Dead Space review

Gamespot rating- 9.0

IGN rating- 8.7

The first installment of the popular Dead Space franchise puts up a suspense-filled, atmospheric gore-fest of a fight to become the leader in the next-gen horror experience. Dead Space follows the protagonist Isaac Clarke (A futuristic Sci-fi Engineer) aboard a dark space colony where he discovers disturbing truths and nightmarish creatures. The Game is widely thought to draw inspiration from a wide span of Sci-Fi horror such as ‘Alien’ and uses some similar aspects as the game : Resident Evil such as the ‘over the shoulder’ player view to install a sense of intimate claustrophobia.  

The suspense Dead Space creates is largely down to the sound-scape, layers of orchestral-based suspense music filled with high quality digetic sounds; this penetrating, surrounding sound is highly immersive and includes the signature silence of outer space scenes and heavy footsteps as Isaac ventures deeper into the depths of the dark space station.

This primary game paves the way for a long and engaging franchise. Many story elements and mysteries intruige the player and many subtle touches capture the gaming magic that is hard to describe. The USG Ishimura space colony is forever abstractly personified by the traces of previous human inhabitants and the mysteries of what they were up to. The dark scenery hides creatures very well and introduces franchise-identifying concepts such as vents containing crawling Necromorphs, other concepts include the zero-gravity sections.

A widely praised element of Dead Space is the scarce ammunition and health packs which further pushes forward the dread and panic so many love this game for. The reload times also add toward the panic. Some mechanics such as ‘stasis’, which slows enemies in a cloud of blue, really give Dead Space its Identity. Stasis also is grounded in reality as characters in the game world use the technology for hyper-sleep in space and engineering. Having far-fetched elements in games, for me, is a turn off and I applaud this game for staying on the right side of science fiction. This game definitely stands out from the rest and is the first game in a long time I have played and instantly thought ‘this is a classic’. To state the obvious, Dead Space is terrifying, EA have however made sure that they have the right audience for this game. EA include a lot of gore into this game which can’t be avoidably not referred to as ‘cool’, thus this game will be played by those over 18 and will get praised unto the next generation along with later installments of the franchise.

Dead Space has many elements of an action game, such as the large arsenal of varying weapons complete with upgrades, upgradeable armour and combat mechanics such as the ‘stasis’ module which allows the player to freeze an enemy in mid air, however the game maintains the survival horror genre throughout. I praise the graphics for the textures, mainly highlighting the metal of the spacecraft to create an ‘industrial’, futuristic feel. The plot rarely matters to a player when a game is this cool, but the Dead space story is intriguing, disturbing and mysterious, it’s definitely not a standard shoot-em-up, it will keep you engaged even on the second play-through. Dead space constantly shocks and surprises