Good job Visceral Games. To quote Mr. Schneider's "You can see the difference quality makes."
Right from the start of the game the quality you can see the quality of the game, very impressive. At the very beginning as soon as you started the game you get chased by two monsters. Thanx for nothing Visceral... I had nightmares for a few days thanx to that scene. At the start of Chapter 03 right at the beginning of the chapter an arm of some sort came out of one the glass walls and scared the bejesus out of me. I turn tale and ran the other way. I ran like a little girl…Very well played... So far I gotten as far as Chapter 06 and I have not died once. Not killing the player in senseless ways is a bonus in my book.
If I had to choose my favorite Chapter it would be Chapter 03. As soon as I got off the Trans System I knew that this would be my favorite Chapter. The whole level is so well planned that it was scary fun. I even got to meet the huge monster that chased me around the turbo lift for a while. And even then the brains at Visceral planned it so well. Sure I ran and hid near the save point but so did the monster. It hid behind the turbo lift waiting for me to come out. The anticipation was killing me, that and playing in total darkness. Another favorite of mine is when I got to meet the resurrecting mother@#$er that you could not kill. HonlyCrap that was cool and even when you got out it felt as if it was chasing me. Props props and more props. You can see that the people at Visceral spent allot time in the level to make sure that all elements play out the way the were meant to.
The Bridge section disappointed me a little bit. I thought it would be much larger in size and abit more impressive. I thought this because it is such a small Bridge for such a large vessel. I also think that more things should have happened on the Bridge or at least have full access to ship specs, crew logs and so on. People like me want to see this stuff, experience the life on the ship.
The weapons in the game are also very well designed. My favorite is the Plasma Cutter. I made it a priority early on in the game to upgrade this weapon to the max. I think that by the end of Chapter 02 I had the Plasma Cutter all maxed out.
The Main Menu could have been a little better. I did not like the background nor the way the credits rolled out. What would have been more effective is having the main character standing in a corner of a hallway animated so when there is a sound he will look in that direction and get ready to fire.
The story is very well developed but I still did not understand how these people lived and worked. I understood how they finally turned into monsters. I saw no traces of living quarters, beds or any other creature comforts. There were allot of storage rooms, bathrooms and other rooms but almost no military style quarters. Maybe no one slept on the ship.
My only complaint was the turret scenes. The game formula worked fine up until that point. I don't understand why they had to stick a mini game in such a polished title...I hope they don't include mini-games in Dead Space 2. That right, it ruined it for me because you are going from a slow paced gameplay to something intense which requires a whole new skill set. To keep with the flow of the game they should have made the player protect a row of cannons and carry ammo to those cannons at the same time the player would have to deal with incoming enemies.
Overall it was a fantastic game. They could have done it without the sick blood spilled horror but then again it would have been called just Space...not Dead Space.