While Space truly has never been this Dead, the Survivel Horror Genre has never been this alive.
+ Impressive visuals at time
+ Strategic dismemberment
+ A lot of varity in Necromorphs
+ The atmosphere fits the game perfectly
+ Very smooth animations
+ Plasma cutter is an excellent weapon
+ The game is longer then excpected
+ Replay value is high
Cons:
- Not alot of weapons
- The secondary fire mode of weapons are not always any interesting
For the record, this review is based only on the single-player experience.
Since the game has no multi-player.
Story:
"When an immense mining ship, the USG Ishimura, comes into contact with a mysterious alien artifact in a remote star system, its communications with Earth are mysteriously cut off. Engineer Isaac Clarke is sent to repair the Ishimura's communications array, but he arrives to find a living nightmare. The ship is a floating bloodbath, the crew unspeakably mutilated and infected by an ancient alien scourge. Clarke's repair mission becomes one of survival as he fights not just to save himself, but to return the artifact to the planet at any cost."
This is the official story desciption of the game and it fits the game very well, i will continue on it myself.
Isaac is companioned by a few guards as well as a military commander and a technician, quickly the guards will be killed in a very predictible way while the two other manages to escape. Now, cut of from the others, Isaac must reapair the ship to be able to survive on it by only following the instructions from your fellow team members while at the same the trying to figure out th true reasons of what has happened. During the course of the gamer Isaac will have too spend must of his time repairng things like the outer shields, the astroid defense cannon, fix leaks, remove toxic waste, reset gravity levels, refuel the ship, clean the air and a lot else. You will eventually find out that it is not only the Necromorphs who is working against you but also a group of religios fanatics whos beliefs lies in that a superior race will be replacing humans and they see the marker as a sign.
You will also experience the in my opinion best plot twist ever, during tyhe course of the game both of your team members will try to make eachother seem guilty or to have hidden information, you will never know whio you can truat but will have to just do as they say to survive. Eventually this will lead to a very predictible plot twist followed in the later levels with an stunningly well-done plot twist you probably could never imagine.
All in all, the story in Dead space will seem generic at first but turns in due time into one of the gaming histories best story.
Graphics:
The visuals in Dead Space is good enough to help the game create the atmosphere that the game wants to create.
The lightning and shader are superb while the shadows and textures are lesser good. A lot of lightning effects is what mainly create the visual impressivement of the game, while the shader helps cover up its low resolution textures and poorly done shadows.
Something that the game manages to do very well is the animations. Both the facial animations of the characters and the movements of the Necromorphs are stunningly well done. When you dismember the different limbs of the Necromorphs they will all react and move dynamicly depending on the current physical status. All the animations are very smooth and really brings the characters and enemies to life.
While the overall graphics of the game are good the textures however are not always that great. If you do not need to look at something you should not look at it either since it is probably lacking heavily in detail. On the other hand the textures on characters and enemies are full of detail even if only at a medium resolution. So while the game can look a bit blurry at times, there will most of the time not be anything to complain at.
Overall, the game has graphics good enough to really show the environment in the Ichimura the way it was meant to look. While the good things about the visuals are weighted down by some minor amount of bad things, it is still not enough to make you want to actually complain on anything.
I didn't experience a single glitch or texture loading throughout the entirety of Dead Space, so it's obvious that this is an extremely polished title.
Gameplay:
The creatures you battle are the reanimated, mutated, and deadly corpses of the former crew of the Ishimura, called Necromorphs. With your trusty plasma-cutter in hand, your goal is to unlearn the classic zombie-killing headshot. The Achilles of these creatures is truly the heel, or the leg, or the arm, or the tentacle jutting from it's stomach. Dismemberment is the name of the game. Your view of the carnage is fixed over the right shoulder of Isaac, much akin to the shooting mechanic founded in Resident Evil 4.
The use of laser-sighting allows for responsive, pin point accurate amputations. The plasma cutter is a very efficient weapon, but should you desire variety there are other weapons purchasable in one of the game's many "stores." Yes, you collect credits and valuable items that can be used to buy weapons like a futuristic power-saw, flamethrower, or concussion rifle. Perhaps detracting from the difficulty of the game (should you so chose) is the option to purchase all kinds of ammo, medical packs, and even the precious "power nodes." Power Nodes are used on work benches to upgrade weapons, armor, and other useful equipment via customizable grids. The store also has a helpful, bottomless safe in which to dump all your surplus items. It takes a while for this to really kick in, but after a few hours of gameplay, you will be having a blast making the right tactical choices of which you need to upgrade.
