It is January, my extremeties are frozen, and much to my dismay my TV has exploded. So, on my way to Team Fortress 2, I look at the Steam store. BEHOLD! Awesome deals on alright games for a few days! Dead Space for a few dollars? Count my frozen ass in.
I would like to start off by saying that I am a huge wimp. In FEAR and Condemned, I was consistantly grinding my teeth waiting for the next thing to creep me out. I am that guy in the movies that frantically flails his gun around shooting at nothing, standing alone in the center of a room with no plan and no nerves, sweating, eyes nervously twitching from shadow to shadow. I skulk in corners and try to spend as much time as possible avoiding scary set peices in an linear game. Yeah.
So it's not the most original story in the world. Scientists screwed up, religion aching about it and sways the minds of the people in charge. The flood takes over stuff, etc etc. Angry aliens like you better missing vital organs and craniums. So, you and a small team of some sort of technicians are dispatched to a ship that needs repairs and is not responding to hails. About one minute into the game they pull the old "You go over there and do something alone while we wait like knobs on this side of the wall that will no longer be accessible." Thus starts your trip through bloodstained halls and pant soiling excitement. The game is paced pretty well for the majority. Sometimes it gets a little ahead of itself, and starts to become very predictable. Waiting for a slow set piece while fighting off waves of monsters etc. Only a few times did I feel a little rambo-like, which pulls you out of the experience slightly and starts to make you feel less anxious and more bored.
It's still a shooter, you point at stuff and make it die before it makes you die. It's third person over the shoulder a la Resident Evil 4. At first that view feels clunky and un-natural, but after a little while you get VERY used to it. Used to it enough that I forget it's in third person. The guns are fairly unique after Pistol and Assault rifle. There are floating saw blades and such, a lot of high power energy weapons. The beauty is no matter what your style you can upgrade them to suit your needs. I took the pistol-like weapon all the way to the end and it was a beast. The upgrading brings me to one of my only gripes.
Games with RPG elements run into these problems. Since you can use certain items to upgrade whatever you like, I kept one of my weapons the same way I found it, but I buffed up my stats. Taking your brittle scientist shell and replacing it with impenetrable super armor of super damage absorbtion takes away from the whole anxiety of running into another set of baddies. I had this problem from start to finish. The mobs would get extremely powerful for me, then I would become superman, then they would start eating me for breakfast, then I would become more overpowered etc. I would rather have recovered upgrading items throughout game at set points rather than leaving it up to me. Being overpowered enough to stop the game from being scary defeats the purpose. In some games where the horror is supernatural, there is nothing you can do to prevent it. In Dead Space, if it scares you, chances are you can shoot it and make it stop. So being overpowered just negates any fear.
For the majority the atmosphere was making me want to huddle in the corner. Creepy shadows, decent sound effects. The ambient noise is a little weird, sometimes being extremely loud but not building tension, and sometimes just perfect. The music too, it's like your suit has an alarm for detecting aliens' distance from you, but instead of a beeping it's really lame music. It's almost creepier when it was silent, since you can hear the mobs if they haven't ambushed you. Oh yeah, you get ambushed, constantly, sometimes enough it stops being scary. There are some supernatural mobs that are challenging to get a grip on, some being super strong, others so fast you can't track them with your cursor. Those I found interesting no matter what.
The last thing I wanted to touch on was the unique little easter eggies and unique gameplay thingies that I thought were great. There is a Zero-G Mechanic that is pretty fun, more fun is being in vacuums which make everything sound extremely hollow. I think you just hear whatever forces your suit to make vibrations. So you can't hear enemies coming until they are on top of you. The Zero-G mechanic makes for a few interesting platforming and head twisting puzzels. Since you can jump to almost any flat surface it gives you vicious vertigo. After making a move I would have to spend 5 seconds getting myself re-aquanted with my new point of view on the environment before continuing. There is also a sort of zero-g basketball game thing that is pretty fun to mess around with.
Bottom line: Ultimately, a solid shooter with decent atmosphere and enough story to make you pull through the repetetive parts. Just when it starts to outstay it's welcome there is a change of pace enough to re-harness your interest.
Recommendation: As most shooters are, they are short enough you can rent them and beat it. I will probably not play through it again, so I would probably rent it first if you're on console. For PC players, I think you would be better off playing it than not playing it. I took my time and rolled in at around 13 hours. That's after looking in almost every room off the main path and playing the extras for a while.
