Dead Space

6 Responses to “Dead Space”

1. Twitted by kote09
   11/22/2009 at 5:45 am

   [...] This post was Twitted by kote09 [...]
2. M. Girardin
   11/22/2009 at 5:51 am

   This is basically a mix between Resident Evil 4, Doom 3 and Aliens (movie). The game is freaking scary, and very very creepy.

   The visuals and art style are amazing which is important in a horror game like this I feel and this game does both well, everything is very well thought out, all of your menus display off the main characters suit rather than on screen, making it a little strange at first but it only pulls you in more.

   The sound is even better, you really feel on edge as you walk through the halls with eerie music playing, something banging on the walls or falling off a desk, you’re just waiting for something to rush in and scare the heck out of you. And when it does it’s aim shoot and hope what your shooting at kills the thing. Headshots aren’t the most effective in this it can be the worst thing you can do actually, the monster will flip out and go berserk taking more shots than before.
   Rating: 5 / 5
3. J. Hornbuckle
   11/22/2009 at 6:01 am

   Dead Space is a pretty good game, let me say that up front. The graphics are good, the story is fine, the action is fine, occasionally it is actually a little creepy too, which is all good

   The problem is that its so obviously just a lowest common denominator version of 3 or 4 other games that everyone has already played, most notably Halo and Bioshock. Since Halo was completely stolen from Aliens anyway, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the way its presented leads one to grow tired of it very quickly

   You start off as part of a search team, and get separated from them quickly. From then on, you’re given directions on where to go and what to do over the radio, exactly, and i mean EXACTLY like Bioshock. You manage to buy powerups from vending machines, EXACTLY like Bioshock. The areas you travel through have been destroyed in a civil war type thing, EXACTLY like Bioshock. You find various clues to what’s been going on from “diary entries” that people have just left laying in random hallways, which was beyond retarded when Bioshock did it, and is still dumb here

   You have various powers, like the ability to slow time or telekinesis, very similar to Bioshock. Saw blades and the like are left laying around, for you to project at enemies, just like Bioshock. Speaking of stuff left laying around, people’s luggage is piled everywhere, as if they were killed while they were getting ready to leave, EXACTLY like Bioshock. there’s a level that exactly duplicates the problem in hydroponics on Bioshock too. its really ridiculous

   The alien monster guys you’re fighting are pretty much exactly the same as the flood from Halo. Your weapons aren’t anything new or unusual either, despite what the previews would lead you to believe. All your missions boil down to “go to this place and get this thing” or “go to this place and turn this bit of machinery on”. One of them is flat out stolen from Halo, i won’t give it away. There are zero G environments just like Halo also, except with the added feature of you running out of air after awhile

   So anyway, if you’d never played any of those other games, Dead Space would be about the best game you’d ever seen or heard of. But since everyone and their mother has played those other games, what you end up getting is a game you’ve played 5 or 6 times before (Halo 1-3, Fear 2 times, Half Life twice, Bioshock) and then when you realize that it sucks all the fun out of it

   ESPECIALLY since the over all plot boils down to the usual drek about “religious fundamentalists” run amok. Apparently that’s the only plot horror writers are capable of anymore. You even get the cliched singing of a nursery rhyme against the back drop of people getting killed in the opening movie! I mean come on

   So anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you’ve spent alot of time with Bioshock you would either love this because its Bioshock 1.5 or you would hate it because its Bioshock 1.5, depending on how tired you are of Bioshock. Buy according to that
   Rating: 3 / 5
4. N E 1 4 Hotdish?
   11/22/2009 at 6:49 am

