What's that sound? The sound of the game drawing you in.
STORY:
Very well written. The plot is original enough to where it isn't a "been there done that" sort of deal, and let me tell you it isn't. You start the game of the ship the Hellion as an engineer Issac Clark and you are being sent to repair the USG Ishimura. As a sort of subplot, you are also there to find your girlfriend who is a medical officer there on board. You get there and realize that this will be no mere repair and go home mission and you are immediately sent on a desperate fight for your life. So overall, you won't feel as though you've heard this sort of thing before.
GAMEPLAY:
Very original. To clarify, in most games, the goal to killing enemies is generally as follows: get gun, point at enemy, fire half-clip, they dead. In Dead Space, the idea is that while firing ammo into your enemies will indeed kill them, it takes too much ammo and time to do so. As a result, the way to kill your enemy is to dismember them. This is an original point in game play that actually drew me in because rather than just being very gratuitous it actually serves as a major point in gameplay.
WEAPONS:
Overall, I haven't actually spent a lot of time messing around with the weapons in this game. For the most part, I got by using nothing more than the basic plasma cutter. I've heard that all the weapons are awesome once upgraded, however, this takes a while, so again, I haven't gotten around to messing with this much.
SOUND AND GRAPHICS:
Simply amazing. The sound is truly well done as it completes the atmosphere that is required to give this game its full effect and appeal. The voice overs are well done and the monsters are also well voiced. The graphics also carry a vital role in bringing this across and they do so magnificently. Overall, great presentation.
OVERALL:
The game presents itself very well and it plays very smoothly. Some critics may complain that Isaac feels slow and his movements aren't what you might expect them to be. Honestly, the guy is no more than an engineer and thusly is no master chief like you may seem to expect and will not go bolting around at Mach 3. I feel that the combination of creepy atmosphere, a fairly conservative (ie not enemy spamming but not like 5-6 a level) supply of enemies, and the ability to completely deck out your Isaac to be the best engineer possible easily qualifies it as one of my overall games of the year, although we still have Fallout 3, GoW2, and a few others still to go before we call this one.