Because you are in the cold reaches of space, naturally you will experience air vacuums, zero gravity, and generally inhospitable environments. The zero-gravity segments of the game allow for variety in the way you deal with any given situation. Having trouble getting around obstacles on the floor? Why not take advantage of Isaac's "gravity boots" and jump to the ceiling to find a better route? Though the gravity boots are useful for staying planted to the ground, it would have been interesting and innovative to experience free-floating zero-gravity while attempting to dispatch foes. The possible mechanic of your weapon's recoil pushing you through weightlessness would have been a welcome and innovative mechanic. The air vacuum segments offer pressured, time sensitive segments in which hastiness is a necessity for survival, though sometimes it can be challenging to see Isaacs remaining oxygen levels displayed on the back of his space suit. This is due to the games insistence of maintaining a HUD-less display.
The immersion into the Dead Space world is achieved in part by the stripped down look of what is displayed on screen. Character health is displayed on the spine of the space suit, ammo appears on the gun itself, and even accessing the map and inventory is all done in real-time. That's right, there is no pausing to reassess the situation while you guzzle down a few health packs, you'll need to find shelter and navigate your inventory while an irate Necromorph stalks after you. Fortunately, the game does not attempt to modernize its save feature. The game demands that the player hunts down "save stations," similarly to finding a typewriter in Resident Evil 4. The game lacks any sort of cutscene, taking a page from Bioshock as it tells its story through engrossing radio and video transmissions. As a matter of fact, even though Dead Space and Bioshock is seperated by an endless space and miles of water, the atmosphere is still as immersive and terrifying.
Puzzles are plentiful in Dead Space, just like in any good survival-horror title, and while they are mostly straightforward affairs, there are some toughies here, and a lot of them have some one-hit kills involved that will send you back to a previous save-game in an instant.
While the environments do get a little on the boring side after a while, there is plenty of sweet effects, such as stomping the legs off of dead body, that give the game a gruesome charm unfounded in other titles.
Combat is enhanced by two abilities, the first of which is Isaac's "stasis" ability. This shoots a concentrated ball of energy that puts anything inside its range into slow-motion. This allows the player to temporarily slow down the enemies for easier shots. This ability becomes more essential as the game progresses, with Isaac facing enemies of greater difficulty and/or in greater numbers. The second ability is Isaac's telekinesis, which allows him to pick up objects and move them around or even send them flying, a la Half-life 2's gravity gun or the telekinetic power in Bioshock. Nearly any object can be tossed at enemies, from exploding barrels to their own body parts.
Sound:
Sound is an important part of any atmospheric game, especially one with a horror theme like Dead Space. The dialoque isn't award worthy, but it gets the job done. Music cuts in when you are being attacked and works well to add tension to those moments. The real star of the sound deparment is the ambient sounds of the ship such as the rumble of the engines, the sounds of scraping coming from ventilation systems, the ship computer still talking in the background, and the sound of voices whispering in the shadows of the ship all lend to creating an aura of fear and tells you that all is not well on this ship. The sound in Dead Space is nothing less than perfect, from the sounds of your enemies, to your weapons, to the voice acting, to the muffled sounds in zero-gravity, it keeps itself at top-notch all the time.
Replay value:
The game runs between 10 and 15 hours. Some may see this as a negative, others like myself prefer this length. All games shouldn't be 60 hours long. If this game was 60 hours+ it would probably be an awful experience. The game has a great pace and ends just when it feels like it should.
I have played through Dead Space 4 times and still want to get back to playing it, so i would say there is a lot of replay value. And since you probably will only be able to afford 3 or 4 at most weapon on your first playthrough you can replay it to try the other weapons, and since the game features a new game+ option you can continue to to upgrade the equipment you have on your aecond playthrough, but it took me 4 playthroughs to fully upgrade everything. You can also try to find all audio logs.