Dead Space Review

[Prussian to the Iron]

Hey Orgahs!

After going through chapter 3, I think I know enough about the game to write a review.


The game is set in the 26th century, on the Mining ship Ishimura. After a crash landing and a horrifying first encounter, a Search-and-Rescue mission becomes a mission of survival. As you progress through the ship, you unlock new areas and puzzles to unlock, while you listen to your chief security officer and your crew-mate fight over whether to leave or not. While all this is happening, you are constantly assailed by what I can only think of as Alien Zombies.


The Gameplay is fairly good, there are only a few things I would improve honestly. Things like the fact that you cannot run while reloading, and that the flamethrower does next-to-no damage, but other than some little quirks and balancing, there's not much to improve on.


At it's core, despite the puzzles and problem-solving, Dead Space is a horror game, and its execution is beautiful. Though some of the encounters are predictable, nearly every time I am ambushed by a few alien zombies it is a heart-pounding experience. So much so, that after the first several chapters, you are ready to face larger numbers.

The Musical Score, masterfully done, molds it from being a game to being a world. However, this score is not like most games, where the music switches to combat music immediately, and switches back right after. If none are in your sight, you won't hear anything apart from any walking you might hear. It isn't a "The music is still going, there must be more.", it is a "I hope there aren't any more.".


There are faults, like the Line Gun, one of the earliest and cheapest weapons, being a near-insta-kill. The game is quite obviously heavily scripted, and it shows. I got stuck a few weeks ago, and had to start a new game, so I remembered just about every encounter with ease, and haven't had many surprises up until now.



Though it's difficult to see the faults, there are some, I just can't think of them off-hand. Overall, this game deserves a 9/10 for me.

[Azathoth]

One of my problems is the incredible way it follows old horror-movie and game conventions. As soon as you accomplish something a load of monsters pop up out of nowhere? Check. Civilians have mining equipment in their storage bins? Check. In fact, this stuff is everywhere. Shouldn't it be on the colony. Ability to buy equipment and better suits? Check. Even though the ship would outfit everyone who needs a suit, because it's their job. Why the hell is this mining equipment, well, mining equipment? What does a ripper do? Why is it called a ripper? What possible mining application could a pulse rifle have? In fact, that should be the only weapon onboard. Or at least have a variety of guns.

IMO this game would have been much scarier if

A. You had to ration ammo like Resident Evil. That stuff is not going to be everywhere, and it's certainly not going to fall out of the slain bodies of Necromorphs.

B. Monsters attacked randomly. More of a hunted feeling. Standing still might eventually lead to a horde attacking you. Random horde size, 1-10. Less monsters - I'm pretty sure the Ishimura doesn't have a 10000 man crew. And why are there 500 babies?

C. You couldn't buy anything. Getting a hit would damage your suit - no entering vacuums until you have it repaired. Of course, most hits would simply kill you outright.

TBH, Isaac is much scarier than any of the Necromorphs. He's one stone-cold mother******, he doesn't even say anything! He just writes **** down in his journal, like a badass. He literally kills more Necromorphs than anything that ever lived in the course of the game. He's like...the Marine from Doom, or something. In fact, Dead Space shares a huge amount of similarities with Doom, just replace Necromorphs with demons, Unitologists with UAC, and planet crack or whatever with Hell.

[Fragony]

I tried, I really did

[Fragony]

edit

[Azathoth]

Huh?

[Fragony]

Ok, I will never quite I will never surrender! At medical, dear god. I find it much scarier actually knowing what is going to happen. Why do I keep doing this to myself, I think I like scary games but I always end up too scared to play them. Walk 5 meter, look at the screen for 10 minutes, walk 5 meter

[Prussian to the Iron]

Ok, I will never quite I will never surrender! At medical, dear god. I find it much scarier actually knowing what is going to happen. Why do I keep doing this to myself, I think I like scary games but I always end up too scared to play them. Walk 5 meter, look at the screen for 10 minutes, walk 5 meter

is your keyboard broken or something? you seem to be missing words.


but the whole "Walk 5 meter, look at the screen for 10 minutes, walk 5 meter" thing. its true.

