Grab yer Plasma cutter and your bucket helmet, its time to go zombie huntin'!

User Rating: 9.5 | Dead Space X360
Dead Space: part The Thing, part Event Horizon, part Resident Evil 4, with a touch of Titanic thrown in for flavour, this game takes survival horror to the dark void of space, placing you, engineer Isaac Clarke, on the Ishimura as you fight the recombinated corpses of its former crew.

What makes this game immersive, and indeed impressive, is its emergent storyline. Sure, you know the **** hit the fan when the Necromorphs showed up, that's obvious from all the Necromorphs. But its in the environment, from the behaviour of the survivors driven to insanity by all the chaos, to the blood splattered halls of the med lab, to the audio logs left for Isaac to listen to, they all come together and orchestrate just exactly HOW the Ishimura fell. It makes for an impressive story, which is a must for any game that bears the "Survival Horror" stamp.

Game play also shines in Dead Space. A standard HUD has been swapped for an innovative RIG system, where all of Isaac's health, stasis and ammunition are displayed on Isaac himself (although it does beg the question how Isaac can check his health meter when its on his back). The controls handle just like Res Evil 4's "aim, then shoot", which goes to show how the best formulas don't need to be messed with for original game play. In short, if it aint broke, don't fix it. If there's one flaw, its in Isaac himself. As a silent obedient guy in the middle of a nightmare of a situation, he subtracts from the immersion. From a design point of view, this was probably intentional, in order for the player to project their own personality into Isaac. Admirable, but surely someone who just destroyed a tentacled reanimated corpse using nothing but a plasma cutter and their steel boots would have something to say about it? And he's supposed to be looking for his girlfriend throughout this game, and when he finally finds her... zip, the guy says nothing.

So to wrap this up, Dead Space has a great intriguing story, great game play, but a robot for a protagonist.