As for gameplay, Redwood Shores took those elements mentioned earlier, threw them in a blender, and added some spice of their own. First, you have the ability to use stasis to slow your enemies, making them easier to pick off (or run away from). This is also used in the more puzzle-oriented sections of the game, though they are not puzzles in the traditional sense; you won’t be stumped by them unless this is your first walk in the gamer park so much as you’ll struggle to complete them while enemy creatures do their best to make you into dinner.
Second, there are the zero gravity portions of the game, and yes, you will fight creatures who soar across the room to get to you in these conditions. These battles are satisfying, especially as the corpses of the fallen float away from you, and as the game ramps up in difficulty, become even more enjoyable as a way to change the pace of the combat.
Third, and here’s the big one: these enemies do not go down by traditional means. Instead, you are advised to attack with “strategic dismemberment” in mind, which is to say, “shoot their limbs off”. Arms, legs, and in some cases, tails or tentacles will be your targets. If you see a creature running across a room, and the first thing you do is blow off his head, all you did was waste a bullet and a second you may want back as other enemies close in for the kill. Body shots are just as ineffective if you’re trying to conserve ammunition, though they at least slow your foes or throw them off balance momentarily.
You cannot think of your shots like bullets, as they do not damage enemies in one small spot. Instead, most of your guns attack an area or in a line, and you need to attack with the idea that you are severing limbs rather than riddling your enemy with bullets. To add to this, all but one of your weapons is anything but, as they are mining tools that you have put to use with the goal of surviving the horror before you.
The result of all of this is a game that slants more towards action than it does traditional survival horror, though that changes as the game goes on. At first, you will have a good idea of when it’s time for a monster to come from behind you or above you, and you will be struggling trying to learn about your new weapons and the creature’s abilities more than you will be with your nerves.
Later on, by the time you have a good idea of how to get rid of the baddies, they stop showing up in as many predictable spots. You begin to notice your environment much more, but not in a helpful way; your shadow dances on the wall in barely lit areas, and more than once I caught myself pulling a plasma cutter on myself, or walking slowly around a corner to attack whatever caused the shadow of what looked like limbs to appear on the floor, only to find out that there was nothing but boxes or a slow moving fan there.
This is when the game begins to get to you as a survival horror title, especially since the store, a beacon of ammo and health-filled hope earlier in the title, is now in existence mostly to taunt you for your lack of funds and the help you cannot afford to acquire-just in time for Dead Space to throw even more enemies at you, and tougher ones to boot. It is here that this game survives in its interpretation of what a survival horror game is, and it was a great experience even prior to this change in pace.
Speaking of the store, it is here and on the work benches where this action/horror hybrid adds somewhat of a customizable RPG twist. You can buy whichever guns you want, as long as you have the credit to do so. As an engineer, Isaac collects “Power Nodes” spread throughout the Ishimura, and puts them to use rewiring and revamping his mining equipment and rig, improving specific areas such as hit points, air supply, the number of rounds a weapon can carry, the damage it can cause, and how fast you can reload it. Too much customization in some games is a bad thing, as you turn your characters into generic copycats, but with Dead Space, you can customize in order to work on areas you are weak on. Do you have trouble keeping track of how many rounds are left in your weapon of choice during a heavy firefight? Add to your reload time, or increase the capacity of that weapon, or just increase your damage so you can take fewer shots.
If you think you can handle the game without using every node for its real purpose, you can use them to unlock some rooms scattered throughout the ship that are full of health and ammunition. There are times where you are going to want to improve the reload time on a slow weapon, but at the same time, you will not have any rounds left for it, meaning that the secret room is going to be mighty tempting. There are a limited number of nodes, and nowhere near enough to upgrade everything fully, meaning each one is a precious resources to be implemented in the way that will best help you succeed. It’s an excellent mechanic, and one that helps to add to the feelings of anxiety you experience during a horror game.
If you are looking for a challenge, complete the game and you will unlock “Impossible Mode”. My lone complaint with this title, and it isn’t a huge deal, in the grand scheme of things (it is a survival horror, after all) is that you can only begin a New Game Plus experience while retaining your inventory if you begin on the same difficulty level. This is either annoying if you want to upgrade your equipment fully on the second play through, or a blessing for those who want “Impossible Mode” to be just that. Adding this extra mode-and making you work to complete it-gives this game plenty of replay and long-term value.
Overall, Dead Space is one of the top titles I have had the pleasure of experiencing during 2008, and that’s saying something given the quality of heavy hitters we have seen released to this point.
I have given it a score of five stars not because it’s a flawless title but because it took a well-established genre, utilized elements of it that we know and love, and added its own distinctive marks to it, marks that could and should be used in future games from the survival horror genre. Pushing the boundaries with incredibly gory visuals, well-paced battles, an RPG-esque upgrade and customization mechanic, and an atmosphere that more than meets the required fear factor of a survival horror means that this game is worthy of this lofty praise.
It’s a game of the year caliber title, and though it may not actually pick up one of those awards, the fact that it should be considered is more than enough reason to snag it. As this new intellectual property is the first in what EA hopes to be a successful franchise, you will want to get started right now on the first chapters of Isaac Clarke’s gory story-even if you need to play with a light on or with a friend in the room.
By the way: because of an editing error, some raw HTML code made it onto the page, and the Electronic Arts embedded video caused the page to crash in Internet Explorer. We fixed it. Sorry.
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