   An abandoned ship in distress, a missing crew, a stranded rescue team finds horrifying carnage throughout. Sounds a lot like the late 90’s horror movie “Event Horizon”. And while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, the game just didn’t give me much satisfaction. While visually a terrific looking game, and featuring sound effects realistic enough to scare your dog from the room, the gameplay is what I felt was lacking. In between the pieces of familiar yet interesting story, you’re tasked with finding this, switching on that, and shooting the two enemies that would attack from the front, and the one who would inevitably sneak up from behind. This seemed to be the trend in every new area – the “two in the front, one from the rear” formula. You advance the plot and right on cue, the music would take a sinister turn and voila, enemies would burst out of the vents. The scares were fairly predictable and I never felt overwhelmed by the attackers. You shoot off some legs and stomp on their heads and that would end the wave until you met the next objective. Maybe I was expecting more due to some of the Bioshock comparisons I had read on Amazon. The only things Dead Space and Bioshock have in common are great visuals and audio. While not horrible, I found Dead Space more compelling due to it’s story than gameplay.
   Rating: 3 / 5
5. Cloud "..."
   11/22/2009 at 8:37 am

   Known primarily for overdoing a franchise with multiple releases (see the endless yearly outings of sports titles, EA went a bit against the grain and released 2 original IP’s in the fall of last year: Dice’s Mirror’s Edge and EA Redwood’s Dead Space. Whereas the former was at times fun but other times frustrating, Dead Space is just top-of-the-line from head to toe. Everything about the game feels perfectly balanced and even small nitpick worthy issues can’t stop it from being an exhilarating ride…at least during the first time.

   Story: In the near future, such ships exist called “planet crackers” which essentially grab gigantic chunks out of planets and mine them for resources and minerals. When the top ship, the USG Ishimura, goes silent and no contact can be made, in comes Isaac Clarke, an engineer sent in to what they think is just a communication equipment problem. Get in, fix, get out except the ship’s crew has changed and not for the better as they’re disgusting and deformed creatures hell bent on seeing you dead, often in the most gruesome manner possible.

   There’s really only 2 complaints I can level at Dead Space’s story: one, we’re told to sympathize with Isaac thanks to a sidestory involving his girlfriend Nicole only Isaac doesn’t say a single word throughout the entire story and makes him a bit more autonomous and hard to sympathize with. The second is that the game is essentially a glorified fetch quest only instead of collecting items, you’re fixing stuff. Literally every chapter you’ll receive reports from either Kendra or Hammond, your shipmates, that something on the ship needs to be fixed lest something bad happen. A chapter where your completely cut off from everybody would’ve heightened the tension and made you go “now what?” but otherwise, you’re just errand boy. However thanks to the graphics and the pacing, you’ll be quite hooked into the story.

   Graphics: What makes Dead Space such an immersive and effective game is the graphics since the ship just FEELS possible, as if this thing can actually exist. It’s a lot more effective when you take into account the layout, lighting, various facilities and levels and everything from detail in the environments, the gore effects and especially that one part during chapter 4 involving the bridge makes you go “holy ****”. Larger detail is lost more farther away things are and bodies on the floor have a weird ragdoll quality and it’s not uncommon to start shuffling bodies with your feet like they’re mannequins.

   Sound/Music: Equally impressive is the sound mix from the roars, screeches, pipes and cans dropping from…somewhere, this is the game to have if you have surround sound as the sound mix will easily make you paranoid about everything. The voice acting is one of those functional types where no one really excels in their roles but they don’t stand out in the awfulness either. Primarily the voice acting comes from Kendra and Hammond who do good jobs for your voice characters. All that’s heard from Isaac is his yells during hits, breathing when he runs and being in air vacuums.

   Gameplay: The first big thing Dead Space does is have no HUD displays anywhere on screen, well at least typical ones. There’s no Halo-esque radar or ammo counter or a shield meter in the old-fashioned sense but rather everything’s on Isaac’s body. His health is a bar that runs up his spine separated into segments, his Statis (slow motion for specific things such as enemies or equipment) is a half-circle while ammo counters are displayed on top of the weapon in a display. Even cutscenes and character meetings don’t have a separate cutscene but either come through holographic projections or brief moments where camera shows an action from somewhere else. This helps with the game and makes one wonder why most game designers don’t use it more.

