(Tardy) Game Review: Dead Space

My first experience with the survival/horror genre was Resident Evil 2 on the original Playstation. My family had gone out to a friend's ranch in the middle of nowhere. It was full dark, we were surrounded by orchards, old machinery, and there were coyotes yapping in the distance. Probably my first, intense feeling of isolation, and it was at that magical moment that our friend's son asked me, "Hey, do you want to play some Playstation?" I could not refuse. This was back when the Playstation was this magical, disc-using wonder of a game system. I loved just watching the thing work.

So, he puts in Resident Evil 2. By the time we get past the first cutscene, I'm already going pale. I had no concept of zombies at that time either, so this was all a great shock to me. Then the game starts going, and Leon Kennedy is desperately pumping round after round into things that die... and then they don't? I never even got to play (the guy was one of those gamers: "Hey, lemme show you something real quick."), but even so, I was terrified. Don't even get me started on how badly those zombies breaking into that gun store scarred me (hint, hint: probably scarred for life). Nowhere was safe!

Then someone suggested Silent Hill and I remember very little after that.

Anyway, my gaming origins, so to speak, are rooted in survival/horror. Since that night, instead of flinching away from any other games of that type from Capcom and others, I ran toward them. I don't know why I did that. Maybe after a scare that bad, it's like a "hair of the dog" kind of thing. As the years went on, I'm not sure if the games stopped being scary, or if nothing had reached that RE2 level of scary since. Resident Evil 4 was the last real freaky-ass game I've played. There's been Bioshock and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but neither of those scared me in the least. I don't even remember jumping.

That's where Dead Space comes in. I had bought it during a Steam sale without really thinking too hard about it. (The game was $5 at the time.) I played the first level, and while it hooked me, I was still getting acquainted with playing games on the PC. This was back when I had just picked up my new comp components, and could suddenly play games of a higher graphical quality than Minesweeper.

The other day, I picked it up again (with the intention of finishing a game so I could clear it off my hard drive), and was suddenly really taken by it. The atmosphere, the story, the gameplay, the macabre and grotesque antagonists: it all sorta clicked. I couldn't put the game down, and ended up finishing it that night. Let me tell you, playing at night was a bad idea.

For the yet-to-be-initiated, Dead Space is a survival/horror game that takes place in spaaaaace. A massive, sub-orbital mining vessel (also known as a "planet cracker") called the U.S.G. Ishimura has recently gone dark, and a distress signal is sent out. The corporation that owns the ship tasks Isaac Clarke, a space-engineer (Space Mario), and his team with figuring out what's gone wrong on the Ishimura, and to fix the problem if possible. After a hard landing, the rescue team finds that the ship appears abandoned. This doesn't last too long, though, as they're soon attacked by the gruesome, mutated creatures informally named "necromorphs."

The whole of Ishimura's crew have been mutated into decidedly inhuman beings, and they don't have a fondness for anything that isn't dead. So, Issac and the rescue team have to figure out a way to get off the planet cracker, stop the necromorphs from infecting other planets (mainly Earth), all the while attempting to look for survivors. Issac's girlfriend, Nicole, was also a member of the crew, so he also has to deal with that along the way - on top of everything else.

All right: the necromorphs. It's clear that this game was primarily inspired by John Carpenter's The Thing, and this is a very good thing (hehe). The monsters you fight are not only painfully scary, they're downright disturbing. You might spend moments of your fights with them just reconciling what they were with what they are. Much like Gabriel Iglesias' "Six Levels of Fatness," there are Six Levels of Scary in this game:

1. Creepy

2. Freaky

3. Frightening

4. Disturbing

5. DAMN!

6. F**ked Up

Sometimes I'd die because I was so distracted by the design of these things, looking on in horror as they approached. Dealing with that is just one part of the game, though. Let's not forget that you're in outer space, and the developers have gone all out to ensure that they take advantage of this. You'll be playing engineer a lot (maybe more than some would like), and fighting things like rogue asteroids, orbit decay, and zero gravity in order to get yourself the hell outta Dodge.

And this is what I really liked about Dead Space. All of your missions, for better or worse, are always sci-fi oriented. Go restore gravity to this deck, take a walk outside before a meteor shower tears you to shreds, play some zero-g basketball to retrieve a nav card (yes, this is an option), learn about the future's most prevalent religion: Unitology. All of this makes your stay aboard the Ishimura a very immersive one. You get a really good feel of how the crew operated aboard the vessel, humanity's economy, technology, social structure. It's a nice, clean(ish) cross-section of a very well thought-out science fictional future in store for humankind.

This isn't a straight-up gorefest. Clearly a lot of thought was put into making the ship and the society that clings to the stars around it feel very logical. That's the key to good science fiction and good horror. Things just flat out make sense. You'll spend very little time questioning the science of this or the logic of that.

If there is one thing that this game suffers from, it's the "Oh! Just one more thing!" syndrome that some games suffer from. This can make the game feel very frustrating at times. Yes, you've just spent an hour fixing the shuttle: Oh! Just one more thing! It seems someone removed the navigational system from it, so I guess you'll have to find it. Yes, you've just spent an hour getting the Ishimura's engine's back online: Oh! Just one more thing! It seems we're passing through an asteroid field now, so you'd better get the defensive countermeasures up and running before we do anything else.

It feels very much like Alan Wake or Dragon Age 2 when they're at their worst (which, for DA2, is all the time - hiyooo!). It can never just be over and done with. One more thing has to go wrong so you'll spend more time running around the ship from hell. Dead Space is fantastic, but the Writer of Subtle Plotlines over at Visceral Games seems to take a vacation at random times. Still, even then, some of these little sidequests take you to some amazing places. So while I don't applaud how they get you there, I'm glad that they get you there, if that makes any sense. It's like being driven to an arcade in a Ford Pinto.

And I just have to say that the visuals are dazzling. For a three-year-old game, there were several moments where I just had to stand and stare for a while. Remember that one really great moment in Mass Effect 2, when you step into the exposed CIC of the Normandy as it's getting torn apart by the Collector vessel? There are several just like that.

Sometimes it's a blessing: playing a game so late in its life cycle. Because now I've played a game that I truly love, and I don't have to wait any time at all to play the sequel! Dead Space is just a fantastic game. No, it's not perfect, but it's original where it counts. Much like Mirror's Edge, you just don't expect games like this to come around every dynasty. Dead Space is a violent, shocking, disturbing, thought-provoking game that's damn fun to play. The immersion factor is high, the sci-fi is mostly on par with Mass Effect, and it'll probably scare the hell out of you.

If you haven't played it, give it a try! Again, like Mirror's Edge, you could probably pick it up for $10 easy. You could do worse!