Dead Space Review
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| This one's been a long time coming |
Originally Written: 10/29/2017
*Spoilers May Be
Ahead*
Developer: EA Redwood Shores
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: Survival Horror
Release: October 13, 2008
Electronic
Arts is an infamous name in the video game industry. EA has been around for
over thirty years and is one of the biggest names in video games today. They
have had a hand in some of the most loved and respected games that we have been
graced with. Obviously for sports fans EA is a name and logo they recognize
well.
But they also have had their name attached to the likes
of Dungeon Keeper, Command & Conquer, the Medal of Honor series. Truly EA is a
powerful entity in the gaming community. But it is also important to remember
what EA truly is… a murderer.
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| Fuck You |
I do not say this lightly, EA has killed so many talented
companies over the years it is sickening.
Bullfrog Entertainment creators of the aforementioned Dungeon Keeper series shut down in 2001.
Westwood Studios of the Command & Conquer fame defunct in 2003.
Maxis the creators of the fucking Sims studio closed in 2015.
The list goes on and is stomach churning to see so many
talented studios closed and god knows how many passionate creators shuffled
from one executive branch to another or in the worst case be unemployed
entirely and the most recent victim of this murderous monster is the studio
behind the video game I am reviewing today, Dead
Space.
Formerly known as EA Redwood Shores, the talented
individuals at Visceral brought to us a horror game that took the world by
storm in 2008. I remember hearing about this game all over the place, it was
getting fantastic reviews, my friends loved, and it was being said that this
would be the game to bring back survival horror.
High praise indeed and I remember renting this game and
putting less than an hour into it and putting it back down unimpressed.
Now being a decade older and in memory and respect to the
folks at Visceral Games I’m going to dive back into this and see if this game
is as good as I was told, let’s review Dead
Space.
So
the game puts you into the metal boots of Isaac Clarke an engineer aboard the
USG Kellion alongside fellow shipmates Zach Hammond, Kendra Daniels, Corporal
Johnston and Corporal Chen they are dispatched to the USG Ishimura to perform
an emergency maintenance test. However upon stepping foot onto the enormous
planet cracking ship it is deduced that something has gone terribly wrong.
Because of course it has.
Dead Space is a true survival horror game to its core and
wastes no time in showing that to the player in an absolutely fantastic first
segment. Separated from the others Isaac and the player can only watch as they
see their first ever Necromorph.
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| Corporal Redshirt |
A horrible monstrosity of science that quickly kills Chen
and Johnston probably due to them not having first names and from that moment
on no matter where Isaac is on the Ishimura neither he nor the player are safe.
As I said I loved this first segment with the Necromorphs
I’ll admit I went into this as a bit of a cynic, I remembered my first time
playing this and stepping away disappointed. I don’t know what the hell was
going on there if I wasn’t paying attention or what but this segment sank it’s
claws into me like an angry space monster and refused to let me go for my ten
hours with Dead Space.
This atmosphere much like my praise for Last of Us carries over into inventory
management. I absolutely love when games make you scavenge for your belongings
in real time. In this game it works all the time because you never know when
one of these grotesque bastards will strike.
The Necromorphs are horrifying enemies and there’s a
variety of these evil fuckers too, From the basic ones, to little creepy
fucking baby ones, to brutish monstrosities, and of course the bosses, but
we’ll come back to those.
The first thing to praise this game for is the atmosphere,
as I said you are never safe in this game. Necromorphs can be lurking anywhere
onboard the Ishimura and will often come out of nowhere especially when you
don’t want them too.
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| I'm not sleeping tonight |
The dark atmosphere of the ship gives off a
claustrophobic feeling, if one of these things attacks there isn’t much room to
run away from them and this was deliberate and it’s fantastic. The same can be
said in your melee attacks.
Dead Space
plays in an over the shoulder perspective much like Resident Evil 4 did and there are a variety of weapons to acquire
in the game and they all have their uses. But if a Necromorph closes in (which
it will) Isaac is not mobile in any sense of the word. Escape usually is not an
option and Isaac’s melee attacks are slow and sometimes ineffective which
again, I feel was deliberate.
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| At any moment something may attack you |
It perpetuates that fear of these gruesome creatures
closing in on you, and the game is not unfair in these encounters. If you have
paid attention to your surroundings and play carefully there is no reason for
you to be cornered. Whenever killed by a Necromorph I always felt it was my
fault and not bad AI, or bad gameplay. Noticed I said ‘killed by Necromorph’
we’ll come back to that too.
I mentioned weapons earlier, and there’s a decent number
of firearms to have with you aboard your trek across the Ishimura. The
flamethrower speaks for itself, but I also loved the Line Rack and the Ripper
was always useful. One of the additional features for these weapons which I
found unique was how each one had two modes of firing. Such as the line rack
which can fire a horizontal destructive blast, or strategically set mines for
the space faring undead.
The game also
looks fantastic no matter where it is. No it’s not really jaw dropping even
when looking out into space, or exploring it yourself. But the feeling of
darkness and confined spaces wouldn’t have as much effectiveness if this game
was ugly. For what it sets out to achieve Dead
Space does a wonderful job.
