EA Redwood Shores definitely had their work cut out for them.  The survival horror genre has its heavy hitters already set and you had to wonder if Dead Space, being a new original IP, even had a chance.  The game was announced in 2007 and had a pretty positive showing at E3.  There were still questions about control issues and how well the story would progress.  You can set those worries aside because Dead Space delivers and then some.

The story begins with your character Isaac Clarke, an engineer who is called upon to repair a damaged ship called the USG Ishimura, a “planet cracking” vessel used to mine valuable minerals from planets.  Of course, it seems like an everyday repair mission, but things take a turn for the worse.  Your vessel crashes into the Ishimura leaving your crew stranded with no way home and no explanation for the events that have taken place on the Ishimura.  Soon you are thrust into life and death situations with the alien species known as Necromorphs that have taken over.  That is just the beginning of your story as you try to figure out why this has all happened and just how to survive.

The first thing anyone playing Dead Space will notice is the lack of a standard HUD.  This is a design decision that turned out perfectly.  There is absolutely nothing on the screen but your character and the environment that surrounds you.  No health meters, no ammo counter, nothing.  If you would like to check your health status, it is always conveniently located on the spine of your suit.  If you would like to check your ammo, that is on a display on your currently equipped weapon.  When you get lost and need a waypoint, simply click down on the right thumbstick and a blue line illuminates your path.  Instead of menus popping up and pausing the game, Isaac has a holograph system built into his suit to display all kinds of information so the gameplay is never interrupted.  All of these small design decisions go a long way in keeping the player immersed in the game and in a survival horror game, that is a must.

When it comes to gameplay, Dead Space definitely has a Bioshock-esque feel to it.  There are stores and equipment benches all over the ship where you can purchase and upgrade your suit, weapons, abilities and whatever else you please.  Isaac’s suit is equipped with kinesis which let’s you throw whatever objects you want at your enemy.  The suit is also equipped with a stasis ability that basically slows the object you used it on to a grinding halt for a short period of time.  Both of these abilities go a long way in assisting you in dismembering your enemies.  The game allows you to go about killing in a myriad of different ways.  Dead Space requires you to use as little ammo as possible.  The Necromorphs eat entire clips of bullets if you just shoot right at them, but if you shoot for the arms, legs or head you are able to conserve a great deal of ammo.  The developers got this spot on.  When you shoot a Necromorph in the legs they are still not dead.  They will crawl and scratch at you until you finish them off.  The biggest problem here is the poor implementation of the melee system.  When you melee, Isaac goes into these large swinging animations that do very little damage.  The same can be said for the curb stomping ability.  I just wish the motions were more fluid because the sound of curb stomping is just hair raising.  The other gameplay gripe I have is the amount of backtracking in the game.  I know it is there to progress the story and make the game clock in at a longer playtime, but a couple points during the game I just felt like someone’s errand boy.

The graphics and sound in Dead Space are fantastic.  Every limb flying, every head exploding just looks and sounds amazing.  It is such a satisfying experience.  Of course most of the game takes place inside of a space craft so you can imagine all of the colors and textures are fairly dank, but dank has never looked so good.  The best part about great graphics in a game like this is it goes a long way in creating memorable moments.  You won’t be able to get the first-rate boss battles out of your head when seen in all of their full high definition glory.

It’s somewhat difficult to write this review without ruining the story and the little nuances in the gameplay, but it is necessary to keep that a secret for the overall experience of the game.  Dead Space doesn’t hold your hand, it throws you in and waits for you to come back out.  I literally jumped out of my chair dozens of times and enjoyed every second of it.  Even with the sometimes clunky close combat situations and backtracking, the game delivers.  There is no need to even speak about multiplayer as there was no point in including any with the plethora of content in the finely polished package they gave us.  The storytelling, gameplay, atmosphere and everything else that went into the game shows us there is a lot of room left for new IP’s in this genre and in the gaming industry.

Overall: 8.75 out of 10

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