So, I started playing Dead Space, and it wasn’t a bad game. However, it just didn’t compel me to keep playing it. I barely managed to play it for a couple of hours, and I was just kinda bored.
I did begin writing this article as a review of it, but as I barely played the game for a couple of hours, I just couldn’t justify posting this as a review, so simply consider this my general thoughts on the game based on a couple of hours of play, and don’t take it too seriously, because hey, I’m not.
Again with the reviews ever so late after the game’s released. Blame lovefilm, I’ve had Dead Space on my rental list ever since it was released but they only just sent it and I was positive it wasn’t worth buying so I waited.
Turns out I was right. It wasn’t worth buying, but it’s not a bad game. Well, not that bad. It gets off to a slow start. I suppose it’s trying to build tension and suspense. Frankly the intro left me bored and uninterested.
As the thumbnail image for this article suggests, Dead Space is essentially Resident Evil 4, in space. Now, I’m basing this off of the opinions of others, as I haven’t played Resident Evil 4. I’m trusting you, internet.
It’s pretty transparent from the beginning of the game that the crew of the ship you’ve crash landed on have become monsters. You instantly get locked in a quarantine and the monsters jump down at you and kill all your friends, conveniently a locked door behind you unlocks and you run away.
From the moment I got control of the character I couldn’t help but grow concerned that the camera was going to fuck me over at every possible opportunity. It’s stubbornly locked above the guy’s right shoulder and resists any attempt at controlling it with great vigor, as if it were a mother and you were trying to steal its precious new born child.
My concerns were swiftly proven to be justified a brief moment after you obtain the game’s first weapon. I shot open a locked door and found a monster thing killing some guy. So I take aim, and the camera promptly gets stuck on the doorway and spins me in the complete opposite direction somehow. After a couple of seconds of trying to figure out what the hell just happened, the guy was definitely dead. I don’t think I was supposed to save him anyway, but now I’ll never know. Thanks a lot, camera.
Still, the game’s physics and controls are generally good. Shooting things kinda feels satisfying, especially detaching limbs from stuff, but a lot of other shooters do it better. Some aspects of the game also have pretty impressive visuals.
The game is supposed to be sci-fi horror, but it doesn’t pull off the sci-fi or horror aspects all that well. The game’s scares are cheap and extremely predictable, entirely eliminating any fear that the player is supposed to be experiencing. While certain parts of the game did put me on edge, it was more of a bored, frustrating anticipation of being surprised. Most of the time, the “scary” (read: played out, generic) music in the game just outright pissed me off. I found myself holding down the run button and charging around corners to make the game hurry the fuck up and scare me with some god damn monsters already.
The setting is the same thing you’ve seen in dozens of sci-fi horror movies – a large ship abandoned in space, and you’re stuck there, with monsters aliens. You’ve watched Alien, right? Or Aliens? Or Alien 3? …Alien Resurrection?
Your allies are a small handful of people who survived your initial crash landing on the ship and subsequent attack by the Necromorphs, and now you have to do everything for them because you’re apparently their slave or something – even though they’re the ones with all the guns. But, you’re an engineer and not a soldier, so clearly that means that guns are beyond you. Instead of real weapons, you’re forced to use mining tools. Conveniently the enemies in the game are particularly weak to digging implements.
For whatever reason, good old-fashioned sci-fi horror wasn’t enough for the developers and they decided to hire some writers who included a freakin’ religion and government sub-plot. I don’t know what exactly it was all about, for some reason my brain just shut off entirely when people in Dead Space talked about anything.
Anyway, that’s all I really have to say about it. If you wanna tell me how amazing the game is and how it’s a sci-fi horror masterpiece then as always send me your emails and I will make fun of you. I mean answer them.