I've never been one to agree that the so-called "horror games" are about what conditions you're playing the game in. Of course, I play them in the dark, for fear of losing content of the game that is in there but you somehow lose if you play it with the lights on. If I've learned anything from playing Dead Space, however, is that atmosphere is fundamental.
Dead Space is about a man named Issac Clarke, and the crew that is sent to repair the USG Ishimura in the depths of space (hey, that sounds sorta familiar). Issac wants two things out of this journey: To repair the ship and get his (space?) paycheck, and to see Nicole, the darling love of his life. Things quickly go awry, and you end up having to run around the Ishimura, getting problems fixed, killing enemies, and apparantly getting scared doing it. I won't spoil anything for you, but the game dives off into some weird stuff later in the game.
Stories in horror games aren't inherently important, but overall the story is a competent way to get the stuff thrown at you into some form of context. The story never compelled me to care for any of the characters too much, as most of them are pretty much your run-of-the-mill characters in a horror flick, but they did a much better job at delivery here than just about all horror flicks do nowadays. When you're doing something (like a quest, fighting a boss, etc.) you know why you're doing it. You'll get most of your story content out of things like text and audio logs, (similar to Bioshock) as well as video conversations you'll have with the crew as the game progresses, and the good thing is that these never take you out of the game, which keeps the atmosphere of the game going. There are a few cutscenes, but they all play in game, and in most of them you're free to move about as the story skips along.
The Gameplay in Dead Space most people should be familiar for most people who've played third person shooters, and this is especially true if you've played Gears of War. However, if you're used to the pace of third person shooters, you might want to rethink your strategy for Dead Space. It is a much slower game, and if you run in guns blazing, you either won't get out alive or you'll end up using all your ammo up.
While the gameplay itself if similar to TPS's, just about everything else about has the horror template attached to it. you start the game out with plasma cutter (which means pistol in space), and not much health to go on. You collect items and cash from enemies, but you have a very limited inventory to manage, especially early on. There is no way to heal yourself aside from med packs, as well as no way to refill your ammo aside from the ammo you find strewn about the ship. Enemies deal a good deal of damage per attack, things creep up from you behind, and stasis (something that is both essential to puzzles and to stopping some of the faster enemies), if not used sparingly, will run out when you least want it to.
However, this doesn't mean that the game doesn't have a good couple of layers of an action game sprinkled in as a cuddle to less hardened players. Money buys you more ammo, weapons, med packs, and anything else you might need, though it doesn't come cheap. You can upgrade your various instruments (which range from a wide line cutter to a flamethrower) and armor by using nodes, rare items that are scarce throughout the game, but can also be purchased. Save points are scattered everywhere so that when you die you don't go too far back, and if at anytime you should feel lost, you can press a button to see a light that guides you to wherever you need to go, meaning you don't carelessly spend time looking for anything. These additions make the game somewhat easier in the end, and while it's appreciated, it lightens the atmosphere that is so important to getting scared, because there's never that sense of urgency in any given fight. If you die, you'll go back to a checkpoint, even if you didn't save, and if you run low on health or ammo, you can almost always retreat to the nearest store.
Just because you have all these options open to you doesn't mean you can just wipe out every enemy in a given room, no problem. There are a variety of enemies to kill, ranging from your average zombie-looking thing to fat ones that spew tiny things at you, to super-enhanced soldiers, who are very, very fast. If you want to heal mid-fight, do it fast, because no menus aside from the pause menu (including stores and upgrade benches) can stop enemies from attacking you. Additionally, the game encourages that you not aim for the head with a dismemberment system, in which you'll waste less bullets if you aim at the limbs of enemies, and the guns allow you do so in various ways. Enemies will overwhelm you (especially in later parts of the game), and using stasis will become more and more useful.
Puzzles also make themselves known here, but really, they're not puzzles as much as enviormental obstacles to be overcome. You have your basic put-this-there puzzles, but the stage of space allows for two other kinds of experiences. The first are vaccums, which will puts your oxygen tank into account. You'll only have so much time to do something in these areas whether it be getting to the other side, or changing someting in the area in order to progress. The other is Zero-G areas, which are somewhat dissapointing due to them amounting to jumping from one flat plain to another, and you can't actually stay in an area with no ground beneath you. Had you been able to actually float in space, that could've made for some intresting areas.
Regardless of whether the game is more action or fear, it's hard to argue that this game isn't beautiful. The overall presentation is nearly flawless, with the only bug I've seen being that of light-weight bodies, but other than that everything works perfectly. Issac's movements are perfectly mo-capped, the voice acting is done well, and animations for all the creatures are done wonderfully. The textures and models also look wonderful, from Issac's suit to the ground and walls and all the digital menus.
The last great feature of the presentation is the lack of any HUD in the game. Your health and stasis are displayed on your back, you only see your gun's magazine when you aim it, which makes the game feel more cinematic. As mentioned earlier, no menus aside from the pause menu take you out of the game, meaning that even in buying things at the store and organizing items carry that tension that you will be attacked from behind unexpectedly, and it definitely adds to the atmosphere of the game.
A sever reduction of closet monsters and too much of a focus on action over horror means that this game might not deliver the chills of a horror movie or even some of the scarier horror games doesn't mean that it's not scary. The atmosphere is the lead here, and with monsters crawling on vents but not always showing up, the tension that comes even from selecting items, and the story that augments the feeling of the game quite well, Dead Space delivers the scary in a new and original way.
