Dead Space

[Antipathy]

You play Dead Space as the repair engineer Isaac Clarke, who has to find a way off the humongous mining ship USG Ishimura after a routine repair mission goes horribly wrong.

Bought this game a week ago, after deciding I should try a horror game for a change. I was most happily surprised... with bricks in my pants.

Dead Space is by far one of the best games I have played in a long time. Everything is extremely well made, from the environment art to combat and overall gameplay. Audio deserves an honor mention, it's just so well made. From the insanely loud roar of Ishimura's engines, to the broken door's banging that muffles after another door closes. Graphics were also well made, especially the light effects. My half-year old HD3850 512 card could run the game on the highest settings very smoothly. Most of the time the game looked as good as Crysis, if not even better.

The game is viewed from a very original camera angle, with the camera put very near Isaac's shoulder. This feels awkward at first, but you quickly get used to it. There is no traditional HUD, instead Isaac's health and ammo status are holograms projected from his suit and weapons. During combat, you don't just shoot enemies, you cut off their limbs. They'll quickly adjust to a lost leg, so you have cut off more limbs. While more enemies are running at you. Very fast. Of which one of them doesn't die. And you are running out of ammo and health.

The atmosphere of the game is completely terrifying. I must say that even when I wasn't very scared to play the game in the end anymore (probably due to playing this game nonstop for a week), most of the game is played with cold sweat pouring down your forehead. The surroundings are very well made, like the rest of the game, which only adds to the atmosphere. The blood stains on the floor tell the cruel fate of the ship's crew. The audio, video and text logs aboard the ship tell the disturbing background story. I mention atmosphere once more. Characters are interesting individuals with different goals and motives. Voice acting is also good. Story isn't anything life changing, but still serves its purpose well, with some plot twists. Plot twists like, oh, did your flawless escape plan fail yet again? No matter! You only need to repair this and fetch that, and maybe this time it'll work! Yes, Isaac is treated like an errand boy, fixing stuff for Hammond and Kendra (who conveniently sip coffee behind their barricades while Isaac gets his hands dirty. Much like real life construction business). No matter though, the gameplay itself is still such a joy, and after the middle part of the game the plot actually starts to advance.

There is not much of a replay value, although after completing the game you get a new suit and bonus stuff. The game still took a good 15 hours of pure gameplay for me to complete, and I will probably pick up this game again after some time.



Applaud:
 - near-obsessive production quality
 - immersing and terrifying
 - excellent combat
 - interesting level design
 - often innovative gameplay design
 - overall a very good game

Smite:
 - mission objectives in the middle part of the game tend to repeat themselves
 - the scorpion dudes that climb on the walls, especially the ones on crack. Damn hard to get their arms, since they don't have any legs.

Overall: I highly recommend this awesome game to anyone who likes to play games with atmosphere and aren't too afraid of video games 



Also, a sequel is reportedly underway. I can't wait!

[Brock]

I've heard this game is good...  It's supposedly "what Doom 3 should have been"

[LtKillroy]

Yahtzee!

I win this time

[Slashnoob]

a better horror game than doom 3 that's for sure. played it for some time.. but it just didn't have the magic to keep me want to play alot more.

[Dairy]

I played this game and I was in 6th episode...today when I came home from university I found out that the game is unistaled and I can't play it anymore. Save games gone as well so I don't want to play it from start.

It was really cool game. Kind of Japanesse horror type. Many scary moments. Blood everywhere. (for my taste it was really too much blood on the enviroment around but still it was kind of cool) Scary noises and weird sounds.

The plasma pistol was the best for me. And the pulse rifle was good as well but not so good as pistol.

The angle was crappy from the start but yes I got used to it and it was really original and the HUD added on Issac's body is also very compact and original. No additional bars, everything directly on his back.

The battle system is also well made and I loved the two modes for every weapon. To be honest I used mostly time only the automatic rifle and Plasma pistol, but it was enough for me and usually weapons is one of the main thing for me in game. Many weapons lover.