[Fragony]

Nothing wrong with that sentence, but yeah kinda my cat likes park his fat butt on my keyboard keyboard is horrible now, everything is broken on this :Daisy:

Windows is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I'm a wimp at games that have monsters jumping out at you even at regularly scheduled interviews so I chickened out early on. Even with the game being more of a slow-moving doom as Azathoth describes.

[Zenicetus]

I gave it a 6 out of 10 rating, more or less. It's a decent linear-scripted shooter that would be completely forgettable if it didn't have two nice features: the dismemberment weapon gimmick, and the minimalist UI. Otherwise it has the usual problems mentioned above in the thread like the conventional "store" for upgrades, and the monster movie cliche' scripting of the encounters.

The one thing I intensely disliked in the game was the save system. I hate game designs that don't allow the player to save at any point in the game, especially when it's usually due to lazy programming and memory/file size management. When saves are based on reaching specific areas in the level, it creates an artificial sense of danger or safety, depending on how close you are to a save point. Designs like this can also lead to more time repeating things you've already done, compared to saving just before a likely encounter or new area. If it's a tough boss-level fight you need more than one save game load to get through, that can get old real fast.

[Owen Glyndwr]

@PI referring to your walk and reload thing:

I haven't really played the game, but I would make the game scarier, at least for me. It was the same with Doom 3's no flashlight and gun at the same time thing. It added a facet to the game, you had to choose between seeing and shooting, which makes you very paranoid.

[Fragony]

Predictable as the scares may be, there is enough story to keep you going, it's an obvious hommage at System Shock 2, up to the loading screen. Great pacing, and I like how sometimes absolutely nothing happens, you know hell can break lose any second it's really harrowing, especially since the monsters are so terrifying BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH gets me every time. Good locations as well, you could almost smell the death in medical, something wen very very wrong. Immersion breaker, System Shock was guilty as well, it has already happened when you are arive, there shouldn't be people able to survive only for you to see them die horribly, kinda breaks the feeling of solitude.

[Whacker]

I managed an entire 2 minutes of gameplay before I uninstalled it, never to look back. The control schema was one of the worst I've ever encountered in a FPS in my life.

[Ironside]

A. You had to ration ammo like Resident Evil. That stuff is not going to be everywhere, and it's certainly not going to fall out of the slain bodies of Necromorphs.

I think the ammo dropping is there because you would need huge chunks of ammo in the between monsters groups otherwise. And to keep that chosing weapons relevant. Ammo is certainly not plentyful, compared to Doom for example. The only weapons that keeps up ammo is the ripper and the plasma cutter.

B. Monsters attacked randomly. More of a hunted feeling. Standing still might eventually lead to a horde attacking you. Random horde size, 1-10. Less monsters - I'm pretty sure the Ishimura doesn't have a 10000 man crew. And why are there 500 babies?

I agree on random attacks, but they are tricky to get that scary instead of annoying. The babies are from those rooms filled with babies for some weird medical reason. They got there halfway in explaination.

C. You couldn't buy anything. Getting a hit would damage your suit - no entering vacuums until you have it repaired. Of course, most hits would simply kill you outright.

That would work with less monsters, but would slighly change the genre. More survival, less shooter.

TBH, Isaac is much scarier than any of the Necromorphs. He's one stone-cold mother******, he doesn't even say anything! He just writes **** down in his journal, like a badass. He literally kills more Necromorphs than anything that ever lived in the course of the game. He's like...the Marine from Doom, or something. In fact, Dead Space shares a huge amount of similarities with Doom, just replace Necromorphs with demons, Unitologists with UAC, and planet crack or whatever with Hell.

It's not Doom it's System Shock 2 that has given most inspiration.

The one thing I intensely disliked in the game was the save system. I hate game designs that don't allow the player to save at any point in the game, especially when it's usually due to lazy programming and memory/file size management. When saves are based on reaching specific areas in the level, it creates an artificial sense of danger or safety, depending on how close you are to a save point. Designs like this can also lead to more time repeating things you've already done, compared to saving just before a likely encounter or new area. If it's a tough boss-level fight you need more than one save game load to get through, that can get old real fast.

Each to it's own I guess, here it was certainly done to increase the sense of danger and for me it worked. If I'm scared I'm a heavy "save after each encouter"- type. They also had two places were they played on that increased safety, so they was certainly aware of it. They usually placed a save just before those tougher areas so I was never bothered about the reloading in that way.

