Dead Space - Xbox 360 Review

by Sarkis Daglian at Oct 14, 2008 12:59am

The first must have title of the holiday season for the Xbox 360 has arrived in EA’s new survival horror IP, Dead Space. In Dead Space you follow the story of Isaac Clarke, an engineer who has been sent into deep space to the answer the distress call of the USG Ishimura.

Of course the seemingly routine call turns into an all out horror fest where you are fighting for your life as you try to bring the Ishimura back to life and uncover just what the heck happened aboard the ill fated vessel. What you will find with Dead Space is that the game delivers on almost every front and is definitely worth the purchase.

The presentation in the game for the survival horror genre strikes the perfect balance between scary and yet not overbearing. The atmosphere in Dead Space is top notch. Ambient sounds throughout the Ishimura will have you on high alert at all times and the art style is in the alien growth blood and gore vein.

Another fantastic aspect of the presentation within the game is the interactive menu feature and the suit in which you play the game. Menus, maps, and story advancement all occur in 3D as apart of the seamless environment of the suit. For example, if you receive a video message explaining what needs to be done next and why, its projects into the air in front of you as a message hundreds of years in the future should be presented.

The map also projects in this way and this innovative feature makes it easy for a player to plot out, plan, and execute a path of action in real time using the way points and easily switchable objective scheme. You won’t be spending time wandering through levels aimlessly lost as you have been in other titles in the survival horror genre.

The visuals of Dead Space are extremely well done overall and for what is supposed to be one ship displays surprising diversity within each location. While most of the game is fought in the familiar corridor layout of other such titles in the genre, Dead Space moves beyond this by mixing in sequences in more open areas, zero gravity areas, and areas that even occur completely outside the craft. The tone of the game is set early as the moment you step onto the Ishimura dead bodies, ransacked belongings, and blood a few coats deep paint the floor and walls. Another point of note is that the futuristic feel of the ship in visual style is nailed.

The Ishimura and what little within it works all give the player a sense of the future. From having a work bench pop up and fold out of a small compartment, to lockers that glide open, to the atrium of the ship that provides a breathtaking view of the space outside high above the ship’s orbiting planet. It might be minor things in the grand scheme of the game, but the visual love and detail has been poured into the game.

Another visual aspect that always makes or breaks these type of survival horror games is the lighting. Some games (ahem Doom 3) have terrible lighting where everything is dark and you have no flash light. Thankfully in the Dead Space future technology has advanced where no longer will entire levels be dark tunnels you have to navigate. Furthermore, weapons have made the life saving high tech jump to having attached flash lights at all times which allows for sight even in the darkest and scariest of circumstances.

Yet the light attachment, is exactly that an attachment, so pointing it does not illuminate an entire room but just enough in front of your face to see what you are directly looking at. Dead Space also makes wonderful use of ambient light to set the mood and increase the scare factor. For example, all the lights will go out in an area once an objective is complete and you will suddenly be fighting a new necros when they come back on. Or a quarantine warning will go off locking you in a room with red emergency lights swirling as a wall panel pops loose and a fight begins.

Your enemies in Dead Space are known as the Necromorphs and as you go through the story you learn more about how they came to be, attacked, and perhaps even took over the ship and infected the crew within it. Visually, I’m a bit torn as classifying all the various forms as scary. Definitely the first time you face a new type of Necromorph it is intense but each one seems to have its soft spots and once you learn those the scare factor is diminished just a tad. You will run into a variety of Necromorphs including ones that have razor blades for arms, smaller Necs that will suddenly pop out a set of tentacle arms and fire at you, massive beserkers that will chase you, and even advanced and boss necromorphs that seemingly cannot be killed.

However, once you feel comfortable with a certain type or even set of enemies Dead Space ups the ante on the player but combining a lot of enemies on screen at one time which will take precision and skill to defeat. The game does provide a good deal of intensity when you complete an objective and a slew of 7 to 10 necromorphs rush you from what was a sealed door or vent in the wall. Fans of the jump moments will not be disappointed either as there are plenty of moments of when an enemy surprises you. In some of the cooler moments of the game, an enemy necromorph will come out the wall with one large arm and swoop you away. In the brief moments you have before being killed you must fire away and hope to do enough damage to be let go.

In the gameplay department, Dead Space is a fantastic mix or third person adventure, shooter, and even has some RPG elements tossed in. The control scheme for Dead Space is as intuitive as I have come across for a survival horror game. The left stick moves, with the stick press the left bumper to run. The left trigger will aim your firearm of which you can assign four to the d pad for the quick switch.

Right bumper alternates between primary and secondary which each weapon has. Isaac can also unleash statis and kinesis upon his enemies and objects as well. As you explore the world you will able to find new schematics for new weapons and pick ups which can be purchased at the store and also power nodes which you can use at a work bench to install upgrades to your weapons and suit.