I would like to start off by saying that I am a huge wimp. In FEAR and Condemned, I was consistantly grinding my teeth waiting for the next thing to creep me out. I am that guy in the movies that frantically flails his gun around shooting at nothing, standing alone in the center of a room with no plan and no nerves, sweating, eyes nervously twitching from shadow to shadow. I skulk in corners and try to spend as much time as possible avoiding scary set peices in an linear game. Yeah.
So it's not the most original story in the world. Scientists screwed up, religion aching about it and sways the minds of the people in charge. The flood takes over stuff, etc etc. Angry aliens like you better missing vital organs and craniums. So, you and a small team of some sort of technicians are dispatched to a ship that needs repairs and is not responding to hails. About one minute into the game they pull the old "You go over there and do something alone while we wait like knobs on this side of the wall that will no longer be accessible." Thus starts your trip through bloodstained halls and pant soiling excitement. The game is paced pretty well for the majority. Sometimes it gets a little ahead of itself, and starts to become very predictable. Waiting for a slow set piece while fighting off waves of monsters etc. Only a few times did I feel a little rambo-like, which pulls you out of the experience slightly and starts to make you feel less anxious and more bored.
It's still a shooter, you point at stuff and make it die before it makes you die. It's third person over the shoulder a la Resident Evil 4. At first that view feels clunky and un-natural, but after a little while you get VERY used to it. Used to it enough that I forget it's in third person. The guns are fairly unique after Pistol and Assault rifle. There are floating saw blades and such, a lot of high power energy weapons. The beauty is no matter what your style you can upgrade them to suit your needs. I took the pistol-like weapon all the way to the end and it was a beast. The upgrading brings me to one of my only gripes.
Games with RPG elements run into these problems. Since you can use certain items to upgrade whatever you like, I kept one of my weapons the same way I found it, but I buffed up my stats. Taking your brittle scientist shell and replacing it with impenetrable super armor of super damage absorbtion takes away from the whole anxiety of running into another set of baddies. I had this problem from start to finish. The mobs would get extremely powerful for me, then I would become superman, then they would start eating me for breakfast, then I would become more overpowered etc. I would rather have recovered upgrading items throughout game at set points rather than leaving it up to me. Being overpowered enough to stop the game from being scary defeats the purpose. In some games where the horror is supernatural, there is nothing you can do to prevent it. In Dead Space, if it scares you, chances are you can shoot it and make it stop. So being overpowered just negates any fear.
For the majority the atmosphere was making me want to huddle in the corner. Creepy shadows, decent sound effects. The ambient noise is a little weird, sometimes being extremely loud but not building tension, and sometimes just perfect. The music too, it's like your suit has an alarm for detecting aliens' distance from you, but instead of a beeping it's really lame music. It's almost creepier when it was silent, since you can hear the mobs if they haven't ambushed you. Oh yeah, you get ambushed, constantly, sometimes enough it stops being scary. There are some supernatural mobs that are challenging to get a grip on, some being super strong, others so fast you can't track them with your cursor. Those I found interesting no matter what.
The last thing I wanted to touch on was the unique little easter eggies and unique gameplay thingies that I thought were great. There is a Zero-G Mechanic that is pretty fun, more fun is being in vacuums which make everything sound extremely hollow. I think you just hear whatever forces your suit to make vibrations. So you can't hear enemies coming until they are on top of you. The Zero-G mechanic makes for a few interesting platforming and head twisting puzzels. Since you can jump to almost any flat surface it gives you vicious vertigo. After making a move I would have to spend 5 seconds getting myself re-aquanted with my new point of view on the environment before continuing. There is also a sort of zero-g basketball game thing that is pretty fun to mess around with.
Bottom line: Ultimately, a solid shooter with decent atmosphere and enough story to make you pull through the repetetive parts. Just when it starts to outstay it's welcome there is a change of pace enough to re-harness your interest.
Recommendation: As most shooters are, they are short enough you can rent them and beat it. I will probably not play through it again, so I would probably rent it first if you're on console. For PC players, I think you would be better off playing it than not playing it. I took my time and rolled in at around 13 hours. That's after looking in almost every room off the main path and playing the extras for a while.
