Dead Space (PS3 - 5)
Dead Space was a big step into new territory for EA Games. The portion of EA that eventually turned into Visceral Games (because of this game actually) had previously focused solely on the movie-based video games that filled the market. But a lot of the production team were fans of old school horror movies and wanted to do something to pay homage to it, so they took a chance, and voila, Dead Space and Visceral Games were born. So let's dive into this one and see how it is.
The X button interacts with things in the game like computer consoles, lockers, and picking up items that enemies have dropped. O heals you with a med-pack, or uses Isaac's Kinesis module when combined with L1. △ brings up the map/inventory screen (also can be done by pressing select, but △ is the hot button for the map), and when used with L1 let's you jump in zero-gravity. □ uses the Stasis module when combined with L1. Lastly, the D-pad serves as your weapon slots.
This is a very fun and very easy control scheme. It flows together greatly for the game and isn't too much of a hassle to pick up. Let's see how it plays out.
The first weapon you gain access to is the plasma cutter, but you can purchase a number of others through the shops found on the ship as you progress through the story. These include a pulse rifle, a flamethrower, a ripper (shoots a circular saw blade out that is then controlled by a kinesis module inside the ripper that hacks the blade back and forth), a line gun (a larger version of the plasma cutter), and a contact beam (sends out a massive and powerful pulse of energy that you are able to charge to make even more powerful).
Your enemy force are necromorphs, which you learn are actually the reanimated corpses of the Ishimura's crew (kind of a giveaway with the name). They are a product of a Marker that is on-board the ship that is spreading an infection that eventually leads to the creation of the necromorphs. The marker causes visions in a person's mind where they hallucinate that their dead loved ones are actually there in front of them, and the hallucination convinces the host to "join" their dead loved ones, after which their bodies are ready to be infected.
Anywho, necromorphs : there's a lot of them, and they come in a few different shapes and sizes. The regular ones are just infected corpses, but then you have brutes (comprised of multiple corpses), leapers (necromorphs that have a long tail and can leap large distances like their name hints), lurkers (reanimated corpses from cloned infants which were harvested aboard the ship for spare parts...yeah this one gets dark), and a handful of others that include the few bosses you'll face along the way.
Regardless of which enemy you find yourself facing, the strategy is always the same : dismember them. The game employs a random-dismemberment strategy where cutting (shooting) off the limbs of the necromorphs will damage and kill them faster. Each one has a specific limb that, when cut off, they instantly die, but it's different for each one. So while hacking off the left leg of one guy might drop him in an instant, the next one will just adapt to losing one of it's legs and still come after you. No matter what though, never shoot of their heads, as this sends them into a massive frenzy where they will just flail about randomly and can be even more of a threat.
All of your gear and weapons can be upgraded with power nodes using a Bench, which you can find numerous of throughout the game. Each item has it's own circuitry map where you can place nodes to achieve certain upgrades. Weapons can have their capacity and damage levels upgraded, while your suit can be upgraded to hold more oxygen, and so on.
Each boss comes with it's own attacks and it's own strategies you need to defeat them. They're all large and pretty intimidating just looking at them. There's even a pretty cool asteroid mini game where you have to hop in a turret and shoot all the huge rock chunks of the planet that are coming towards the ship.
All in all, Dead Space is a great game, and it's a lot of fun to play, so let's see how challenging it is.
The enemies come at you at a moderate challenge. There's a decent amount of enemy types, but with the random-dismemberment, there's no sure-fire way to eliminate them consecutively. One enemy in particular, the brute, has only one specific weak point that you can hit on it's backside, but it still takes a somewhat practiced combination of hitting it with stasis to buy yourself some time to run around and hit the weak point.
Bosses are a bit more challenging, but not by much. They have limited modes of attack, which can be learned fairly quickly. However, they're still huge, and even after you've learned the strategies, they'll take a bit to bring down. Honestly though, much like I said in my Resident Evil 4 review, as tough as they can be in the fight, afterwards you'll look back at them as being a lot of fun.
Upgrades are easy, but very time consuming. The only way to do so is by using the power nodes at the benches. In the game, there is a trophy (or achievement for those playing this one on Xbox 360), to fully upgrade everything, meaning your Rig, Kinesis, Stasis, and every weapon. This requires at least two full playthroughs of the game (Dead Space features a New Game Plus mode where all your gear and upgrades carry over to a new playthrough), so you have to be very dedicated to getting this one.
In the end, this game can be a decent challenge, but let's see what was good and bad about it before I get to my final decision.
- Perfect horror setting. You're stranded on a ship in outer space, surrounded by, literally, death reanimated, and not much for options on where to run or hide. The setting itself just screams horror, and it delivers perfectly. This game is filled with jump scares, and a lot of them bank on you feeling safe. You'll find yourself walking down one hallway eliminating enemies, and when you return the other way down the same hallways you'll think everything is taken care of, and then a vent will blow out and necromorphs start vomiting out in front of you. You'll definitely be on the edge of your seat from the moment you start this one up.
