Dead Space is a new IP from the small, family-run publisher EA. It’s a third person survival horror set on a rather rusty spaceship. During the campaign you take the role of the silent Isaac Clarke as he travels through the planet-cracking, monster-infested ship, The USG Ishimura. Isaac and his team have been given the job of fixing whatever caused the Ishimura to drop out of contact with its corporate owners.

Each level takes the form of an area of the vast ship, with the start and end usually being the tram station. At each stop Isaac has three or four jobs to do out of a fairly unimpressive list: collecting items, pressing buttons or meeting someone (or something). Once done, it’s on to the next stop with a light smattering of story to try to keep things interesting.

As you travel through each level, you slowly begin to learn more about the fate of the crew; a fate closely tied to the other creatures you meet on board. Referred to as Necromorphs, the grossly deformed figures come in your usual survival horror range and will be your main enemy. Not to worry, as your trusty collection of engineers’ tools allow you can quickly dispose of your enemies, one limb at a time.

Who knew space ships could be so boring?

I get it: brown is the new black. But why do the levels need to be as exciting as the décor? In nearly every level, you arrive at a specific section of the Ishimura and with some tedious tasks to perform. Find x number of y or press z number of buttons etc., making sure to go back to where you started when you’re done. After three hours you begin to notice a pattern, and after six you begin wishing for at least some change. For once I would like to end up somewhere that’s just the tram stop where I started.

And yet even with the almost linear level design, it’s possible to get lost amongst the myriad of dead ends and locked doors. Thankfully the designers added a handy holographic line showing you the way to your destination at just the press of a button. Something I was even more grateful for when the “innovative” in game heads-up display (HUD) based map broke.

I understand the importance of keeping a gamer within the world, and adding the fancy in-game only HUD is one way of doing that. But please check that you can at least match the functionality of what you replace. On several occasions the map simply didn’t work or wasn’t even close to understandable. If you feel the need to add a quick time event and the key to press is displayed on the back of the suit, make sure that it’s visible to the player. The first time I was grappled by an enemy, the “mash x to escape” icon was out of view.

Another issue with the HUD that came up repeatedly was the inability to read the number on the back of Isaac’s suit. You know, the number that was supposed to tell me how many seconds of air I had left when I was in a vacuum.  Why not add an option to turn on a more conventional HUD?

With the ever-present brown scenery (occasionally replaced with washed-out pale blue) more annoyances arise. For instance, it becomes easy to miss important items; something made noticeably worse on an SD screen. Several times during my play through, I had to back track to find a save point or two that I missed. In addition, these save points are very conservatively spread around the game.

The game provides checkpoints before some challenges, but if you become frustrated and want to stop playing, you will find yourself back at the last save point when you next load up the game. This is something I simply don’t understand the point of. Does the game want me to leave the console on? Or maybe repeating walks down a bunch of corridors is some great new exciting game play element I don’t understand. Basically, let me save before parts I’m likely to die during so I don’t have to keep re-playing boring parts.

One of the few parts of the game where levels take on a bit of originality is come from the weightless moments. Sadly, you’re never actually weightless. Instead, “down” is orientated towards whichever surface you are standing on. To float around, you have to look at a place to land and launch yourself. Think Super Mario Galaxy with less accurate controls… and lots of blood and guts floating around.

Sadly, these parts never seem to quite be as cool as they should be, and more likely result in mild disorientation than awe. This feeling of disorientation is one that you seemingly share with with your enemies. Apart from launching themselves at you from angles you forgot to check, they also seem to frequently get stuck on convex corners.

Frustration and repetition do not generate more fear.

One of the biggest draws of the game is its atmosphere, something essential to all good survival horror games. You want to feel on edge; you want to be continually looking behind you and you want to need a new pair of pants at the mere thought of somebody shouting “Boo!”. Dead Space, to its merit, does achieve this level of tension on occasion, but all too often falls flat. Many times this is due to the predictable nature of some of the “frightening” moments. The first time a corpse rose suddenly from the dead, I was genuinely shocked. When it started to happen regularly however, it lost all of its effect and looked like desperate attempt to garner fear from the player.

Similar to corpses reanimating, the predictability of monsters appearing shortly after pressing a button or walking towards a door lost any sense of excitement after only a few hours. The majority of times when a cliché trigger was present, it would act accordingly. The most tense moments occurred when the game seemingly forgot to be to predictable. Sadly, these moments are few and far between.

