Game Review : Dead Space Part I

Its been awhile since I played any horror survivor, namely cause most of the games in this genre usually dwelve in the super natural. The only ones i usually touch are games in the resident evil series and parasite eve series (too bad there were only 2 squels to this series)

Then there are the space survivor horrors like 'Run like Hell' and 'Doom 3' which I only touched a bit. Now comes this new game called 'Dead Space' and it pique my interest. I read some reviews that stated that this game has the 'feel' of aliens and event horizon and that was enough for me to fork out the 65 bucks for it.

I got home around the night and thought that it was a good idea to run the game. Boy was I wrong. Before I started on the game, I looked into the extras to see what bonuses are there inside. They had a concept art section that instead of just giving you a myriad of pictures, they were played in a slide show manner, even with some music to accompany the screenshots, which in my book was very cool.

Just the concept art itself made me reluctant on starting the actual game. Not that it was bad, but it was good, so good that it made me frightened to start it. But alas, I bought a game and I am damn well going to play it.

The game started with not much intro or game movie as many other games have, instead you start out in the bridge of a small repair ship. The starting feels like a movie sequence but you can pan and rotate the camera as the start credits begin to appear. You play Issac, an engineer sent to a mining ship that has not been in contact for the last 7 days. Also your character watches a vidlog sent from his girlfriend whom is aborad this ship, the Ishimura.

Thinking that this is just a routine repair run and that most likely that the ship's antenna has been knocked out and the crew on board might have trouble repairing it, things take a turn for the worse when your repair ship is forced to crash land into the hanger of the Ishimura. In the 1st 5 minutes of the game, it instructs you to follow the rest of the crew onboard the rescue ship into the flight lounge.

You are then instructed to go to a security post in a hallway seperated by a glass wall. As you are determining the status of the Ishimura, all hell breaks loose. You witness a mutated human/spider thing skewer one of the guys and then you are told to run. Without weapons on hand, you better run. Soon another one of those things breaks into the passageway you are in and starts to chase you. As the door that led you to the passageway is locked, you only run deeper into the ship.

I won't spoil it anymore for you people out there, but this 1st 5 minutes of the game will definitely get your heart pumping. This game's visuals are really dark and creepy, most of the ship is dimly lit, and at times the light will even go out. Saving grace is that the 1st weapon you pick up, the plasma cutter has a light attached to it. So when you aim the weapon a spot infront of the gun will be lit. That does not do much when the ship's lights go out from time to time and all you see is the bright spot.

Another component of the game that enhances its fear factor is the sound effects. From details like footsteps to stuff shuffling about when you walk into them, even some random metal pipe sound falling and hitting something when you walk on some catwalk will make you jump in your seat. The other thing about the audio is that it is loud and scary, even when you go into a vaccum, you can hear Issac breathing and it starts to get laboured when he runs out of air.

I am currently only in chapter 3 of the game and so far it has all been good reviews from my end. Its not as epic as GTA IV is and it does not have the story telling of MGS 4, but it sure score high on its own merits, which is the scare department. Lastly before anyone gets the game due to this review, I must warn you that the game is very gory as the most efficient way of killing these monsters are to cut off their limbs. This will result in a very bloody kill, if you get what I mean.

I think I will give this game 4.5 of 5 consoles falling short on the story as it seems very similar to 'Run like Hell', aside from that I think anyone whom loves a good horror survivor should get this. By the way, its out for PS3, Xbox360 and the PC, but I heard the controls on the PC version is horrid.