Upgrades can be purchased from the store from the cash you will find in lockers and from dead bodies. Power nodes will be found much of the same way except are much rarer and are picked up off of dead boss level necros and some cabinets you can find while exploring. The game starts you off with the plasma cutter and it appears in the early going almost every enemy you kill has a drop. The opening levels are absolutely littered with item boxes as well Isaac can open by press the right bumper to unleash a stomp breaking those boxes.

While you do collect a ton of nice items and ammo, the lack of slots in the suit early on does make you manage what you want to carry at all times. Dead Space also does not make it apparent what is the best strategy to use against which enemies which becomes an issue when trying to choose the right weapons for the situation or what upgrades would be prove to be most successful. While I’ve yet to run into situation that has made me think I should have gone back and done something differently, the game seems to subtly hint what it thinks you should be using weapon wise by the drops. Obtaining fully maxed our weapons and armor is not going to be achievable through a single play through either. I spent the majority of my early nodes upgrading my plasma cutter and I dare say it is pretty kick ass powerful and precise once you learn how to use it effectively.

Using any weapon in Dead Space effectively is innovative. It’s more a by product of the game design than the actual weapons themselves but it’s worth mentioning again that each weapon and there are 7 to choose from in the game does have its uses. In traditional games, the instakill or point of highest damage has always been the head. In Dead Space, you could unload an entire clip into a necros head and it will keep on coming.

Emphasis is placed on taking out the necro’s limbs and when you sit down and play the game it makes a ton of sense. Necros without their limbs are practically useless. Shoot off an arm and the blood begins to pour out. Shoot out both and it’s usually death. Of course enemies are moving slow and steady so a player can learn the mechanic early in the game but enemies do become challenging and aggressive as the game progresses in terms of speed and attack.

One of the things that Dead Space does not do a good job of some of the time is the level design. All of the levels seem to follow the same generic formula. Hop on tram, go to next area, fight bad guys, perhaps solve a puzzle or two, back track to start of the level and move on. Plus, all the objectives seem linear even if you are given multiple objectives to complete. There is a choice for what order to complete them in for example if you have disable 4 poison pods, but there really does not seem to be benefit or cost to choosing one path or another.

At some point, you are going to go to all four and the events seem static at each. The puzzling aspect of Dead Space can also be argued is a bit shallow. You may approach a door or two that seem to open and shut far too quickly to pass through safely so you fire a beam of stasis at the door to slow it down. Other times, you may need to use kinesis to flip a broken switch or move an object. There are intense moments however in the puzzle/adventure department for example when you turn the ship’s core back on and it begins to spin and you only have moments to live as you fight your way through a vacuum in space.

Sticking with the formula theme, there seem to be many instances where you will head toward an objective facing little resistance but once you get to the location and activate the switch for example all of a sudden the necros show up and the fight begins. It doesn’t really detract from the game in any way, but some of the surprise aspects is lost as you start to become more and more habituated to the game’s tendencies.

Dead Space’s core gameplay is split it by a few sequences in zero gravity, in an air vacuum, and even one where you sit in the seat of a gunner chair ala KOTOR and knock out incoming asteroids. Some of the zero gravity portions of the game are clunky. For example, in one sequence you are asked to simply go from one door to another on the outside of the ship in zero g with no oxygen placing a time limit on how long you can spend outside.

The usually helpful map tells you to make a half circle across a broken ring outside the ship to the other side. Once you get outside camera issues make it hard to jump to where you want to go and also there appear to be places you should be able to reach and are the most direct path to your destination and yet you cannot access them. The only way I was able to figure out I had made the right move some of the time in these moments was to be attacked by a new wave of enemies.

These gameplay issues aside, I was sucked in by the title over all and I am having a blast going through the campaign. The story has taken a lot of influence from other sci-fi horror stories you’ve seen before in the movies or played in other games. It reminds me of a cross between Bioshock, Halo, and Aliens. Replay wise, defeating the game unlocks a few new items and a new difficulty but as someone who tends not to revisit single player campaigns on any game, I do not think I will be doing it for Dead Space either. If you are a fan of these types of games and ready to try something new, fun, and of high quality than Dead Space is the game for you.

Presentation
A menu and map system every game can learn from.

Visuals
Great visuals, but growth and enemies start to look the same about half way through the game

Gameplay
Core mechanics are extremely well done. Objectives and level design could use less linearity and back track.

Tilt
I dig the game a lot and I usually do not like titles from this genre. The story is not oscar-caliber but among the best for the genre and was good enough to suck me in which is saying a lot.

Presentation	Visuals	Gameplay	Tilt	Online
9.0	8.5	8.5	9.0	N/A

Upside
• Core game play mechanics are awesome
• Mood and tone of the game is well done for the survival horror genre
• The HUD system is the most innovative thing we’ve seen in a long time

Downside
• Game is linear
• Zero Gravity portions are awkward

Overall: 8.8 (out of 10) Must Buy The very best available