Intellectual Gamer

I’d like to get every ones attention I have a very important announcement to make. It is official EA has made a good game!!!! This is big news people, and should be especially significant as EA has only been successful with sport games in the past! Usually when I saw a good game idea I figured the best way to screw it up would be to give it to EA. I mean its EA….. EA made a good game that wasn’t sports based…. it’s madness!! However, perhaps this madness was an attempt to go with the theme of Dead Space itself.

Dead Space is a third person survival horror game in which crazyness seems to be the norm. If you are a fan of John Carpenters ‘The Thing’ Dead Space is a must play, as you can tell it must have had a lot of inspiration from the movie. The story follows a group of people sent to assist the USG Ishimura, a giant mining ship known as a planet cracker. You play as an Engineer named Issac Clark which is tested beyond his limits on the ship. The game for me was very story driven and as so I don’t feel it would be wise to disclose anymore specifics.

The game itself was a stressful playing experience for me in a good way. Although the game is not constantly throwing enemies at you it has balanced it well enough to keep you highly paranoid throughout the duration of it. Suspense, in my opinion, is the most nerve racking horror as Alfred Hitchcock would agree. Dead Space has applied this better than any other game I have ever played (although Call Of Cthullu for Xbox comes in a close second). The combat is really fun and never gets boring as there are a great variety of enemies and situations you’re placed in requiring different strategies (be it using the Mine Cutter to take out an individual enemy’s legs before removing an arm to finish the job, or freezing multiple enemies in stasis and then laying a timed mine at their feet with the Line Gun before turning your attention on a different horde). You will find that it is necessary to apply different solutions to different situations.

The game sits at a length of around 12 hours when you take your time, and is enjoyable enough to replay on a harder difficulty for a different type of experience. Because it is a story based game, however, your replays will be focused on killing in different ways rather than more insight into the story. Fortunately the games combat is good enough to make this an enjoyable experience.

Dead Space does everything well and has a ton of strengths, they follow.

Strengths:

• Sound: Great use of sound (when there is sound you’re scared when there isn’t you’re paranoid)
• Flow: The game moves with a purpose; you’ll never feel weighed down or burdened by pointless tasks and/or long loading screens.
• Combat: Varied amount of weapons with different specialties and purposes; fundamentally this makes every weapon a different experience.
• Scare: Good use of horror tactics, perhaps the best game ever at utilizing suspense.
• Customization: Fun customization system in which you need to allocate points strategically in order to upgrade equipments and weapons speed, capacity, width, damage, reload, and duration (to name a few).
• Story: Engrossing story makes you crave more information in the form of audio and text logs, as well keeps you focused on all the in game plot twists.

I have very few complaints about the game.
Weaknesses:

• Combat Discrepancies: Occasionally if an enemy is right up close to you you will shoot through them (I noticed this happen alot with the bigger guns and stasis).

Dead Space is simply a great game which really showcases the next generation of horror based games. If you are interested in a great survival horror action game make sure to pick it up!
My rating: Buy this game.

Love: The Plasma Rifle….. oh yes!! Finally a game that makes an assault rifle a precision weapon rather then a spray and pray type.

Detest: I disliked one part of the story, I choose not to disclose it for spoilers sake.

Bonus: There is a 6 part animated comic book for free on Xbox Live; download it and watch it after you beat the game. It is a very interesting prequel to it.

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