DEAD SPACE

Honest review  by: QUIK

My friend Robert has been telling me to try this game for a long time. I picked it up for the PC and according to him the graphics were much better then the Xbox 360 version. I only played the demo version on the 360 and I wasn’t impressed at first. Warning: Do not play the demo of this game, if you like horror shooters you must own this game in your collection, the demo is a disappointing experience compared to the game itself.

Let me compare this game to another horror shooter I’ve played called Doom III. Dead Space does everything right where Doom failed. The atmosphere of the Ishimura (the ship you are on through most of the game, think Event Horizon for comparison) is absolutely brilliant and scary (in a good way) compared to the world of Doom. The enemies are unrepetetive, the pace at which they are introduced in the game is perfect leaving you never bored with the same type of enemy or how they attack you. After the initial scary mood of Doom passed I would literally walk into a new area, empty the clip, clear the room and move on to the next area. Dead Space doesn’t do that. You always have to be on your toes because even when walking through an already cleared area there’s a chance a monster will jump out of a vent and attack you. The enemies will even appear in some places and “play dead” suddenly jumping up at you when you walk past them too closely. Honestly when it comes to enemies in this game and how scary they really are this game gets perfect 10/10. I couldn’t ask for more.

The story is absolutely brilliant. You begin not knowing anything about the world (unless you saw the animated movie or read either books or comic books based on the Dead Space universe) but by the time the first chapter ends you will want to know everything about it. I get excited and happy every time I found a text, audio or video log. Learning about this world was almost as equally fun as playing in it which recently I only experienced with Mass Effect. I won’t spoil any of it here because I want you to experience it the way I did, through in-game logs (and eventually Dead Space wiki hehe).

You play Dead Space in a “over the shoulder” third person perspective (think Gears of War). At first I wasn’t very happy about that. I figured if this is a horror game it would be much scarier to experience it “through the eyes” of the main character. I disagree with myself now. I think the tpp was a very good idea now. “Why such a change of heart Quik” you might ask. Well, let me tell you dear and loyal fan of yourgamesux. There is no visible UI in this game. No health bar on the bottom, no ammo info in the corner of the screen. Everything you need to know about your character, weapons, inventory is part of the game and your character. When the protagonist Isaac Clark checks his inventory he sees a holographic projection of his items and obviously you see them as well. You know Isaac’s health by a “health bar” right on his back (the game explains why it’s there but I won’t spoil it for you, just pay attention to the posters on Ishimura, it will make you chuckle) and when you aim with a weapon the ammount of ammo left will show right there on the gun. Through keeping all of the player’s UI right in the game the creators of Dead Space made sure you are never taken out of the fantasy you are immersed in and it made the game that much more scarier. Yet another area where Dead Space wins and Doom III failed.

I highly recommend picking up this game. At the time when this review came out you could pick it up on Steam for $14,99 and that’s 15 bux well spent my friends. Now I can’t wait to finish the last chapter (I never even bothered finishing the last boss in Doom III) and play Dead Space 2.

One last thing I want to say to all of you Halo fans: