Dead Space

Amazed there isn't a topic on this yet (Lenin, you disappoint me ;p).

I think that GiantBomb's Review of Dead space perfectly sums it up.

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When EA announced Dead Space a year ago, I recall some members of the press deriding the game for looking just a little too familiar. I know I was guilty of doing it. But in our defense, you have seen all this before: A massive, grungy industrial starship gone dark, adrift in a remote system with no sign of its crew. A horde of hideous monsters spewing forth from a sinister, amorphous biomass hiding deep within the ship. Audio and text logs scattered around every deck that reveal what happened, piece by piece. An over-the-shoulder perspective that snaps to a zoomed-in aiming view for combat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doom 3, check. System Shock 2, check. Gears of War, Resident Evil 4, check.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But all those blatant similarities didn't matter in the end. After finishing it, I felt stupid about knocking Dead Space for displaying its influences so prominently, because this game is pretty darn amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The story isn't astoundingly original, but it does a fine job of moving you from one section of the ship to the next. You take the role of deep-space mining engineer Isaac Clarke, a member of a five-man crew dispatched to investigate the loss of contact with the USG Ishimura, an enormous "planetcracker" mining ship. Clarke's girlfriend was stationed on the Ishimura, so he has personal as well as professional reasons for getting in there and finding out what's going on. About five minutes after arriving, Clarke's own ship is toast, his five-man crew is down to three, and those three have been separated by a vile menagerie of creatures overrunning nearly every inch of the ship. Over the course of the game's 12 roughly hour-long chapters, your priorities will shift from saving the Ishimura to saving your own [wagon], and you'll barely fight your way through one tense, frantic monster attack after another as you try to escape the ship. The game is densely packed with spectacular moments from beginning to end, and the action is paced well enough that you never get bored or feel overwhelmed at any given moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's easy to forgive a game for being derivative when it's presented with so much impact and it plays so damn well. Dead Space has some of the tightest, most well-balanced controls I've ever used in this kind of game. There are so many variables in a third-person shooter that contribute to the way it feels--the camera speed, the sensitivity of the analog sticks, the interval between hitting the aiming-mode trigger and actually being able to fire a gun--and I can't complain about any one of these factors in Dead Space; they all feel sublimely tuned and perfectly balanced to be easy to use and, above all, fun. You can hold a shoulder button to run, but unlike Gears' famed roadie run, you can still stop on a dime and break into a sidestep in an instant (or even run backwards). Everything about the moving, aiming, and shooting controls is superbly balanced and really entertaining.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EA has been throwing around the catchy marketing phrase "strategic dismemberment" in reference to Dead Space for a few months now, which is justifiable since that's actually a good way to describe the combat. Most of the game's grotesquely mutated enemies have spindly arms, legs, tentacles, and other appendages that you can shoot off with a well-placed shot or two, and you get these satisfyingly meaty snapping sounds and a jet of blood every time you separate another body part. You can also stomp an enemy that's down but not out with your heavy spacesuit boots to splatter their limbs before they can get back up and keep coming at you. And I do mean splatter--it's a really gory game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The precision aiming required to properly dismember the enemies adds more depth to the combat than you'd get with most shooters, where you're just pumping rounds into a guy's torso or, at most, aiming for his head. Here, you'll want to specifically shoot for the knee to stop a fast-running monster from chasing you down, or shear off one of the smaller types of enemies' tentacles because they can fire [bleep]es with them. The game's basic pistol weapon, the plasma cutter, even lets you orient its wide beam vertically or horizontally for more accurate slicing and dicing. Another weapon, the ripper, shoots a saw blade about eight feet in front of you and then just holds it spinning in midair, letting you rake it over an enemy and slice them up every which way. You can imagine the possibilities. With eight weapons on the roster and an alternate fire mode for each, there's a lot of variety in the carnage here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Space throws in a few more mechanics above the basic shooting action. You can telekinetically pick up and launch some objects as weapons, and you can also throw a stasis field to slow down an enemy briefly, making it easier to take their limbs off with precision. Both of these abilities are useful in fairly frequent environmental puzzles, some of them simple and some clever. I liked that the game didn't try to portray Isaac as a mining engineer...who also happens to have psionic abilities. Both of these abilities stem from devices in his suit, and that's that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, there are some noteworthy sequences in zero gravity and in a vacuum (sometimes both). The vacuum sequences don't play any differently--they just feel more urgent, since they put you on a timer as your air tank runs out--but they dramatically desaturate the color palette and dampen the sound almost entirely, which creates a uniquely eerie atmosphere, especially when you're clomping along with your magnetic boots on the outside of the ship and some monsters silently sneak up behind you and attack. In the zero-G sections, those boots keep you planted while everything else floats freely, and you can jump from any one flat surface to another. So every wall becomes a potential floor and you never really know which way is up. It's a refreshingly confusing approach to weightlessness that creates some interesting puzzle scenarios.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a game you really need to play on a big high-def TV with a good, bass-heavy sound system. It's an audiovisual tour de force, with some of the moodiest and most impressive lighting effects on this generation of consoles. Some of the interior environments of the Ishimura are positively cavernous, or filled with massive thrumming machinery. There aren't a lot of boss encounters, but the sheer scale of a couple of them in particular left my jaw hanging open. The sound design is also extremely well done, not just for the ever-present creepy ambient backdrop, but also some of the in-your-face effects, like Isaac's sonorous gasping when he's badly hurt and out of breath, or that aforementioned grisly wet crunch of severed monster limbs. The sound effects have a real weight to them that beg to be conveyed over speakers with some serious muscle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead Space would be a great game no matter who made it, but I'm more impressed with it since it's coming out of EA. That bastion of the annualized sequel is finally taking some risks with original games, if not always original ideas, and in this case the risk paid huge dividends. You've probably seen most of Dead Space's parts in other games from time to time, but you've rarely seen them assembled this well.

