, Isaac Clarke. Your main objectives are to fix the ship, clear it of aliens, find your missing girlfriend and save humanity. Seems simple enough. Well it is, but as per usual, something always goes wrong, and you are sent on a series of missions, all split into chapters, to try and fix what could’ve easily been avoidable.

And thus we have the basis for the game: Do things so you can leave.

Alright, so the first thing you notice, without noticing, is the game’s atmosphere, which I guess you could describe as, inside a space ship. Where the game begins, in a sort of docking area, there are robot arms, storage containers, footprints concentrated in one area, all those things overlooked in day to day life. Which, when put in to a level blend endlessly and tell us ' It's a docking station.' Without those small details it's more ' A big room with an orange door. Possibly used for badminton.' The level designers, or whoever ripped the belt off their pants and whacked a 3D artist with it and said "That third stone needs 2 more of the 1.5mm scarring!"

Throughout the game there are tiny indicators on walls, in bins, on floors, and even as far as acid burns in the labs, that add great depth, atmosphere and creepiness. As boring as it is to think about it, all that adds to the overall game play and I would go as far as to say it makes Dead Space.

Although navigating my way through the ship's dark abode, running over corpses, and going in and out of medical labs is a clear message that the ship was once populated, it isn’t enough to draw you into that reality, like say a movie would. And some movies are pretty shit at it actually, but that’s regardless of the point. Customizing every single wall, floor tile and pane of glass would be very costly, so it seems game developers use subtle hints at what was there, or what happened.

Your objectives are all mission based, so you spend most of your time going from A to B, B to C, C to B, then back to A, only to realize A is now locked off, so you delve into the mysterious area of E. As for the aliens, they always appear when you first go to an area, and magically re appear after you’re radioed and told your mission. There are frequent times through-out the game where the music score would get high and intense, but nothing would happen. And those were the creepiest, on the edge of your seat moments.

The aliens themselves come in a variety of shapes and colours. Ranging from flying crumpled brown bags, bugs that jump on your body, and the species in which you fight the most, awkward Ian, as I named them.

A little explanation is probably needed. In the first chapter of the game, the aliens are quite slow. Being mutated humans, they walk with their legs very close together, with their arms (that have giant pincers protruding through the hands) up in the air in an awkward bent fashion.

Playing through the game the 2nd time, I had gained enough confidence to observe them a little before executing them. And I came to a conclusion, which was exactly what they look like.

The bottom half of the alien looked like it was doing the awkward ‘I need to pee badly' dance. The top half had just been trying to take a tight jumper off, but it got stuck on its head and it’s flailing its arms around madly to get it off.

Picture for reference.

Side by side comparison

Thank you firefly films for publicly embarrassing yourself for the sake of my review.

I guess if you’d played the game this would make sense.

Anyway…

Being a horror game, you do expect scary things. Being a suspense game, you do expect them to jump out and scare the shit out of you. And playing this game on a console, you do expect to die a lot from frustratingly awkward bumper aiming. And Dead Space delivers. I’ve already backed myself into a stupid gun aiming corner by playing it on a console, but doubled with my slightly off balance firing technique, and you have a lot of avoidable deaths. Luckily the gun aiming sensitivity in Dead Space is quite good, and easy to navigate around. In fact I’ll go as far to say it’s very good. Let me explain why.

From the first moment you pick up a weapon, within ten seconds you will need it to save your life. You open a door; a monster throws its arms up and starts to charge you. And like everyone else, when you are suddenly thrown in to that situation, all logic is thrown out of the window and you start to madly shoot everywhere and run at the same time. Meaning to run backwards and kill it, you instead turn around in a circle and shoot at the ceiling. This wasn’t the case. I did mention the controls were sensitive, but they’re also slightly heavy. Which means accidentally tapping the trigger to the left won’t send your crosshairs to aim at the air vent on the eastern side of the room. It instead stayed close enough on the monster, for me to just run to the right a little and shoot.

Though to be honest, third person aiming is annoying

I’m mentioning this because, well, anyone’s who played Halo or Gears of War, will know how frustrating the controls on the weapons can be. They can sometimes lead to you turning the game off, and not touching it for months. The cheeky grin, and satisfaction you get from just walking backwards and taking out a horde of angry monsters is what makes you continue to play a game. And Dead Space doesn’t make it easy, just easier to adapt to.

I actually have to mention, I did freak out and die 8 times within the first 10 minutes of the game. I kept pistol whipping the monster, instead of shooting it.

And that’s another thing - the stomp and pistol-whipping Isaac dishes out, activated by RT and RB. They are pretty powerful blows too, I’d imagine someone’s head flying right off, and feet completely crushed. There is no comparative feeling like curb stomping a mutated human baby, or whacking a corpse around like a rag doll. But.. But… They can become quite annoying. Accidentally throwing up a Pistol Whip instead of firing your gun can be costly. The slow animation and recovery from it is more than enough time for an Alien to rip your head off.

Another cool thing to mention is all the weapons you can buy in the game are machines Isaac would use as an Engineer, and have been modified for Alien Killage.

And kill them it does! Although each breed of alien is killed in a particular way. Unless you’ve found a flame thrower. Then everything is death by flame thrower. The aliens (obviously) are more challenging as you progress through the game. And playing on hard, they’re quite difficult at the start so I don’t want to imagine how difficult they became.

I couldn't find any pictures relevant. So I drew a penguin instead.

So I’ve managed to greatly elaborate boring things, but haven’t really told you what you experience as the game progresses.

Well, there a few main things.

More aliens.

An annoying Indian man.

Zero gravity.

Which was surprisingly enjoyable, actually. I thought it'd be an annoying task that you would only experience once. But fixing machines, bouncing off the surface of the ship, and even _____________ (that’s a huge spoiler actually) can all be done in zero gravity! And I use exclamation marks, because it’s so damn fun!!! But it’s stupid to elaborate zero gravity. You’re in space, and you can fly, period.

So I did enjoy playing this game. But I paid little attention to the story really. And concentrated on murdering everything, getting the missions done, and that’s about all.

I enjoyed it.

The music score is good.

It lived up to my expectations.

I’m glad I enjoyed Dead Space, because the game had been built up highly, and if the promoters were lying and Dead Space was in fact just another title release for Viva Pinata, I was going to slam the game on my local EB Games counter and spend that money on something ridiculous like Wii Music.

Oh, and naming Isaac Clarke after Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov? Good one EA

Pros

You witness a particularly annoying woman get smashed by a giant tentacle.

Cons

Definitely the repetitiveness. After playing the game for two hours, you're able to predict exactly when you're going to be attacked, and the missions start to bore you. The game should've also had more explanation of why they were there, and what had happened. It's obvious some people aren't going to watch the anime that explains that backstory, so they could at least include a few more cut scenes. If you find mission based games vexing, it's probably best to stay clear.