Dead Space

Available on: Xbox 360, PS3, and PC
Played it on: Xbox 360
Played it for: 13 hours

RATING: 9/10

Summary: Earth is breaking. The world has sent out hundreds of ships to mine the other known planets dry, and use those resources to fuel the dying planet. One such ship, the USG Ishimura, picked up a strange artifact with it's mining materials called The Marker. It's existence was sacred to the Church of Unitology, so it was kept on board until the ship could reach Earth.

It never did.

Engineer Isaac Clarke is sent with his team to fix the ship after it sent its final distress signal, but when they arrive, the team finds the ship crawling with Necromorphs, freakish, mutated, zombie-like beings that barely show any semblance of once being human. The ship's entire crew has been turned by the marker, and it is Isaac's job to find salvation.

Review: Space Zombies!
At some point during your Dead Space escapade, you'll probably, no, you will ask yourself who on Earth would be demented enough to not only create the idea for Dead Space, but was actually crazy enough to make it into a full game with a plot and everything. Not only do you have to fight undead in space, you frequently have to watch the transformation from human to Necromorph, and you are also forced to watch 20+ suicides throughout the 12 missions of the extensive campaign. The Marker has made you insane and given you dementia, and if that wasn't bad enough, you have to face the entire 12 hour campaign alone. To put it in basic terms, this game is not for the feint of heart...

I bought Dead Space half out of curiosity and half out of boredom. I wanted something completely different from my usual Halo FPS or Gears of War TPS or Fallout/Skyrim RPG. Something preferably scary, but not the calibur of Amnesia or SAW (though I've never played SAW, I have heard the stories). Dead Space seemed to fit right into that category, and I was completely right. Those who want a very different experience out of gaming will very much enjoy it, but be prepared for some pretty disturbed visuals. I will say this, where Amnesia is a game that relies of the psychological aspect of horror, Dead Space handles the startling part. Necromorphs can come out of literally anywhere, so you have to be prepared at all times for a battle royal. The higher the difficulty you play, the more scarce ammunition is as well, making it much more difficult to, well, live later on. I suppose you could cheat your way to the finish, as Dead Space is one of the few living titles to employ actual cheat inputs for when you pause and are bored enough to look them up, but I preferred to go the traditional route and just play it how it was meant to be played. Oh how difficult it was...

Dead Space 2 is more popular than the first one, and for good reason. It's newer, looks better, handles better, has newer and better features and the like, so many readers probably don't realize how brutally unforgiving Dead Space is compared to the sequel. It was unbelievably difficult to complete the campaign just on medium, and that was with me just pumping money into ammo at every store, and burning through weapon upgrade nodes at work benches. Even with all of this, the final mission was a tough one, forcing you to fight wave after wave of the strongest Necromorphs in the game to deliver The Marker to the giant hive mind on the planet Aegis 7, which floats gently below the Ishimura for the other 11 chapters. The part that scares me the most is that there's not just one, but two difficulties harder than the already challenging medium, one of which is so difficult it's called Impossible Mode, and is unlocked after playing through the game once on easy, medium, or hard, Gears of War style. Just for kicks, I created a new game on impossible, and it's difficult just beating the first chapter, and that's with already knowing exactly where all the Necromorphs are going to pop out. I can't imagine how ridiculous the next 11 are...

Aside from all that, the gameplay itself is fantastic. While one might think that only having seven guns in the entire game would be pointless and stupid, the weapon upgrades make it impossible to have more anyway, as  more guns means more resources to spread out, which in turn means you'll have a lot of guns, but none of them are nearly damaging enough to actually be effective past chapter 6. Unlike DS2, there are also only 5 suits, simply named level 1 suit, level 2 suit, and so forth, but this I think also makes the game more interesting, as it takes your focus off of how you look and onto how many more Necromorphs you have to kill before the next room. Actually, all of the things you can buy in the store or use in upgrades just add to the tension, as you have to make the decision to either keep your last upgrade node to open up a special locked treasure door later on or to upgrade your machine gun so you can live long enough to see the door in the first place. The game is built to put you in those positions, and it makes the experience that much more effective. In all, it's both new and quite refreshing.

The campaign runs you about twelve hours to beat it once, and I'd say that's fair for a standard shooter. I would have liked the campaign to run closer to thirty, but you begin to wonder at some point when it's all going to end, and therefore the game actually raps itself up quite nicely by the end of chapter 12. It's got descent replay value as well, as long as you play it on a harder difficulty each time, and is something that you can easily go back to and play for a few hours after your first go round. All in all, it's a good and different game that's probably worth your time.