I finished dead space the other day ago and, I must say, it is a serious game of the year contender. I know we have a ton of triple A titles coming up / out (LBP, GOW2, ect.) but it's an amazing experience. It's not very often I'm that impressed by a single player game, especially one in a genre that isn't exactly my favorite.

So this next part is for those who have already played the game, or don't care about spoilers:

[hide=SPOILERS!]So, what did you think about the story? I have to admit that I didn't expect to have that girl betray you near the end. Hell, when she first shot the scientist and flew off I thought she would have come back :lol: .

However the entire deal with his girlfriend...man. Creepy as [bleep] once you realize that she wasn't really there. More so how does some of the stuff in the game even happen if she was dead, such as when she helped him with the door?

Overall I was impressed with the story. It wasn't out of this world but it was a lot better than most these days. Oh and the last boss? [bleep]ing incredible[/hide]

I saw a couple of my friends playing it, looks fun.

I rented it because I'm not the biggest survival-horror fan...but DAMN. Dead Space is amazing. The environment they create and how it makes you feel like you're right there is just....wow..incredible. Level design is perfect for what it is, and the gameplay mechanics are great. And agreed with Nadril, last fight was insane.

One of the best games I've ever played(aside from the whole "peeing fear" aspect. It's a damn frightening game.

I'm still wondering why i didn't make this thread :lol: .

But yea, it was...well, epic is the best descriptor. And the twist ending? Definitely a twist- on both counts, Ch. 11 and the very end. Thought the other guy was going to....But there's one thing I didn't quite understand, and I suppose I'll spoiler tag it.

[hide=]If his girlfriend was dead all along, putting aside how she unlocked that door for him and was being attacked by Necromorphs (thankfully the only thing remotley close to an escort mission in the entire game), how did she attack him in the shuttle right at the end? Oh, and I almost pissed myself when that happened :lol:

The Hive Mind also had the most....interesting death sequence, I don't know if you saw it. It pulls Isaac into its mouth, chomps a few times, then isaac comes crawling back out, leaps, gets caught again, pulled back face-first, at which point it bites down and rips his arms off. Now he's dangling upside-down, armless and screaming, before being thrown back in and eaten. It's awesome, but not in a "lolz his armz were gone and he's screaming like that" sense, but "holy....wow....... :shock: " sense. I actually said "Oh my god...."[/hide]

I think one of the most interesting parts is that, unlike Gordon Freeman, who never spaks, isaac doesn't speak, except for his wheezes in a vaccuum, his yells as he melee attacks, and his screams upon being killed in some cases.

