Game review: Dead Space

[CyBeR]

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Once in a while, you play a game and at the end stand away from the screen and run through its parts. It has that and that and that, it did that and this and that and it spells to a great experience. You add them together but somehow, somehow, that sum is greater that what you've experienced as a whole.
That's quite the deep paradox, right?
I'm sure I will catch flak for this but…I'm here to say 'Dead Space' is not a good horror game.

'Skitter Skitter Skitter'
The premise for this Sci-Fi, action-horror-survival game is well known so I'll go through it briefly. You're Isaac Clarke (yes, really), an engineer sent along with four others to check up on the SS Ishimura, a planet cracking mining ship that's gone silent for some time now. The humanizing factor for Isaac is a video of his lovely girlfriend that sounded distressed from aboard the Ishimura.
The behemoth is dark and no one is responding to any sort of hails and the docking procedures, for some reason or another, go ballistics, the shuttle crash landing into the docking bay.
Minutes later, you're running for your life with baddies on your tail, cut off from the other survivors. And you're supposed to be scared and alone.

Notice please, the important terms here: 'supposed to'.

DO NO WATCH THE FILM! OR READ THE COMIC! This game is not scary as it is, if you experience those beforehand, you lose the scare factor out of those three or four scenes that would actually be worth a damn here in terms of mood.

'I'm really sorry Isaac.'
But it's hard to care for the main character, no matter how much you may want to. His girlfriend may make some appearances, his journal may add a hint of humanity and ONE, one single line of dialogue from the supporting cast actually adds some believability to his relationship to Nicole…but that's just about it from start to end. From the moment he puts on his helmet to the last great big reveal the game has to throw our way…we're playing an un-immersive robot whose suit not only protects him from the necromorphs, but also from US, the players.
He's the only really alone and isolated character in the game…too bad it can't transmit to the player via much and we're left to grin, just disgusted, at the gruesome ways he may find his end at the mercy of different monsters.

And that's just part of the problem why this game does not reach that critical tension point it needs for it to be genuinely scary and frightening. Sure, it may have the usual moment where you're out of ammo, enemies are near, health is low and desperation is creeping up on you…but it's so rare that it's laughable (and you can always use your kinesis to throw random junk at them…more on that later).

Second part of the un-scary equation here is the lack of good pacing concerning the monsters.
You can get a game to be gruesome and scary as all Heck. It's all down to knowing that filling rooms with enemies is a bad idea if you want people to be scared of them.
I've reached my objective, crossed perilous rooms, killed some occasional baddies and finally linked the engines so I could correct the orbit. Now the room fills with enemies. Way to spoil my success and be predictable, game.
Same can be said for almost every sequence in the game. Completing objectives almost always leads to bigger confrontations, boss encounters are preceded by rooms full of ammo and health packs, going forward through a passageway that's empty now will mean that when you're coming back it'll be full of enemies and so on and so forth.

YES, the pacing is THAT BAD.

And if you won't believe this, than be warned that you'll be experiencing these shoddy horror moments from the first minutes where if you get scared…you need a new brain.

And third of my gripes, main gripes that is, because otherwise I'd be getting petty…
F*** that, I'll get petty if I want to.
WHY ARE THERE NO BUTTONS?
…
Umm…sorry, let me try and not sound like a cretin: why is there no physical interaction?
Isaac interacts with his environments via holographic menus. I understand with consoles and such, but doors are a different matter altogether.
I hate making comparisons in my articles but this one needs to be made: 'Doom 3' got this feature right. 'Doom 3' created a way in which you'd interact directly to your world via consoles, adding a certain level of immersion to the whole experience.
'Dead Space' has rejected that free immersion bonus that it could have gotten from Isaac having interacted with his environment more freely than just move this object from here to there or such things that he'd require for some puzzle or another.
On that remark, I found the lack of an option to actually grab something with your bare hands to add to that. The kinesis module does any sort of moving and it's daunting, helping only in isolating poor Isaac from us, his uncaring puppeteers.

'There's a lot of blood in this room, but no bodies.'
The story in 'Dead Space' unfurls as it would in most every other game in the genre. You get your usual queues from the main cast, you do your mission objectives (that are usually 'Go there, do that, get those for that') and on your way you collect audio or text logs to flesh out the overarching story and what's actually happened there.
Of course, to get the most out of the greater picture you need to read the comic book and watch the animation film, both of which I would recommend…they help and they're great to watch.

The story is hard to fault, but if I were to do so, it would be about the characters. They're not likable and you really don't care what happens to them. I've already made my rant on Isaac and his mute crusade against an army of creatures Hell bent on exterminating this poor engineer. There is hardly any dialogue between them and if they do communicate to you they're basically orders to do various mission objectives.
They do not help you in the least, just open up the way into more hazardous environments so is it any wonder you feel actually content at the time when someone gets their limbs torn off brutally? No, I wouldn't think so.

I'm not soulless (unlike Isaac *wink wink*) so I'll get on the good points now.
The voice acting for the story is done wonderfully unlike some other entries in the genre (*cough*'Project Zero'*cough*) and that really helped a lot along the way, making hunting for the audio logs a pleasure, rather than the nuisance it should have been.
Also, there's certain logic to how the objectives play out on the ship. You need to repair the ship before sending out a beacon or else you may end up as star dust before anyone comes to your aid, you need to get the air to vent the poisonous gas before it spreads to the entire ship and your efforts become even more desperate and so on. I was really pleasantly surprised with how much logic the mission objectives had.