- A new praise for the underdog. Most of these survival horror games, you go in controlling some sort of pro. A cop, someone from the armed forces, anyone really with a background that would help them in the situation. Isaac Clarke goes into the Ishimura as an engineer. He was literally brought along to just help fix the ship and get it moving again, and he was only there because his girlfriend Nicole was on board and he wanted to see her. So everything he does, he's learning and making it up as he goes along.
- Point-and-jump Zero-G. There's a handful of areas in the game where Isaac must go outside the ship into space and float around in zero-gravity. Except he doesn't float, he's magnetically attached to a metal surface and the only way for him to get around is to point himself at another metal surface and jump to it. Not what you'd expect from zero-gravity, but it's still unsettling when you're in these areas and you can watch as necromorphs float straight for your head.
You can find it just about anywhere for about $10, and you will more than get your money's worth from this one.
Just a little personal note to end this one, the reason that Leon from Resident Evil and Isaac here always stood out to me is because they're the underdogs, and they thrived in their horrible situations. Leon shows up for his first day on the job and is greeted by a zombie outbreak, and Isaac pulls his way onto a repair mission to see his girlfriend and is faced with a horrible, devastating infection that threatens to take him down at every step. But they pull through in their tough times, and they've always stood out to me as two of the best characters in horror games, and it's why I've always held on to the name Leon Isaac, and I'm so happy that within the next month I'll get to meet him for the first time. Sorry for the sap ending, but I have waited so long to meet my son and because of where the name came from, I wanted to do these two reviews for the both of us.
The Story
Dead Space is set in a future when Earth's elements are running out, so they've developed and resorted to a technique called planet-cracking, where they literally rip open a planet down to it's core and mine it's elements to bring back to Earth. The Ishimura, the first planet-cracking ship, was sent to a mission on Aegis VII but has since fallen into a communication blackout. A small team, including Isaac Clarke, is sent out to locate the Ishimura, repair it, and return home. But when they get there, all they can find are corpses littering the ship, and they are greeted by an enemy lifeform, the likes of which they've never seen before. They try to escape, but their own ship ends up getting blown up. Their only hope at survival is to repair the Ishimura and fly it back home, but can they survive the horror that's infesting it's halls?The Controls
Dead Space features a shooter-based control scheme. The joysticks control Isaac's movements and aiming/looking around, and clicking the right joystick brings up an objective-line that sends you in the direction you need to go if you're at a crossroads. L1 aims his weapon, while R1 shoots and R2 activates the weapons alternate firing mode which varies with each one. On their own, R1 and R2 controls Isaac's punch and stomp respectively, and L2 let's Isaac sprint.The X button interacts with things in the game like computer consoles, lockers, and picking up items that enemies have dropped. O heals you with a med-pack, or uses Isaac's Kinesis module when combined with L1. △ brings up the map/inventory screen (also can be done by pressing select, but △ is the hot button for the map), and when used with L1 let's you jump in zero-gravity. □ uses the Stasis module when combined with L1. Lastly, the D-pad serves as your weapon slots.
This is a very fun and very easy control scheme. It flows together greatly for the game and isn't too much of a hassle to pick up. Let's see how it plays out.
The Gameplay
This one is most definitely a survival-horror shooter, and it's a fun one. The moment you step foot inside the Ishimura, all hell breaks loose right in front of you, and for the first couple minutes you don't have any weapons. Dead Space is very linear, and objective based all throughout. Your overlying mission is to repair the ship and get out of Dodge, but each chapter faces you with getting to a specific area of the ship to repair it, or eliminating some sort of obstacle.The first weapon you gain access to is the plasma cutter, but you can purchase a number of others through the shops found on the ship as you progress through the story. These include a pulse rifle, a flamethrower, a ripper (shoots a circular saw blade out that is then controlled by a kinesis module inside the ripper that hacks the blade back and forth), a line gun (a larger version of the plasma cutter), and a contact beam (sends out a massive and powerful pulse of energy that you are able to charge to make even more powerful).
Your enemy force are necromorphs, which you learn are actually the reanimated corpses of the Ishimura's crew (kind of a giveaway with the name). They are a product of a Marker that is on-board the ship that is spreading an infection that eventually leads to the creation of the necromorphs. The marker causes visions in a person's mind where they hallucinate that their dead loved ones are actually there in front of them, and the hallucination convinces the host to "join" their dead loved ones, after which their bodies are ready to be infected.
Anywho, necromorphs : there's a lot of them, and they come in a few different shapes and sizes. The regular ones are just infected corpses, but then you have brutes (comprised of multiple corpses), leapers (necromorphs that have a long tail and can leap large distances like their name hints), lurkers (reanimated corpses from cloned infants which were harvested aboard the ship for spare parts...yeah this one gets dark), and a handful of others that include the few bosses you'll face along the way.
Regardless of which enemy you find yourself facing, the strategy is always the same : dismember them. The game employs a random-dismemberment strategy where cutting (shooting) off the limbs of the necromorphs will damage and kill them faster. Each one has a specific limb that, when cut off, they instantly die, but it's different for each one. So while hacking off the left leg of one guy might drop him in an instant, the next one will just adapt to losing one of it's legs and still come after you. No matter what though, never shoot of their heads, as this sends them into a massive frenzy where they will just flail about randomly and can be even more of a threat.
