theSchap's Blog

Who: Devel­oped by Vis­ceral Games and Pro­duced by Elec­tronic Arts

What: Sur­vival hor­ror, 3rd per­son shooter

Where: Again in the future. This time in the 26th cen­tury. We bet­ter be fly­ing around in space by then. Noth­ing irri­tates me more than a “sci-fi” game that doesn’t set the date out far enough. Some writ­ers are too con­fi­dent in our species. We don’t know what the hell is going on in space yet. Okay so some things irri­tate me more than that, like a midget with a blow horn dur­ing a movie, but that’s it… okay so there is quite a bit that’s more annoy­ing, like the length of this expla­na­tion, but it’s irri­tat­ing none the less!

When: Released in the US on the Xbox 360 on Octo­ber 14th of 2008.

Why: This game isn’t too old, but I just played it so it’s new to me! Plus I feel like I should sup­port orig­i­nal IP from EA in hopes that they will put their mas­sive monop­o­lis­tic resources towards some­thing more than the next Mad­den, NBA, or <insert sports league or asso­ci­a­tion here>.

I would con­sider myself fairly new to the sur­vival hor­ror genre up until this year. I have never fin­ished a Res­i­dent Evil, or Silent Hill until RE5 came out and I pur­chased it mainly because of the rec­om­men­da­tion from some­one who was a bor­der­line crack head about RE4. We played through it and “YEA!” it was good times, but it wasn’t really that scary. Prob­a­bly because I was play­ing with some­one, and would talk to them over the head­set. It was more so a story dri­ven game, that was just cool to fol­low. Not exactly what I expected from a “sur­vival hor­ror”. It left me won­der­ing if I was a REAL fan of the genre. I thought back to when I tried to play “Call of Cthulhu” by Bethesda, but instead spent most of my time chang­ing my pants. It could be that is was a PC game, and I feel more vul­ner­a­ble at my desk than my couch, but that’s a dif­fer­ent story. I actu­ally unin­stalled the game, and don’t plan on going back to it any­time soon.

All of that ram­ble will help me explain the fear fac­tor of Dead Space. In a few words, “just about right”. Towards the end I found myself play­ing it more and more like a shoot ‘em up, but that’s prob­a­bly because I knew what to expect. The first quar­ter of the game scared the shit out of me sev­eral times. To it’s credit it had the atmos­phere of a hos­pi­tal work­ing for it so that helped. Hos­pi­tals are just plain creepy. This is also where Bioshock shined, like when you turn around and a crazed doc­tor is star­ing you in the face… scary shit. The rest of the envi­ron­ments are nearly just as great. The light­ing and sound com­bined with the sharp aggres­sive archi­tec­ture of the ship set a great mood that will beg you to be the stu­pid teenager in hor­ror films. The game scares you still, but your curios­ity will push you for­ward. After a while I actu­ally looked for some­thing to scare me, much like when you first dis­cover roller coast­ers. This aroused me to the “sur­vival hor­ror” genre and that’s a big plus; no pun intended.

Another bonus was feed­ing my RPG addic­tion. Your weapons and suit can all be upgraded by search­ing for power nodes, which can then be plugged into a sim­ple but effec­tive node grid con­tain­ing attrib­utes. Reward­ing explo­ration is another big plus. What is even bet­ter is that you get to keep all your weapons and upgrades in your com­pleted game file, and you can start over with all your good­ies. It makes you feel like quite the bad ass.

This game has two excit­ing mechan­ics that stood out for me:

1. Limb dis­mem­ber­ment: Sure you have been able to blow limbs off for a while in video games, but in Dead Space it’s required. You will need to for­get about shoot­ing stuff in the head for a while. Mon­sters are best taken down with cer­tain guns, shot at cer­tain appendages, in a cer­tain order, and it took me the major­ity of the game to find the best for­mula for some of the ene­mies. Plus, sea­soned FPS/3rdPS (TPS?) fans will find it refresh­ing, and that it is a bit harder to hit an arm on some­thing crawl­ing around, than a head on some­thing hid­ing behind a chest high wall.
2. Zero Grav­ity: It’s fun jump­ing across a huge void, and inter­act­ing with stuff with­out grav­ity. It’s an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence, and it’s made even bet­ter when incor­po­rated into a boss bat­tle. That boss bat­tle had a strange retro feel that I can’t quite pin­point, but it felt good.

If you are a fan of the sur­vival hor­ror and or sci fi genre this game will be right up your alley, or your space­ship cor­ri­dor… dumb. If you played the demo and you were turned away con­fused and irri­tated you may want to give the game a sec­ond chance. It didn’t show­case the game’s strong points very well.

Quan­ti­ta­tive Review:

• Game­play: 8.5 - Com­bin­ing new and old mechan­ics into a sys­tem that is easy to use. Hack­ing off an enemy’s limbs as it approaches, and often con­tin­ues to approach is both grat­i­fy­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing. You will panic to make your shots count.
• Visu­als: 9.0 - The light­ing and envi­ron­ments in this game are ter­rific. Dark cor­ri­dors won­der­fully lit, accented by sharp mechan­i­cal geom­e­try that keeps you on your toes even when ene­mies are nowhere to be seen or heard. Areas are filled with bod­ies of the fallen, and areas feel lived in with bloody hand prints and warn­ing of impend­ing dan­ger. Sev­eral scenes are set up through­out the ship that are just deli­ciously disturbing.
• Sound: 9.5 - All aspects of sound in this game are great. From the faint sound of foot­steps rever­ber­at­ing through your suit as you tra­verse the exte­rior of the ship, to the ambi­ent sounds of crea­tures mov­ing through­out the ship and the music swelling with vio­lins as a beast sneaks out of the shad­ows behind you, the immer­sion is great. The voice act­ing of fel­low souls on the ship, and eulo­gies of the muti­lated are believ­able and done with appro­pri­ate feel­ing. The sound does a great job of sup­port­ing the atmos­phere, which is cru­cial to a good game of this genre.
• Pre­sen­ta­tion: 8.5 - The game is com­pletely absent of a HUD, which helps you stay immersed and focused on the action. Your health and ammo is shown directly on your equip­ment and a head­ing can be found by a sim­ple thumb­stick press, ilu­mi­nat­ing a line on the floor from you to your des­ti­na­tion. This is a bit hard to fol­low while in some of the zero grav­ity areas, but it’s a nice fea­ture. My only real beef, and likely the biggest I have against the game is the absence of a quick scroll option for inven­tory and store lists. You are required to mash the D-pad, which is both slow and a bit uncom­fort­able with a large amount of items. The con­trols are sim­i­lar to that of Res­i­dent Evil and move­ment is responsible.

• Con­tri­bu­tion to the genre: 9.0 - The sur­vival hor­ror genre tends to remain a bit under­ground with the enor­mous suc­cess of Halo, CoD4, Gui­tar Hero and WoW. I think there is a large amount of peo­ple that don’t like being afraid of their game. I think this Dead Space has a good for­mula for a more main­stream player base because it main­tains a good dose of fear, while keep­ing the action flow­ing. I think I’ll keep my eyes on these new releases.

• Over­all: 8.9 - I had a great time. A cou­ple of the achieve­ments make me look at try­ing the game for a sec­ond, pos­si­bly third time. Going through using only one weapon would add an inter­est­ing chal­lenge, and the impos­si­ble dif­fi­culty would add a whole new level of fear.