Yes the two members which survive doesn't do anything at all and just gives you more and more objectives which everytime ain't even working. (Example - part with the biiiig thing - Leviathat - in the food storage. You had to run to labs to get the virus , then you had to go for the alien DNA sample and then went back somewhere to mix it and I think it was back to the labs. Then to the plant-research center or whatever it was... [tomatoes!:D] and give the mixture of poison and DNA to the air system of food storage. ...then you had to wait few seconds for report from that woman "That the virus wasn't strong enough to destroy the leviathan so you have to go to the storage and kill it manually." this part was the most disaponting for me, I mean what the heck ? What was all the things good for when it's still alive...?! )

Anyway, this game was a masterpiece and for me personally very inovative in many aspects which is nice because nowadays or lately the games are too similar to me.

[STM1993]

My friend had this on his xbox 360. The game was cool, pretty scary and innovative, but he found one thing that is annoying - it's difficult to read the mission objectives etc since they are both too small and are often angled a little.

Other than that, it's really good. Highly recommended.

[tehsnipah]

It's a game that definitely surpasses RE4! Scared the shit outta me when my friend played. Those monsters sure are tenacious....

[Psycho]

I thought it was one of the greater, if not the greatest single player experience I had this year. Love the game. It didn't make me really scared, but it sure was an intense thrill ride.

Damn I hated that regenerating bugger

[Antipathy]

Damn I hated that regenerating bugger

You tell me about it. The first encounter was pretty annoying, not only because the monster regenerated really fast, but there were also tons of other enemies coming at you, and the room didn't have much space.

To be honest I used mostly time only the automatic rifle and Plasma pistol, but it was enough for me and usually weapons is one of the main thing for me in game. Many weapons lover.

Yeah, same here. I think Plasma Cutter/Pulse Rifle combo was a bit too powerful, I beat the last boss with just the Cutter.

[vulbastick]

I really wanted to get it + was going to but apparently it ports horribly to the pc making the controls really hard to use with slow response movement + such

was Doom 3 supposed to be a horror game? Thats not what the frist 2 games were about at all, just a good ol fashioned demon massacre

[tehsnipah]

The ways that the protagonist dies are the best part of the game for me personally, it's so freakin gory!

[-Skykanden-]

I really loved it.
I already finnished the game, and it has so tense moments. The mutilation is great and there is so much gore

[Antipathy]

I really wanted to get it + was going to but apparently it ports horribly to the pc making the controls really hard to use with slow response movement + such

I think the controls were quite decent, but yeah some people have complained about them. Of course I've played alot of games with laggy controls recently, but try disabling Vsync if you run into any problems, helps for me.

[Dairy]

Yeah I have to agree with the "Death of the main character". Mostly the deads were kind of "Oh my gosh Isaac got riped into 2 pieces" douche but I really liked the part when you're running back from somewhere (it was on the start when you 1st time see the freaking broken door which might cut you into two pieces and after you're running back oooor wait. Nope it was the one when you're running back from the room with zero gravity [the 1st you ever met in the game or you will] and the freaking long zombie cock sucking worm grabs you by the leg and taking you into his hole ...I mean the hole in the wall and during this sequence 1st time I thought Isaac the killing engineer will handle it by himself but after the worm totaly riped me on shreds I had to handle it by myself ... buggy lazy Isaac.

Oh, some things were bugging me. For exaple the way to the "planetary defence system a.ka Big 'ol ass gun". It was so hilarious when I ran just like a dumb donkey and the so called meteroids killed me one hundred times. Kind of sad that I didn't realise I have to hide behind the ...well whatever it was.

And the second which I still remember was the screaming of the small mutated children with 3 tentacles from it's back. From the start it was kind of scary but with time It started to be a pain in ears and later on even in the ass.

[AntiHero]

I would agree this game is great This Game has the game style of "Doom And Resident Evil" But way better

[croat1gamer]

i have this game, its great, but my computer is screwing me with the sound, so i need to turn it off for nice playing
scream is going so:

a
aa
aaa
aaaah
aahh
aahhh
ahhh
hh
h
h


dam, it screws the game
but i have an cure:
open foobar (or some music player) and put judas priest, lets say, decapitate (how connected it is ) and kill em hard

i like the game

*dam*
i stopped at act 3, forgot on that
i blame half life 2 for that

[Antipathy]

i stopped at act 3, forgot on that
i blame half life 2 for that

Short attention span, huh?  Can't blame you for that. For me, Dead Space was the first game I've completed since... uh, I can't even remember. For example Far Cry 2, Fallout 3 and Opposing Fronts are all now gathering dust at the shelf, simply because after some time I lost interest in them.