Dead Space Blowing Shit up in Zero-G is Awesome!

“Dead Space” is an interesting amalgamation of games. If I had to explain what it is by comparing it to other games I’d say it’s a combination of Gears of War, Bioshock, and Resident Evil. It has the camera perspective of an over-the-shoulder TPS like GoW, it has the narrative style of Bioshock, and the survival horror elements of Resident Evil. If you are a fan of any of these titles, you should really enjoy “Dead Space”. That is not to say it brings nothing new to the table. Quite the contrary it has added a number of elements that will be copied for decades to come, I’m sure. The most exciting of which is the complete removal of any interface for the game. Nowhere on the screen will you see a traditional health bar, ammo gauge, or any other UI elements unless they are needed. For example, your character’s health bar is a series of green bars on his back and when you aim a gun, the remaining ammo is displayed on the hilt. When it is time for something to be shown to you it is done through these very slick hologram effects. If a door can be opened a faint blue holographic line surrounds it, otherwise it will be red. Even when you pull out your map or inventory it is a holographic image that the character pulls out and displays next to him, and you can rotate around it just like any other object in the game. This was not without its flaws, as I had problems with small things like knowing how much total ammunition I had remaining, but all-in-all it worked extremely well. Another great new feature that “Dead Space” has brought to the table is to make it so that the primary way of killing enemies is to sever their limbs. In a genre that is overtly saturated with headshots, it was nice to play a game where the head isn’t as important as blowing off arms and legs. This is especially cool in the Zero Gravity sections of the game where taking out a limb causes it to slowly float away in some random direction, globules of blood going with it. The choice of camera in the game is an interesting one, mostly because of how well it worked in “Dead Space” and how horribly it did NOT work in the recent “Alone in the Dark” title. In AITD I pretty much always kept the game in First Person unless I had no choice, but in “Dead Space” I loved the camera throughout the game and never found it intrusive that my character consistently took up 30% of the screen real estate. I am a sucker for cinematic effect brought to gameplay, meaning I love it when my games look like movies. I will walk when appropriate, rotate the camera slowly with the right stick during intense moments (even boss battles), all in an attempt just to make my experience look and feel more cinematic. So I appreciate it when games like “Dead Space” do what they do to make the entire game feel like a movie. There were points where these decisions really hurt the game, however. Things like not showing your total ammo remaining are just a nuisance, and there were multiple times that I pulled out the map to find 90% of it blank with my cursor off in the corner somewhere. When I would try and rotate the camera to get a better view of the map it would disappear entirely or bounce around erratically as the camera fought for a resting place. Sometimes I just wanted a traditional interface for the game, but these were few and far between. As for the story, I will say that it was very cool that it ended up being a big Scientology bash, as they have to be some of the biggest idiots on the planet right now, but all-in-all I would say it was weak in content and delivery. My biggest problem with it was the complete lack of expression from the main character through the entire game. Only at the very end, when presented with tremendous tragedy, did he break down and put his head in his hands for 5 seconds, then he unrealistically regains his composure and moves on. Also, I don’t know how many of you fully understood or liked the twist towards the end, but I found it unrealistic and lame and reminiscent of the lazy story-telling found in Ghost Recon 2. Many modern movies are guilty of these kinds of stupid twists as well every since that kid whispered “I see dead people”. It doesn’t matter so much to me that the story wasn’t mind-blowing, though, because all the action in the game is. It is all wrapped in such beautiful graphics and sound (OMFG the surround is incredible) as well that you give it a lot of slack for not having a super captivating story.

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