Dead Space - 360/PS3 - Review

[Kenzomatic]

So I just finished beating Dead Space and I must say it was pretty enjoyable. The basic story is pretty much pulled from Event Horizon and patched together with other video games and horror movie. At various points in time in the game you will immediately recognize ideas/scenes/setting from this list

Event Horizon
Alien
Ghost of Mars

Resident Evil
Silent Hill
Obscure
Metroid Prime
Bioshock
Half-Life 2

Spoiler:

Anyways you’re sent there to help this vessel USG Ishimura which for some reason is not communicating with anyone. You start off with a team of 4 people which seems rather small considering the ship your maintenanceing holds over 1000, but I guess you’re the best of the best. Isaac (you) is an engineer, so you don’t start off with any weapons. Actually you only find one real weapon in the game the rest are really engineering/mining tool, but they all shoot like guns. Things start off quick with an event you will never believe, you get separated from the crew. Actually you crash first then get separated after you all get off the ship (your ship). After that you’re off to do the endless number of task. I won’t go any further then that because the story is actually pretty good and I don’t want to give anything away.

The story in Dead Space is better then Event Horizon but not by much and is full of clichés. It doesn’t stray from the formula and in doing so actually ends up really solid.



Gameplay

The game play is good and some what original. The enemies are most vulnerable on there limbs so chest shots do next to nothing which is an interesting and welcome spin. Your guns or “tools” are made to deal with this as the shot wide line laser shots, so you can easily clip the enemy’s legs or arms. The enemies AI is pretty good they jump out of vents bounce around the room and the ones that come straight do it at the incredible speeds. And to add to the unrest all of your menus are projected in front of you so while you looking at your map you can be attacked, or shopping for upgrade or whatever. The only break from the game is to save. Adding this little device work really well. Remember the menu is just a holographic display you character has so you can get attacked while using it. There are also puzzle elements that use 2 other special abilities your equipment has. One is basically zero point energy juts like in half life and the other slow down time for and object. So if there are super fast chopping jaws you can slow it down so you can run through, the same is true with fighting enemies.



The game is divided up into chapter about half are fetch quest. Moving between chapters or location is a train so you get off at the start of a chapter and with the exception of the end you will always get back on at the end of a chapter. This systems isn’t as good as it could have been just exploring but it works fine. In the end the locations very enough and the story is good enough to make up for the fact that all of your quest are very typical. Like there is a engine problem, a communication problem, a oxygen problem, a meteoroid problem, etc etc but while your quest will be all to cliche the story will make up for it.



Graphic

The graphics look great out side some major pixilation of the shadow maps witch flicker a lot on the character. The character designs are all good though your suit seems a little impractical but hey it’s a video game. The art style is also fairly good but not great. Your not going feel the environments are mundane or boring but you probably won’t be in awe of any of them say for maybe 2.

So I really thing you guys should try this out, I give it a 9

[Don Ramón]

I wanna get this game as soon as it drops price