@PI referring to your walk and reload thing:

I haven't really played the game, but I would make the game scarier, at least for me. It was the same with Doom 3's no flashlight and gun at the same time thing. It added a facet to the game, you had to choose between seeing and shooting, which makes you very paranoid.

The Doom 3 flashlight I found to be a failure, the game was annoyingly dark and if hostiles showed up, muzzle flash works good enough. The flashlight that runs out of power+ occational random spawn if standing still would be quite a bit scarier.

All in all I liked it. As mentioned, it's mostly old concepts but it's very well executed. Second run through was a lot less scarier, but most horror game seems to lose steam halfway in when it comes to scares. You get used to the old stuff and the new stuff can't keep up in scarefactor. Also in this particular case it was a game+, so I started out a bit tanklike.

[Fragony]

I managed an entire 2 minutes of gameplay before I uninstalled it, never to look back. The control schema was one of the worst I've ever encountered in a FPS in my life.

The controls are actually tight as a drum, just takes a while to get used to it give it 10, missing out on a great game

[Azathoth]

I think the ammo dropping is there because you would need huge chunks of ammo in the between monsters groups otherwise. And to keep that chosing weapons relevant. Ammo is certainly not plentyful, compared to Doom for example. The only weapons that keeps up ammo is the ripper and the plasma cutter.

You still don't explain how calling these weapons "mining equipment" makes any sense. I could accept the current system IF all the weapons were straight-up guns, like the pulse rifle.

The babies are from those rooms filled with babies for some weird medical reason. They got there halfway in explaination.

I counted, and you fight 50-100 of them. HOW CAN THERE BE SO MANY BABIES.

It's not Doom it's System Shock 2 that has given most inspiration.

Just saying, the similarities are striking.

All in all, this was a good game, 8/10. It was just completely uninspired, superficial interface innovations aside.

[frogbeastegg]

HOW CAN THERE BE SO MANY BABIES.

IIRC (it's been a year since I played it)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

one of the doctors went loopy because of the marker and/or virus and started creating the babies. He cloned the basic human cells necessary to get growth started, added a dose of the necromorph virus, and put them in test tubes to grow. Something about either the virus or the test tube environment made them grow very quickly.

It was in the audio logs.

Most of the weaspons are designed to cut precise lines into ore, rock and so on. Certainly that's what the line cutter and plasma cutter were for. Ones like the ripper ... no idea. It didn't even work very well as a weapon. IIRC the flame thrower was another straight up military weapon like the pulse rifle.

[Azathoth]

IIRC (it's been a year since I played it)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
one of the doctors went loopy because of the marker and/or virus and started creating the babies. He cloned the basic human cells necessary to get growth started, added a dose of the necromorph virus, and put them in test tubes to grow. Something about either the virus or the test tube environment made them grow very quickly.

It was in the audio logs.

Huh, maybe I wasn't paying attention. Now that I think about it, I can't believe I thought that the babies floating in vats was normal, haha.

Most of the weaspons are designed to cut precise lines into ore, rock and so on.

If they can barely cut through organic material...I'll admit I was playing on Hard, though.

[Prussian to the Iron]

If they can barely cut through organic material...I'll admit I was playing on Hard, though.

i have no trouble with it. but if you think about it, if something is meant to slice and shoot straight through ore, its likely at either:

A) an enormous velocity

or

B) specially designed shape to penetrate all the way through the rock



either way, it is likely to go straight through organic material, barely slowing anyone down. this might explain why you must slice off the limbs, rather than trying to shoot to the chest where little would happen.


BTW: i found something online explaining each of the guns mining purposes; all but the Pulse Rifle (which I presume is used for guards/security detail) are used in mining in one way or another.

[frogbeastegg]

If they can barely cut through organic material...I'll admit I was playing on Hard, though.

It's video game logic, pure and simple. Only a tiny minority of games depict weaponry with realistic power, and feature enemies who aren't able to withstand the kind of damage that would leave a real person a shattered wreck screaming on the ground.

The same applies to damage done by enemies. A necromorph's arm scythe should cut Issac into two pieces quite handily.

[Azathoth]

Yes, when you put it that way the complaints do come across as unfair.