Dead Space Impressions

Holy crap this game is scary. I could just leave my impression of the game at that. Its easily one of the scariest games Ive ever played. I tried out Condemned 2 earlier this year, and F.E.A.R last year, and I just found those games to be gory and brutish, but not scary. This game is genuinely horrifying, at times I was so freaked out I turned on the lights and turned down the sound. Fear isnt a positive emotion, but it sure as hell is powerful.

The single experience I kept being reminded of was the first time I saw the film Alien. It starts off slowly, picks up speed and by the end you are scared shitless, screaming like a little baby, and loving every minute of it. This game is a lot like Alien in many ways. Initially a rescue and recovery mission, you get trapped on a remote mining operation that has become infected with alien lifeforms. You play the vast majority of the game entirely by yourself inside a desolate, broken down ship. Your goal is initially to explore and repair the ship, however it gradually escalates into a fight for survival. And the ending, as much as Im dying to talk about it, will blow your fucking mind. At some during during your playthrough of Dead Space, make sure you watch Ridley Scott's Alien, no matter how many times you've seen it before.

The actual game itself is quite well done, Im honestly surprised it hasnt gotten more nominations for game of the year. Its that good, its that well made and well executed from the start to the end. Its the Bioshock of 2008, and in many ways the game is better than Bioshock. The weapons, kit upgrades, and enemies, for starters, are far more varied and interesting than what you have in Bioshock, and its impossible to get everything in one playthrough, which gives the game a huge amount of replay value.

The graphics and sound meet or exceed those of any game on the market. The game is a technological masterpiece played in HD with 5.1 sound. The enemy animations and death scenes are some of the best Ive ever seen. If you've played Ninja Gaiden 2, this game will immediately have you thinking of it because of the insane amounts of blood, gore and dismemberment. Its easily one of the most violent and gory games ever. At one point I found myself trapped in a room full of human corpses, and the most clearly logical thing to do was to dismember the bodies and smash their heads into red paste with my steel boots. Its that kind of game.

One of the things that really sets Deap Space apart from something like Bioshock is you actually use your space suit to go out into space and perform missions in zero gravity; the suit has the ability to slow down time with a temporary Stasis Field (like in TimeShift), and it also has a built in Half Life Gravity Gun which you can use to move objects around the environment, and even attack enemies with their own body parts. These aspects combined with some very original weapons open up myriad gameplay possibilities.

In Bioshock you never actually left that stinking ship. It had a great story and all, but where were the undersea exploration missions for that Big Daddy suit? Where were the huge seamonsters? Where was the speargun to kill them? Although I think the story in Bioshock is unmatched in any videogame for its psychological intensity, other aspects of it left me wanting in ways Dead Space never did.

My only real criticism is that the main character never speaks, although he engages in many "conversations" where people talk to him, so I simply assumed he was an android, given a paucity of evidence to the contrary. The game has other smaller flaws, but they are so minor or short in duration that they never really bothered me.

If you havent played Dead Space yet, and you arent afraid of extremely violent or scary games, do yourself a favor and check it out. Combining the best atmospheric aspects of the film Alien, the enemy diversity and dismemberment of Ninja Gaiden 2, with weapons and bosses that would make Gears 2 and Left 4 Dead blush, its hard to see how anyone could be disappointed in Dead Space.