Dead Space [B-]

Dead Space was released in October 2008 for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Windows. Developed by EA Redwood Shores, it’s a third person survival horror game set in space.

Dead Space

The Overview

In the dark and distant future a corporation, Concordance Extraction Corporation, sends a giant mining ship to some planet in some system somewhere to mine stuff. During the mining operation the colonists discover some huge evil looking artifact and as always happens in cases like this they dig it up. Once again as always in cases like this bad stuff happens (the dead come back to life as horrible murderous creatures), first on the colony and then upon the ship where the evil thing has been transferred. The ship’s crew has been stuffed full of an unpopular popular religious group, Unitologists, who as it turns out have their own machinations for the artifact and are unable to believe it could be causing the bad stuff.

The game starts with our hero and others arriving at the giant planet cracking ship to see what has happened to everyone. Our dear hero is especially concerned since his girlfriend was on the ship and sent him some horrible “we are all going to die” message. So they board the ship and then stuff happens.

The Good

The UI for health, ammo, energy etc is slick. The health and energy are displayed on the players back, the ammo comes up as a 3D display over the gun being used and videos are projected off the player like a holographic display. Doesn’t distract the player from the gaming experience helps it feel more like it’s you in the game.

The weapons are fairly interesting and all have an alternative fire mode so it’s like having twice as many guns.

You collect items as you progress that allow you to upgrade you weapons and armor. 

The levels have a coherent feel to them. It doesn’t seem like each level was done by a different person/group in a void.

Several times during the game you enter areas where gravity has failed or is turned off and you play in zero g.

The first couple of times the monsters attack it can be rather freaky and make you jump in your seat.

Big boss fights.

There is a couple of amusing mini games. 

It’s very pretty, in a evil alien monsters want to eat you kind of a way.

When you beat the game it awards you with bonus items (cash, upgrade items and a new suit of armor)  and the ability to play through again with your charecter retaining any upgrades.

The Bad

The story seems like one we have heard 100 times before. Even the twists and turns when they come aren’t all that exciting. It helps to watch the animated feature that was released at the same time but really all that did was make me wish I could have watched a movie of the game instead.

You unlock all of the weapons quickly. I think you have them all before 1/3 of the game is complete. I kept waiting to find some cool new weapon but nothing else came along. I have always thought you should save a BFG for the end of the game or at least space them out more.

While the levels are coherent it does get rather boring after a while. Oh look another dark grey hallway leading to a slightly larger dark grey room. There is more variety towards the end, but I don’t think I ever had that oh ah feeling when I walked into a room.

The combat gets boring fairly quickly and while there is probably a dozen monters to fight it’s always pretty much just freeze them (did I mention you have some sort of physic abilities?) then shoot the legs til they fly off and then chop off an arm or something to kill them. 

It took me 12.5 hours to beat the game on medium.

There is no multi-player. In the year 2008 no multi-player. I am sure there was reasons for it but come on man 2008.

My Experience

I played through the whole game on medium on the Xbox 360 over a period of about 3 days. As stated above it took me about 12.5 hours to beat it.  I then played another hour or so through it a second time to test out the upgraded armor etc.

Conclusion

If you can rent it, borrow it (as I did) or get it cheap ($20)  somewhere it is worth playing through. 

If I spent $60 bucks for a game with 12 hours of game play I would fee like I got robbed.

I gave it a B-. I really felt like I should be harsher but it had it moments and since I didn’t actually pay for it I couldn’t hold the price against it.

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