Dead Space is about a man named Issac Clarke, and the crew that is sent to repair the USG Ishimura in the depths of space (hey, that sounds sorta familiar). Issac wants two things out of this journey: To repair the ship and get his (space?) paycheck, and to see Nicole, the darling love of his life. Things quickly go awry, and you end up having to run around the Ishimura, getting problems fixed, killing enemies, and apparantly getting scared doing it. I won't spoil anything for you, but the game dives off into some weird stuff later in the game.
Stories in horror games aren't inherently important, but overall the story is a competent way to get the stuff thrown at you into some form of context. The story never compelled me to care for any of the characters too much, as most of them are pretty much your run-of-the-mill characters in a horror flick, but they did a much better job at delivery here than just about all horror flicks do nowadays. When you're doing something (like a quest, fighting a boss, etc.) you know why you're doing it. You'll get most of your story content out of things like text and audio logs, (similar to Bioshock) as well as video conversations you'll have with the crew as the game progresses, and the good thing is that these never take you out of the game, which keeps the atmosphere of the game going. There are a few cutscenes, but they all play in game, and in most of them you're free to move about as the story skips along.
The Gameplay in Dead Space most people should be familiar for most people who've played third person shooters, and this is especially true if you've played Gears of War. However, if you're used to the pace of third person shooters, you might want to rethink your strategy for Dead Space. It is a much slower game, and if you run in guns blazing, you either won't get out alive or you'll end up using all your ammo up.
While the gameplay itself if similar to TPS's, just about everything else about has the horror template attached to it. you start the game out with plasma cutter (which means pistol in space), and not much health to go on. You collect items and cash from enemies, but you have a very limited inventory to manage, especially early on. There is no way to heal yourself aside from med packs, as well as no way to refill your ammo aside from the ammo you find strewn about the ship. Enemies deal a good deal of damage per attack, things creep up from you behind, and stasis (something that is both essential to puzzles and to stopping some of the faster enemies), if not used sparingly, will run out when you least want it to.
However, this doesn't mean that the game doesn't have a good couple of layers of an action game sprinkled in as a cuddle to less hardened players. Money buys you more ammo, weapons, med packs, and anything else you might need, though it doesn't come cheap. You can upgrade your various instruments (which range from a wide line cutter to a flamethrower) and armor by using nodes, rare items that are scarce throughout the game, but can also be purchased. Save points are scattered everywhere so that when you die you don't go too far back, and if at anytime you should feel lost, you can press a button to see a light that guides you to wherever you need to go, meaning you don't carelessly spend time looking for anything. These additions make the game somewhat easier in the end, and while it's appreciated, it lightens the atmosphere that is so important to getting scared, because there's never that sense of urgency in any given fight. If you die, you'll go back to a checkpoint, even if you didn't save, and if you run low on health or ammo, you can almost always retreat to the nearest store.
Just because you have all these options open to you doesn't mean you can just wipe out every enemy in a given room, no problem. There are a variety of enemies to kill, ranging from your average zombie-looking thing to fat ones that spew tiny things at you, to super-enhanced soldiers, who are very, very fast. If you want to heal mid-fight, do it fast, because no menus aside from the pause menu (including stores and upgrade benches) can stop enemies from attacking you. Additionally, the game encourages that you not aim for the head with a dismemberment system, in which you'll waste less bullets if you aim at the limbs of enemies, and the guns allow you do so in various ways. Enemies will overwhelm you (especially in later parts of the game), and using stasis will become more and more useful.
Puzzles also make themselves known here, but really, they're not puzzles as much as enviormental obstacles to be overcome. You have your basic put-this-there puzzles, but the stage of space allows for two other kinds of experiences. The first are vaccums, which will puts your oxygen tank into account. You'll only have so much time to do something in these areas whether it be getting to the other side, or changing someting in the area in order to progress. The other is Zero-G areas, which are somewhat dissapointing due to them amounting to jumping from one flat plain to another, and you can't actually stay in an area with no ground beneath you. Had you been able to actually float in space, that could've made for some intresting areas.
Regardless of whether the game is more action or fear, it's hard to argue that this game isn't beautiful. The overall presentation is nearly flawless, with the only bug I've seen being that of light-weight bodies, but other than that everything works perfectly. Issac's movements are perfectly mo-capped, the voice acting is done well, and animations for all the creatures are done wonderfully. The textures and models also look wonderful, from Issac's suit to the ground and walls and all the digital menus.
The last great feature of the presentation is the lack of any HUD in the game. Your health and stasis are displayed on your back, you only see your gun's magazine when you aim it, which makes the game feel more cinematic. As mentioned earlier, no menus aside from the pause menu take you out of the game, meaning that even in buying things at the store and organizing items carry that tension that you will be attacked from behind unexpectedly, and it definitely adds to the atmosphere of the game.
A sever reduction of closet monsters and too much of a focus on action over horror means that this game might not deliver the chills of a horror movie or even some of the scarier horror games doesn't mean that it's not scary. The atmosphere is the lead here, and with monsters crawling on vents but not always showing up, the tension that comes even from selecting items, and the story that augments the feeling of the game quite well, Dead Space delivers the scary in a new and original way.
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