All of your gear and weapons can be upgraded with power nodes using a Bench, which you can find numerous of throughout the game. Each item has it's own circuitry map where you can place nodes to achieve certain upgrades. Weapons can have their capacity and damage levels upgraded, while your suit can be upgraded to hold more oxygen, and so on.
Each boss comes with it's own attacks and it's own strategies you need to defeat them. They're all large and pretty intimidating just looking at them. There's even a pretty cool asteroid mini game where you have to hop in a turret and shoot all the huge rock chunks of the planet that are coming towards the ship.
All in all, Dead Space is a great game, and it's a lot of fun to play, so let's see how challenging it is.
The Challenge (or lack thereof?)
Dead Space has a few areas where you can face a challenge. From the enemies, to the bosses, down to the upgrades.The enemies come at you at a moderate challenge. There's a decent amount of enemy types, but with the random-dismemberment, there's no sure-fire way to eliminate them consecutively. One enemy in particular, the brute, has only one specific weak point that you can hit on it's backside, but it still takes a somewhat practiced combination of hitting it with stasis to buy yourself some time to run around and hit the weak point.
Bosses are a bit more challenging, but not by much. They have limited modes of attack, which can be learned fairly quickly. However, they're still huge, and even after you've learned the strategies, they'll take a bit to bring down. Honestly though, much like I said in my Resident Evil 4 review, as tough as they can be in the fight, afterwards you'll look back at them as being a lot of fun.
Upgrades are easy, but very time consuming. The only way to do so is by using the power nodes at the benches. In the game, there is a trophy (or achievement for those playing this one on Xbox 360), to fully upgrade everything, meaning your Rig, Kinesis, Stasis, and every weapon. This requires at least two full playthroughs of the game (Dead Space features a New Game Plus mode where all your gear and upgrades carry over to a new playthrough), so you have to be very dedicated to getting this one.
In the end, this game can be a decent challenge, but let's see what was good and bad about it before I get to my final decision.
PROS
A quick note on this section before I dive into it. This game has produced two sequels, but I want to give an honest opinion on this one, so my pros and cons for this game will only reflect this game, and not what may or may not have been fixed in the later titles.- Perfect horror setting. You're stranded on a ship in outer space, surrounded by, literally, death reanimated, and not much for options on where to run or hide. The setting itself just screams horror, and it delivers perfectly. This game is filled with jump scares, and a lot of them bank on you feeling safe. You'll find yourself walking down one hallway eliminating enemies, and when you return the other way down the same hallways you'll think everything is taken care of, and then a vent will blow out and necromorphs start vomiting out in front of you. You'll definitely be on the edge of your seat from the moment you start this one up.
- A new praise for the underdog. Most of these survival horror games, you go in controlling some sort of pro. A cop, someone from the armed forces, anyone really with a background that would help them in the situation. Isaac Clarke goes into the Ishimura as an engineer. He was literally brought along to just help fix the ship and get it moving again, and he was only there because his girlfriend Nicole was on board and he wanted to see her. So everything he does, he's learning and making it up as he goes along.
CONS
- No voice for the voiceless. Isaac never utters a single word throughout the entire game. What's more, he doesn't even grunt, scream, no reactions whatsoever to the horror coming to life around him. It's a little upsetting and it definitely gives you the feeling that he's just some lackey being ordered around to do all the dirty work while the other two members of his team sit pretty and wait for the job to be done.- Point-and-jump Zero-G. There's a handful of areas in the game where Isaac must go outside the ship into space and float around in zero-gravity. Except he doesn't float, he's magnetically attached to a metal surface and the only way for him to get around is to point himself at another metal surface and jump to it. Not what you'd expect from zero-gravity, but it's still unsettling when you're in these areas and you can watch as necromorphs float straight for your head.
Final Verdict
The only reason this game doesn't belong in your collection, is if you're not a fan of horror. This game is amazing start to finish and it is very easy to find yourself becoming obsessed with the mythology behind it. Throughout the game there's numerous text, audio, and video logs that you can find that will lend you more and more information about what's been happening on the Ishimura, and it's all very captivating. It keeps you on your toes with all the enemies and the countless places they can come from to attack you, as well as all their differences. So if you like playing games that can make your heart skip a bunch of beats, then you'll love this one.You can find it just about anywhere for about $10, and you will more than get your money's worth from this one.
Just a little personal note to end this one, the reason that Leon from Resident Evil and Isaac here always stood out to me is because they're the underdogs, and they thrived in their horrible situations. Leon shows up for his first day on the job and is greeted by a zombie outbreak, and Isaac pulls his way onto a repair mission to see his girlfriend and is faced with a horrible, devastating infection that threatens to take him down at every step. But they pull through in their tough times, and they've always stood out to me as two of the best characters in horror games, and it's why I've always held on to the name Leon Isaac, and I'm so happy that within the next month I'll get to meet him for the first time. Sorry for the sap ending, but I have waited so long to meet my son and because of where the name came from, I wanted to do these two reviews for the both of us.