The second you lose fear of the world, either through repetition or frustration, the game’s main draw is gone. For the first couple of hours, the game keeps the suspense almost perfectly. The first two hours of Dead Space are some of the most immersing experiences I have had. Sadly, it doesn’t last much longer than that.

With almost surprisingly bland and unvaried levels, the designers seemed to think that a few puzzles thrown in the mix would liven things up. A huge mistake. Even with nothing new going on, the levels still maintained at least a basic level of enjoyment. The change of pace from slow, plodding progress to trial and error puzzles ended in simple frustration. The best example of this is an asteroid shooting gallery stage.

This section followed an incredibly dull run-cover-run-cover section where you had to manoeuvre yourself across the surface of the ship, taking cover behind conveniently placed boxes whenever a timely shower of space debris impacted. Behind the airlock on the other end of this example of unnecessary padding was the shooting gallery. The experience made worse by the fact the giant gun you controlled would overheat, often at the worse times, and wasted valuable seconds cooling down. It felt like a challenge added for no reason other than to frustrate the player.

Frequently, the game chooses a cheap tactic to extend game play by adding some kind of unnecessary challenge. To progress through this room I have to move four rocks… with monsters appearing out after I dispose of each one? Oh, only one check-point right at the start? Perfect. To tip game designers, the following combination doesn’t make me happy: mild disorientation, boring puzzles, a timer, bad checkpoints and things that can instantly kill me.

What story?

One big problem I found when playing Dead Space was struggling to find a reason to continue. With the repetitive and mundane nature of the levels, I knew each cleared stage would simply lead me to more of the same. The story of Dead Space was barely there. You can work it all out by knowing the following elements are in it: corporately owned space ship, religion, “mysterious artefact”, a wife, missing crew, strange monsters, a black guy on your team, a woman on your team.

There are twists, but sadly you can see them coming a mile away and any real surprises just left me more confused than shocked. Apart from the ending, and I mean the very, very ending before credits roll; that actually shocked me. I was left in a state of utter disbelief and speechlessness over the sudden revelation that apparently they let a child try to write a gripping and frightening story.

A few other points worth mentioning:

• Upgrading guns is fun. Using an over-complicated and unrewarding node-based system is not. Especially when you frequently use power-nodes to get closer to an upgrade, but not actually make a difference.
• When your character looks at an item, it’s automatically selected. This is fine until you are in a small space with several items, then it becomes a fun mini-game of “guess what’s selected”.
• There is a quick button for health regeneration, but not one for stasis (needed for telekinesis) regeneration.
• Several highly contrived and annoying situations arise. For example, guarding somebody as they take three minutes unlocking a door.
• Often vague instructions leave you wandering around trying to work out what to do, with no useful clues.
• If I need health but my inventory is full, I have to drop something, pick up the health, use it, then pick up the item I dropped. The same thing applies for ammo.
• Save files (at least on the PS3) save alphabetically, so saving in Chapter 10 puts the file next to Chapter 1.
• Sometimes, the handy holographic line showing you where to go breaks, leaving you completely stranded.
• The shooting parts (note: plural) are so needlessly annoying. Just a crappy set of quick time events would be more fun.
• The game often allows you to get into a situation which is impossible to get out out of. E.g. putting in a vacuum with not enough air.
• Many tiny enemies, they type which require you to rapidly press “X,” stop being fun after a couple of deaths.
• Nearly all text, including mission objectives and story-driving text logs, are unreadable on SD televisions.

Overall the game is very polished, yet lacks the attention to detail that gives you the kind of experience you want all the time. You are treated to gleefully gory dismemberments and the occasional satisfying boss encounter, but to reach these points takes many hours of frustration. Thankfully, the typical arsenal of generic guns have been replaced with limb-severing tools of destruction, so at least combat feels enjoyable most of the time.

The story and levels feel bland and struggle to make you want to play on, especially in the middle few chapters. The occasional break away from the norm either results in enjoyable set pieces, or torturous “puzzles”. Dead Space will have you frightened from time to time, which is what a good survival horror game should do. Sometimes the fear is created by the impressive presentation the game offers, sometimes because something ran at you and said “boo!” and sometimes it’s fear that you might have broken your controller as you just hurled it across the room.

You should play this game if…

… you are forgiving of cheap and often frustrating elements of games.

Final Score
Fresh feeling, gory combat mixed with polished yet tedious levels and some very frustrating attempts to liven up the game.

(What does this score mean?)