Dead Space

Dead Space : EA’s brand new Survival-Horror franchise. That statement feels like a lie.

Story : Dumb.

Okay the story of Dead Space is that you’re on some kind of mission to go to this spaceship. You and your dim-witted crew discover that everyone’s been slaughtered by some kind of monstrous species and now must find a means to survive. The first thing I noticed about Dead Space is that the voice-acting is bad (and not in that Resident Evil hilariously bad way but just bad), the characters are unlikable and couldn’t die soon enough, and the whole story is predictable, lame, cheesy, a dud.

The second thing I noticed about Dead Space is that the developers are really proud of their limb disembowelment gameplay mechanics and are fixated on making sure gamers know this too. It’s like the very soul of Dead Space is found from severing appendages. As you begin exploring the ship, you will run into at least two messages written on walls in blood “Cut off their limbs!” before you even know what exactly “their” refers to. Then, your crew members will be sure to tell you point blank that in order to defeat your enemies, you must attempt to sever their body parts. After that, a green message will pop-up telling you to your face that you must dismember limbs to kill these monstrosities. And just in case you didn’t pick it up the first five times, the loading screens will frequently tell you to aim for the limbs to kill enemies faster. And isn’t the box art making it apparent enough that the very essence of this game is to slice off limbs? Was this game designed for the pirate crowd of people who downloaded the game without reading the box at the video game store?

The third thing I noticed about Dead Space was a feeling that crept up on me; I did this all before! Dead Space seems to be an amalgamation of many other gameplay clichés combined into one very unoriginal piece. To be specific, you have the third person camera, inventory/store system, movement and shooting controls of Resident Evil 4, but in the Aliens-esque infested spaceship setting seen in Doom 3, among MANY other games. The basic gameplay in any given chapter involves going from one part of an area to another, dealing with enemies that pop up and separating them from their arms and legs.

For what it’s worth, you’ll face a hearty variety of grotesque enemies and the action will stay fresh. Only in the end-game levels did I get annoyed at the sheer quantity of enemies being thrust at me. What these enemies aren’t, however, is remotely frightening. I wonder if it can be considered some kind of accomplishment that a game can have flesh-eating monsters with fangs growing out of weird appendages and make them less terrifying than Spanish peasants with pitchforks. Oh they try to scare you, appear out of nowhere as an orchestra shouts loud and proud to proclaim their presence, but I never felt startled or unnerved. Throughout the entire 9 hour experience, only the cheap-scare ending was able to elicit an emotion out of me that wasn’t contempt at the ordinary action/non-horror game I was playing.

The game does have two original bones in its body. I mentioned the limb-cutting mechanic earlier (though I didn’t mention it as much as the game will) and as biologically illogical it is to kill enemies faster by aiming for some stray tentacle instead of say, their head or vital organs, it does make for some interesting battles. There’s also a select few areas in the game where there is no gravity, and because of such, you can hop directly from one area to another with your magnetic boots. I won’t give anything away, but these segments make for some unique set-piece sequences that ask for some outside-the-box thinking.

But then there are the other 204 unoriginal bones in the game’s body. Like the Half-Life 2-esque gravity gun that you use to manipulate items in the game world for puzzles. Or the ability to slow down enemies or fast-moving machines. Or the obligatory gun turret sequences!

All things considered, I should at least give the game credit for managing to extract 9 hours of gameplay without excessively spamming enemies (well, except for the end) and repeating too many areas over again. But try as I might, the feeling of déjà vu was too strong. I hated the storyline, couldn’t care less about my surroundings, certainly never felt terrified, and all and all it was just an action game that I was playing for the sake of playing it.

If you were to assess Dead Space on technical merits, and have a separate review score for graphics or sound or presentation, then you would have gold-medal caliber scores across the board, as this really is one of the most visually impressive games on the market. But what Dead Space lacks is emotion. The game feels heartless, just another futuristic sci-fi shooter but with nay all of the gameplay extracted from Resident Evil 4, and not the sense of atmosphere or dread. I hate it when people call Dead Space an exciting new franchise that needs new installments; it sends the message that it’s only okay to create new franchises if they’re exactly like the old ones.

Pros : The ability to curb stomp. For people that hate HUDs and things that remind them that they’re only playing a game, health bars and all pertinent information are integrated on your weapons or the back of your suit, and all messages, pop-up displays and menus are presented in the form of Minority Report style hologram windows that pop up in front of the character’s eyes instead of yours.

Cons : Because of this, these pop-ups are SD DEFICIENT and thus hard to read if you’ve got an ordinary television set.

3 ½ stars.

Oh, and the name of the game sucks.