Dead Space
Dead Space is a survival horror third-person shooter video game, developed by Visceral Games for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows released in October 2008. The player takes on the role of an engineer named Isaac Clarke, who battles a polymorphic, virus-like, alien infestation which turns humans into grotesque alien monsters called “Necromorphs”, on board a stricken interstellar mining ship named the USG Ishimura. It was revealed in September 2009 that Dead Space 2 is in pre-production.
The player takes the role of Isaac Clarke (named after science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke), an engineer who must fight his way through a stricken mining ship infested with hostile, grotesque monstrosities called Necromorphs, which are human corpses transformed and reanimated by an unknown alien organism. The game features an ‘over the shoulder’ third-person perspective. Players can upgrade modules, including suit and weapons.
The interface of Dead Space does not feature a traditional head-up display. Instead, all information is relayed to the player via holographic projections and the features on the suit and the weapons themselves. For example, a small display on the weapon shows an ammunition count; also, the ‘health meter’ that indicates Isaac’s condition is integrated into the spine of Isaac’s armor. Via floating holograms projected in front of Isaac, the player can check the current objectives and the 3D map, or access the inventory screen to manage items. Meanwhile, however, the game still progresses through time, and the player is always in danger of being attacked. The only menus in which the game is not still in progress are the pause and save menus. The player can still be attacked when using the store or upgrade bench, meaning there are effectively no “safe” points.
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- Tagged with: 2008 | horror | pc | PS3 | shooter | space | survival | third-person | Xbox
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3 Reviews
This is a very scary game.
It succumbs to a fair bit of the cheap, cat-squeal-and-leap, monster-closet kind of shock-scares that plagued Doom3, to choose the worst offender, but it is a genuinely creepy experience nonetheless.
It’s incredibly well-polished and well-executed; the amount of money spent shines through ever moment, and there are any number of interesting ideas and breathtaking set pieces on display.
The in-world HUD is a great innovation, as well, keeping you in the game world, relentlessly.
But for me, the innovations on the genre are also the roots of some of the annoyances. The over-the-shoulder 3rd person view makes combat harder than it should be, and it’s nearly impossible to get a mouse sensitivity that just works. (If you’re a console gamer, using an Xbox controller on the PC might be the go here — I found it even harder to use than mouse and keyboard.) Navigation around the floating, in-world HUD is confusing. Key combinations for the time-slowing and gravity-gunish tools are a little weird, as are default key bindings all across the board. The weapons-that-aren’t-really-weapons are a great idea, but it’s not quite as fun using them as it ought to be — the much-mentioned dismemberment mechanic to kill the necromorph thingies gets a little tired after a while. But these aren’t major problems, mostly just minor niggles.
I’d call this a great, cinematic experience, miles scarier than Doom 3 ever was, and an fascinating world and backstory to explore.
It’s far from perfect, but I’d say it’s well worth the effort to get into.
Scared the bajeezus out of me. Never finished. Took me a good 45 minutes of playing to settle into the over the shoulder view and not-innate controls whenever I picked it up. After that, and adjusting v-sync and mouse controls, I found it smooth. The gore is awesome. The creepiest parts for me were the labored breathing/gasping/choking episodes when you’re in trouble. It’s nearly as good aurally as it is visually stunning.
Pro-tips (I decided to finally finish the game and am enjoying it greatly): Disable v-sync if your mouse feels mushy. Much better. Also, line-racks are awesome (especially once upgraded).