I was gonna make a topic, but I got lazy.

Ya, this is an amazing game. It is one of the few times where a third person works well for me. It adds so much more to the horror to me.

I was gonna make a topic, but I got lazy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ya, this is an amazing game. It is one of the few times where a third person works well for me. It adds so much more to the horror to me.

I personally find first person is alot scarier for horror games...because you can't see all around you.

 

I was gonna make a topic, but I got lazy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ya, this is an amazing game. It is one of the few times where a third person works well for me. It adds so much more to the horror to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I personally find first person is alot scarier for horror games...because you can't see all around you.

It's zoomed in a lot in Dead space, so it's hard to see behind you.

 

 

I was gonna make a topic, but I got lazy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ya, this is an amazing game. It is one of the few times where a third person works well for me. It adds so much more to the horror to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I personally find first person is alot scarier for horror games...because you can't see all around you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's zoomed in a lot in Dead space, so it's hard to see behind you.

Yeah but you still have your peripherals(sp?). Oh well, it's a matter of opinion.

Currently borrowing this from a friend, and only played part of the way through Chapter 1 so far, so I know the game has plenty of time to develop further, but so far I have predicted literally every single attack except one, and even that one wasn't a surprise, it was just not predicted.

I hope it gets more interesting later on? :pray:

I might go out and buy it, or at least rent it.

I heard this game is seriously scary. :shock: It looks amazing, but I'm too afraid to play it :(

Yea, I actually had to turn it off and do something for about 10 minutes after the first 15 or so :lol:

So hey,I played it for a few minutes in my friends house and it really freaked me out worse than that Thai horror movie I was watching with no subtitles.I was at least ten times closer to peeing myself.

Haha, finally got the "Don't Get Cocky, Kid" achievement. Took about half an hour :lol:

I watched my brother play this game. I wasn't to impressed, not really my kind of game though.

I watched my brother play this game. I wasn't to impressed, not really my kind of game though.

I scrolled down quickly and somehow your post "melded" with your sig.I read it as "I watched my brother play this nude".Heh.

I watched my brother play this game. I wasn't to impressed, not really my kind of game though.

Honestly you really have to play it, don't think watching it does it justice.

I watched my brother play this game. I wasn't to impressed, not really my kind of game though.

 

 

 

Honestly you really have to play it, don't think watching it does it justice.

I just tried it out for about 30 minutes. Pretty scary waiting for the creatures to pop out, I have to give it that. Once I got to some tram room I was able to predicted when and were I was going to get attack so I stopped. For now though I think I'm going to stick with Little Big Planet until I pick up GoW2 on friday.

Just beat the game!!!

Awesome...Easily one of the best games I have played in a while.

I'm starting up Impossible Mode...anyone here playing it on impossible?

Again.

[hide=]If his girlfriend was dead all along, putting aside how she unlocked that door for him and was being attacked by Necromorphs (thankfully the only thing remotley close to an escort mission in the entire game), how did she attack him in the shuttle right at the end? Oh, and I almost pissed myself when that happened :lol:[/hide]

Again.

 

[hide=]If his girlfriend was dead all along, putting aside how she unlocked that door for him and was being attacked by Necromorphs (thankfully the only thing remotley close to an escort mission in the entire game), how did she attack him in the shuttle right at the end? Oh, and I almost pissed myself when that happened :lol:[/hide]

[hide=]I didn't think she attacked him, just scared him.[/hide]

Ah. That makes a hell of a lot more sense.

Did anyone know their is a prequel to the game, a movie in fact, called Dead Space: Downfall? I just ran into it while browsing netflix.

Did anyone know their is a prequel to the game, a movie in fact, called Dead Space: Downfall? I just ran into it while browsing netflix.

Yeah I watched it like a week ago, it's pretty good.