   Instead of traditional weaponry a la shotguns and assault rifles, Isaac carries engineer-type equipment from plasma cutters to rippers and the equipment feels like what one would use in their fixing duties so it’s nice that they’re functional for killing some beasts. The core of the game is to dismember your enemy, essentially take them apart piece by piece. Take their legs off and make em crawl or take their arms away and leave them attackless. Of course knowing how best to dismember is key since some actually change should you do something and screw you over even more. But with flamethrowers, pulse rifles and melee attacks at your disposal, you’re more than well-equipped and that’s what makes the game work: it’s not difficult per se a la Ninja Gaiden but rather it’s an even matchup. You against them and not feel handicapped by anything.

   With kinesis which acts similar to Half-Life 2’s gravity gun where you can grab distant objects or move big things you couldn’t otherwise move, there’s also the aforementioned stasis which temporarily slows time down for an enemy which is fun since it’s for a specific enemy so the annoying one can be slowed while you deal with the lesser types at full speed. Another of the more funner aspects is zero G. Just aim and if you can jump, you’ll go flying which’ll get you either on the ceiling, walls and all over. It’s incredibly fun and having an enemy flying at you is a bit intense. The segments where there’s no air are also great since the sound is drastically cut down save for muffled gunfire and yelling from Isaac.

   My one complaint is that the game isn’t as amazing the second time since it becomes a bit more predictable. “Oh, this is where I get ambushed so better go this way and do that” and since some of the achievements are most definately multiple playthroughs needed, it doesn’t make it chore-like but it drags it down ever so slightly. Whereas Mirror’s Edge frequently had great moments mixed in with completely off-the-rails segments and gameplay moments, there’s very little that breaks Dead Space. It’s not “scary” per se and won’t make you lose sleep but it’s an intense ride.
   Rating: 5 / 5
6. Markus Egger "www.MarkusEgger.com/blog"
   11/22/2009 at 10:49 am

   For some reason, this game appealed to me since I saw the very first trailers. I am not even sure why, but the Event Horizon-like setting caught my eye.

   And this game has a lot of good things going for it. I like the art style. They do a very good job at conveying the idea that you are in a giant and abandoned space ship. It is a little scary at times. Some people say there isn’t enough variety in the levels since it is all the same space ship, but I don’t mind that. It creates an overall experience that works and it is consistant.

   Also, the way all the interaction and the UI (or the lack of a UI) works is great. Everything you do, you do in game. Never goes the game go into “play a video” mode, but instead, the character brings up a holographic screen that hovers in front of him, even while you keep moving around. The same goes for the inventory, and so forth.

   I also like the weapons which are unusual. I like the upgrade system. It provides more depth than you would expect for this type of game.

   So what’s wrong? Well, unfortunately a lot of the things that frustrated you in games 10 years ago and seem to have generally been fixed are back in this game. The overall controls are very very sluggish. At all times, you feel like the character just isn’t quite doing what you want him to do. And he moves sooooo slow! Turning around takes forever. “Running” is probably slower than the average human walks. Except here, scary monsters are after you. But the avatar doesn’t seem to care.

   One of the things I really hated in this game is the lack of ammo. I see that they are trying to make things more suspenseful with that, but it just doesn’t work. You always only have a few shots and you can never experiement with your weapon. And when you run out of ammo, you have to deal with awful hand-to-hand combat. At that point you might as well reload. And health is another problem too. If your health runs down to far and you have no helath packs, you just know that you can’t proceed much further, and there is nothing you can do about it.

   Also, some animations take forever to finish and there is nothing you can do about it. Accidentally bring up the inventory in a fight and you are toast, because it takes forever to close it down (or at least longer than it takes to get killed).

   So as a conclusion: I am angry at this game! Angry, because it does so many things right. It creates fantastic athmosphere. It creates a fantasticly immersive UI experience. And then they messed it all up with the controls and the choice of not giving you ammo. Argh!!!!

   Note: If you do not have an HD-TV, then I really can’t recommend this game, since you will not be able to read anything on screen.
   Rating: 4 / 5