Dead Space

Each genre of games has a crowned king to be reckoned with. For Survival-Horror games the king is without a doubt the Resident Evil series from Capcom with the acclaimed and praised fourth installment as the latest and the fifth edition in the final stages of completion (scheduled for 2009) as the next title. But every king has one thing to fear on mind: dethroning. Dead Space, the latest IP from videogame giants EA, can be considered as the new knight in town who is capable of making the king’s fear a reality.

First off, Dead Space is diverse enough offering a collection of good features from a number of different games. The style of Resident Evil 4, the atmosphere and ship’s interior design of Doom 3, the emptiness of Rapture city, which smells death at every corner, from Bioshock add to that the blood and gore from Gears of War plus a quiet fellow as an ordinary engineer (instead of a scientist) turned into an alien killer like what we’ve seen in the Half-Life series. All these adaptations and countless more are so masterfully implemented in the game and tweaked into perfection that put together will create a base for future games to follow.

The game starts as Isaac Clarke (a tribute to two masterminds of Sci/Fi novels, Isacc Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke) our in-game personality with his crew of three heading toward the USG Ishimura giant planet cracker ship on an inspection mission to find the reason behind the lack of any communication between the ship and base. We learn that Nicole, Isaac’s partner, is also one of the residents on Ishimura, which is why our hero is taking the issue so personally. They reach their destination to find the giant ship resting in complete silence with no life forms to be found. The team decides to land on the docking bays but with the amount of debris floating around and the malfunctioning auto-docking system of the Ishimura they barely manage a crashing landing on the ship.

The use of a temperamental atmosphere alongside some brilliant sound effects adds so much tension to this already terrifying game. The developers have tried to re-invent so many old ideas and were successful on almost each front. The monsters, which are either aliens or deformed humans, are a big treat and will make your life pretty miserable compared to the simple walk in the park some games on the market offer. They try to ambush or catch you off-guard at almost every instant. You can hear their murmurings at times or even have a glimpse of their shadows before they attack. The tried headshot kill (Check: every other action game in the market) was substituted with limbshot kill. Early on in the game you will realize that in order to down the enemy as fast as possible you need to shot off its limbs. A shot to the head will certainly blast the head off but that does not mean the creature will stop marching your way.

The innovations do not end here; your screen is HUD-less, meaning you have the entire screen for yourself, without a

y life bars or inventory/weapons displaying. Your life bar is implemented as a feature on the back of your suit and your menu is a holographic screen appearing whenever you want with the freedom of rotating the camera for a better view. This holographic menu system also acts as your video and audio player and more importantly as a guiding map. With a press of a button you can easily view the path to your next objective shown on the ground, a feature first seen in Army of two, another EA IP. The weapons are the other noteworthy feature of the game, gone are the customary army branded weapons; instead we have a set of weapons created for a different kind of enemy with an alternate firing mode on hand depending on the situation.

The story is on par with some of the best horror flicks; those in which scaring the audience is the primary motif. You will find yourself jumping out of your seat on numerous occasions especially when you play the game in the dark with the surround system putting you in the mood with every little piece of sound playing around you. The music kicks in when something happens on the screen, passing of an unaware creature will make you terrified when coupled with a sudden change of music, and the battles are all accompanied with faster rhythms suitable for the progress at hand. The graphic, level design, animations, character and creature models are all of the highest quality and the game looks brilliant at every part. The game is divided into 12 chapters and it would take around 15 hours more or less to finish it. The pace of the game will keep you connected and before you even feel tired of the repetitiveness of the events, you will be introduced to a new treat, weapon or a story twist.

Aside from third person action sequences, there are numerous puzzles to solve as well. However you probably won’t find them to be insurmountable. One of the main elements of the game shown in the pre-release trailers playing a major part in the final game is the zero-gravity levels. Your rig offers various special abilities in the form of add-ons. With Stasis you can make every moving object slower and with Kinesis you can move or throw objects, with these two abilities you can solve many puzzle elements of the game. Health and air canisters, various weapon ammunitions, Cash cards and other useful objects are scattered around the levels. Like what we had in Bioshock, you can buy stuff at various vendors or upgrade your weapons by power nodes you find or buy thorough the game vendors.

Dead Space is here to stay; this new IP is successful on all fronts. At the moment a comic book miniseries followed by an animated feature acting as prequels are at work. It is a bloody gory game with great action, great new ideas and tons of borrowed ideas made into perfection. It is a must buy for every survival horror game fan and those who play this game will admit that our new shiny knight is becoming the king when it matures with time. Capcom and the Resident Evil series have a true contender here.