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Dead Space Review

Electronic Arts first released Dead Space on October 14th, 2008 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. From Visceral Games, comes a 3rd person survival horror game where you must uncover the horrific truth of this shocking thriller. Strategically dismember the Necromorph enemies limb by bloody limb. Telekinetic powers allow you to pick up objects (even the aliens own severed arms and legs) and hurl them at your advancing enemies. And zero gravity combat means terror can strike from anywhere!

System: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Genre: Third-person action-shooter, survival-horror
Release dates: October 14, 2008 (USA), October 23, 2008 (Australia), October 24, 2008 (Europe)
Players: 1
Developer: Visceral Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Origin: America
Rating: ESRB: M, PEGI: 18+, BBFC: 18

“……………” -Isaac Clarke

A massive deep-space mining ship (USG Ishimura) goes dark after unearthing a strange artifact on a distant planet. Engineer Isaac Clarke embarks on the repair mission, only to uncover a nightmarish bloodbath — the ship’s crew horribly slaughtered and infected by an alien scourge. Now Isaac is cut off, trapped, and engaged in a desperate fight for survival. Clarke’s repair mission is transformed to one of survival as he fights to save himself and return the artifact to the planet at any cost.

After my Dead Space 2 review, finally here’s the video review of Dead Space on VGB!

Agree/disagree with my thoughts? Please feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you think!

Thanks to everyone who watched my previous vids and commented!! Hope you like this one (its again a little different sorry folks.) Dad provided the scream-over of Isaac Clarke. Stay tuned at the end for out-takes!

Music from the game used in the review:

All the music used in this video were from the Dead Space OST (excluding two that are marked with an asterisk, they were all however downloaded from iTunes.) Here they are in the order they appear:

1. Dead Space Theme
2. Crickets *
3. Manuel Survival Mode Seven
4. Nicole’s Farewell
5. Psycho Theme *
6. Welcome Aboard the U.S.G. Ishimura

As a conclusion let’s see how much fun the game is on a scale from 1 to 10:

Story

I think Dead Space is a really good example of how to take a well-worn genre or theme and just reworking it until it feels like something you’ve never played or seen before; and that’s not really a bad thing. I mean, if we look at Uncharted it’s kind of like a mix of Indiana Jones with Tomb Raider and it works brilliantly so.

Dead Space has a brilliant story and it works well. While it’s not a game that had me go “Wow that’s really different!” I did have one problem with the story and that’s leaning more towards the character design, and that’s… Did it bother anybody that Isaac Clarke is practically mute? I mean, “Come on!”, when the only word that comes out of your character’s mouth is a dying scream or some kind of Darth Vader-ish labored breathing, that’s pretty bogus! You’re in space, hacking through Necromorphs, not to mention that everyone is talking to you — and *YOU ALONE* — you must have something to say.

Gameplay

Aside from the spinning of the maps in strange angles that sometimes bothered me, the gameplay is pretty darn perfect. It’s all the things a game needs to be…

It’s fun to play with the dismemberment.

It’s fast-paced, barring the really long introductory sequence.

It’s easy to get to grips with. But not too easy so that it gets boring.

And it’s scary as hell, which a horror game should be.

The levels and missions provide a lot of space-related variety, so you don’t get too bored with the same kind of things, although dismemberment isn’t really boring. Variety comes from Isaac entering gravity-free or oxygen-free zones, which act as sort of mini-games within the game and give you a lot to do.

The weapons upgrade system is easy to use, simple to get to grips with as you do it via the work bench, occasionally you have to find nodes to power these or buy stuff from the work bench. This includes prioritizing between ammo and upgrades as you progress through the game.

Graphics

The graphics were good. But I found myself not really paying much attention to them, and that’s not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, it just shows you I was SO engrossed in what I was doing and petrified that some alien was going to jump out and mug me! So that I wasn’t really paying much attention to how the walls looked nice or how gleaming the asteroid was. The Graphics section is a little short but this is why – not much else to say. XD

The graphics create an eerie, dark atmosphere and weren’t clunky or out-of-place. They looked great.

Audio

The soundtrack is really good at shredding those nerves when running down the halls, but I really think the true genius here is in the sound effects as they are just brilliant and they work so well at creating a very physical environment. It freaks you out before the action even begins.

You’ll be walking down a hall and you’ll hear these random clanging sounds in the pipes, and the kind of wearing of the vents, and really hollow sounds. They all work at really really scaring you, and working you up.

The soundtrack songs are really just there to add a movie-esque quality to the game. They use type-A orchestra, with type-A scary instruments, like sudden violin-age Psycho style.

The sound effects and soundtrack work together to create a really scary atmosphere, so the soundtrack is good, but I really think the sounds of the USG Ishimura make Dead Space what it is… and that’s, creepy!

OVERALL FUN-FACTOR — 9.75

Overall, I’m going to rate this game highly. Although it kind of feels like DOOM 3 reincarnate to me, but it really works in just creating that scary as hell atmosphere, which I haven’t seen in a really long time. It plays beautifully and caters to sci-fi fans. Plus the soundtrack works incredibly well, amongst other things, to create this really creepy atmosphere.

It’s not what I would class as a “survival-horror”, because it relies too much on dismemberment as we’ve mentioned before. Even though the protagonist is strangely silent, it’s not going to knock down my score.

I would say: Play it in the dark with surround sound and it’s between a 9.5 / 10 score. Playing in broad daylight is about a 9.

PS: The EA Store is giving a 40% discount on both the original Dead Space for $11.99 (£9.99) and its sequel Dead Space 2 for $23.99 (£34.99) this week until May 8, 2011. Expect a similar price cut this weekend on Steam’s EA deal week.