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| Though admittedly humans look... off in this game |
I must also pass on this praise to the actors in this
game, while Isaac is mute (and I fucking hate that!) the other characters in
this game really give their all here. Peter Mensah does a good job as Hammond,
the leader attempting to keep his people alive in a hopeless situation.
However, Tonantzin Carmelo is the true stand out performance here for me. While
not on the same level as say Ellie, Kendra is a character that immediately
stood out to me. Not for good or for ill but always had my attention when she
spoke due to how well she was acted. While her character motivation and
ultimate fate may be considered by some predictable, and I can see why they’d
say that, Kendra as a character is one I thoroughly enjoyed… experiencing.
However this wouldn’t be a space game if we didn’t
explore some space! There are several zero gravity sections in the game where
Isaac must solve puzzles or navigate around hazards by jumping and floating
through the area, there are also sections out in space itself devoid of much
sound save for Isaac’s breathing even when battling Necromorphs.
Okay well I have been sucking this games dick thoroughly
for the last three pages you may be thinking “Parrot you deliciously dangerous
individual is there anything about this game you didn’t like?”
To which I will respond “who you calling dangerous you
pissant? And Yes there is a few in fact.”
First let’s get this out of the way. I Hate Silent
Protaganists, if your name is not Link you do not get a pass from me on this.
That being said however I never felt Isaac being quiet took away from this game
at all. At moments where Isaac has to be emotional like during moments with his
girlfriend Nicole, I could tell how Isaac was feeling even without saying a
single word and even I can admit that is powerful.
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| I believe every upgrade slot should be worth something |
Next is the upgrade system, throughout your happy little
vacation aboard the Ishimura Isaac can discover power nodes which can be used
to upgrade your weapons or items. I realize this is just me and others may not
feel the same way but there aren’t many of these things and they aren’t cheap
either costing 10,000 at the shop. So I feel I it is a little dickish that some
of the slots in the upgrade system don’t do anything. They just serve as a
bridge between one actual upgrade i.e. capacity to the next one i.e. reload
speed.
Also I need to get this out of the way before I rant.
Chapter 7 fucking sucks, having to put a tracking beacon on a giant asteroid
that has two giant metals arms rotating around it that kill you instantly that
cannot be slowed down by stasis abilities is fucking annoying!
Wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t take Isaac ten fucking
years to pull the beacon out of his ass, okay again that may just be me, but it
was the only section in this game I can remember where I got angry.
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| DO NOT LIKE!!!! |
Well besides the turret sections. I won’t dance around
these from what I’ve seen the internet collectively agrees that these suck.
Whether we’re shooting asteroids or blasting my ex-wife off the Ishimura these
are not fun.
Okay you could call those nitpicking and fair enough you
have your opinion and I have mine however there are two other major complaints
I have with this game that I feel cannot be argued.
First is the lack of challenging boss fights. As is there
is none, now I did play this game on medium difficulty and I found myself
getting killed a few times by Necromorphs or traps or giants asteroid bullshit.
But never once a boss, first there aren’t many only two real ones in the whole
game for me. A giant Leviathan creature and the final boss (No I don’t count
The Slug) I relate this to how I felt about the first God of War a fantastic game I had few complaints about but a
disturbing lack of bosses.
And second is the padding. Some have called this problem
repetitive and while they aren’t wrong I myself never felt bored doing the same
thing repeated over and over. I instead felt annoyed that there were these
micro objectives between me and the next thing I wanted to get too. Be it next the
chapter, boss fight, save station whatever. The two times these cropped up for
me bad was during the poison pods section where I had to hunt down and kill
these humans who had been turned into poisonous creatures polluting the air of
the Ishimura, I had to kill seven of these things before I could continue.
They aren’t hidden very well and they can be dealt with
easily when found, but at this point in the game they had really been building
up the Leviathan boss and I was anxious to get to it and see it, so this part
dragged for me.
There was another section later in the game where I had
to find card keys to access a section of the ship, there were only three of
these but my same complaints apply here.
I did enjoy the ending however, I thought it wrapped up
believably I liked how it affected Isaac and how it left me wanting more.
Now I finished the game a little over ten hours and when
I finished it, I received several unlocks. Including a bunch of money for the
shop, a new suit, a new difficulty and finally this game has New Game + which
is a fantastic benefit for any game to have.
Unfortunately I discovered that since I finished the game
on medium I could not change the difficulty of my New Game Plus mode. I was
looking forward to tackling this game again on the higher difficulty with all
my gear and seeing how long I could last against this Necromorph menace.
But the only way to do that would be to start from
scratch on the highest difficulty and then do it, and in the words of my Uncle
Sparrow, Fuck. That.
And it is that last problem that tips the scale here for
me. I debated for quite a while on this rating here on if the problems in this
game were enough to hold it back because I was seriously considering this game
to be the first to receive a gold rating from me. However I’m afraid my
annoyances and problems have piled up just enough for me to say…
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| I have no smart ass comment for this one |
That Dead Space receives an extremely high Silver Seal of
Recommendation
This is indeed a fantastic game and one I am very happy I
finally replayed, whatever it was that made me dislike this game all those
years ago has obviously fallen away, because I really do love this game. It’s a
bittersweet love however not just because of my complaints, but because
Visceral Games is no longer with us. So I would like to leave you with this.
Fuck EA.
And thank you Visceral Games.
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