On the other side of the barricade…it once again proves that no budget should be allocated to the training of Space Marines, seeing as a single alien organism is usually enough to contaminate and destroy a whole starship-full of the highly-trained losers.

There are some other stupid moments in the story of course that are meant to be disturbing and gruesome but I found them puzzling. In a ship full of monstrosities that come in droves, how can unarmed civilians survive alone and isolated, even insane?
Anyway, that's nitpicking of the highest caliber so let's move on to something more important.

'Cut off their limbs Isaac.'
So yeah, the biggest selling point of 'Dead Space', as most of you very well know so far, would have to be the fact that you can't kill these creatures by simply blowing their brains out. In fact, they get rather pissed if you do so.
The gameplay revolves around dismembering, with various tools. I found the most effective to be the simple Plasma Cutter, but experimented a bit with the others as well and each offered a fun time at the party sort to say.

Gunplay aside, the zero gravity moments and the oxygen-less areas are absolutely fantastic. Yes, those have been my favorites and I bet a lot of people are gonna see why when they'll reach it. Not willing to say anything more…just greatly designed.

Experienced players should have no problems with the difficulty in this game. It takes a bit of practice to get the feeling of cutting limbs off, but after a while you can even avoid the big monstrosities that if killed wrong let out the little buggers that Isaac barely shake off. If you don't see those little buggers coming, then I hope you enjoy the view from a dozen digestive systems…yeah, that's about as cheap as 'Dead Space' seems to get so there's hardly any need to worry about that.
Enemy variety is satisfying for the most part, though I would like to ask this of developers:

*ahem*
STOP IT WITH THE UPGRADED MONSTER BULLCRAP!

Seriously, ENOUGH ALREADY!
I am sick and tired of killing the same types of monsters only to find in the later part of the game the same damn type, re-skinned but tougher. Stop being lazy and start being creative with your enemies.

Anywho…gameplay all in all plays well. There aren't puzzles that will twist your brain or waves or enemies that will challenge you for long. Upgrading your rig with power nodes, buying new weapons and ammo at shops also helps so Isaac is anything but not helpless…if anything, they should make an army of engineers, not of loser-Space Marines.

'Now we are whole again'
'Dead Space' looks good for a gray game. Not to be too critical for a game that's set in a space ship that makes no freaking sense at times, but they could've had some more colors from time to time. Otherwise, good design, the game engine looks good for the most part and it does its job admirably.

The monster models are nicely detailed and gross to look at and dismember.

Ok, look, I'm staring at already four pages of text and I'm trying to talk about graphics. There's really not much to say. There's incredibly little to talk about in this department. The game looks good and that's that. The last areas look about as good as they can and throughout the game there's some organic growth that could've been handled a lot better.

There are some breathtaking moments when you're in outer space and those really take the cake in terms of visual quality. Too bad they're rather few and you're in a hurry to not choke to death on lack of oxygen.
But all in all…this game could've just used some more color. You know, so that the Ishimura would've seemed at least like a ship where the crew wouldn't have been on constant anti-depression medication on a normal work shift.

'And screams echo in the twisted halls'
Ah…the sound. It truly shines bright in a game that for me shined of mediocrity in most areas.

The voice acting is top-notch, the music is chilling to the bone and the effects are fantastic. The monsters skittering in the vents are blood chillingly satisfying to hear and the screams that echo in the hallways are always a pleasure to listen to. Add to this the incredibly well handled muffled sounds of the no air areas and you've got a rather clear image of how good this game sounds.
It's moody and atmospheric and if it could've been coupled with some better writing and not been held back by all the things I've written about, this would've been the single scariest Sci-Fi game ever made. It wouldn't have mattered that it ripped off 'Alien' or 'Event Horizon' (HA! You really though I wouldn't go there?!), or that the cast was as unlikable as Heck or that once you knew what the monsters were they didn't seem as threatening…it would've been scary as all Hell.

Very good effort on the sound and I really can't find anything to say bad about it. It was fantastically handled on all fronts. I bow to them on this.

'It rips his head off and gets its tentacles in his spine, effectively taking over the body'

'Dead Space' is not a bad game. It all honesty, if you're looking for a rather solid shooter, it's quite good. If you're looking for what it's cracked up to be, it's not there.
It had everything going for it except the actual core of the experience: the immersion. It looks good, it sounds good, it plays good but it's not really that good of an experience in the end and you'll really be left wanting for more in the end.
But not more of the same, more of what it should and could have been.

Graphics: 9
The lack of colors is annoying and some design choices for the levels are really awkward and leave you asking what their purpose there is. Impaling the crew?
I'd probably be driven to suicide working on the Ishimura on a normal day.

Sound: 10
Perfect orchestral score helps set a moody tone for the action and the story.

Story: 6.5
The big twist at the ending is really nice but the ending in itself is rather drab and a let down that's seen coming from way on high.
Without the additional media, the overarching story is a tangled web that makes very little sense to new comers to the universe of 'Dead Space'.
Isaac is a robot that you don't care about, along with all the members of the supporting cast.

Gameplay: 6
Dismembering your foes is fun butpredictable.
The scare factor, even the 'BOOO!" one isn't there at all. Gore does not substitute for that.
Mission objectives are repetitive, even if their particular name is different. The actual action is 'Go there, pull that, go to the other place, do the other thing, go to the last place'.
Too many enemies for the game to be scary.

General impression: 7
I liked playing the game and I've enjoyed the story enough to want to play the second game when it'll come out. But I couldn't get pass the fact that it was so little of what it could have been because of some very bad decisions.

Words of the wise producers: we will not connect more with a mute character.

Final score: 7.7