I’ve been around video games for a long time, and that experience has demonstrated to me that there are really only two routes a game can take to reach great success. It can either present truly original and groundbreaking ideas, in which case its flaws can be forgiven, or it can take existing ideas and execute them flawlessly, in which case its lack of originality will be overlooked. It’s possible to do both, but you will never find a financially or critically successful game that didn’t master at least one.

Dead Space has clearly chosen to follow the second path, and has done so brilliantly. You will find very little originality in the gameplay, and none at all in the story and setting. Most of the story is lifted directly from classic movies of the sci-fi/horror genre, and the gameplay conventions are immediately recognizable to anybody who has played Bioshock or Half-Life 2. Many games wouldn’t survive such blatant larceny, but Dead Space executes its theft with such excellence and attention to detail that you don’t really mind. It’s easy to forgive creative banditry that outshines the source material - just ask Vin Diesel. (If this confuses you, watch The Fast and the Furious. Then watch Point Break. Get my drift?)

In Dead Space you play the role of Isaac Clarke, engineer on a repair team sent to solve what they think is a simple communications problem on a giant mining vessel. What he finds instead is a labyrinth of bloody destruction wrought by an obscure combination of alien zombies and religious extremism among the crew. Isaac must make his way through the ship, staying one step ahead of the rampaging alien zombies and the gradual mechanical disintegration of the ship itself. As is appropriate for an engineer, Isaac’s missions mostly revolve around making repairs. Most of his weapons are modified tools of one sort or another, ranging from a wide-bladed energy cutter to a vicious little thing called a Ripper that projects a spinning saw blade out in front of you. This is a good thing because the enemies in the game are very resilient, and the game intends that you defeat enemies through dismemberment rather than direct damage. Your first order of business should always be cutting the legs off; they move a lot slower that way.

Isaac’s upgradeable environment suit also includes two clever little gadgets called Stasis and Kinetic Unit. The Stasis unit slows things down that are hit by it, while the Kinetic unit moves things around. One of Dead Space’s greatest successes is how well integrated these two abilities are. Many games introduce elements like this as gimmicks that are used only occasionally and only when a Giant Blinking Sign tells you it’s necessary. In Dead Space, there are constant opportunities to use them in both environmental puzzles and in combat. Not only can you use Kinesis to throw explosive tanks and fire extinguishers at your foes, you can even slash them to death with their own severed limbs. Stasis is just as frequently useful. Catching a leaping enemy in mid-air with the Stasis gun and then calmly blowing his arms and legs off with four precisely aimed shots while he flew towards me in slow-motion has to rank as one of my all-time favorite moments in gaming. Stomping on his head to finish him off once he hit the ground was just icing on the cake.

Rating :

Gameplay time : 15 hours

Replay Value : High

Favorite Weapon : Plasma Cutter

Least Favorite NPC : Kendra

Even more brilliant is the game’s mastery of atmosphere. This game is very, very creepy. The lighting in particular is superbly done, flickering and throwing deep shadows around the cramped interior of the ship. Enemies don’t just leap out at you, they move around on their own business, sometimes glimpsed out of the corner of your eye just as they pass around a corner, or appearing as a shadow behind you that’s already gone when you turn around. Don’t get to comfortable, because they’ll be right back there behind you as soon as you’re busy paying attention to something else. They do make a lot of noise; it’s nice to know that zombies are afoot, but it’s pretty scary when you can hear something nasty moving around and can’t see it.

Survival horror games frequently fail by making survival too easy. Once you have a shotgun it’s you hunting the zombies instead of them hunting you. Because the enemies in Dead Space take quite a bit of killing, you never really feel safe, no matter how well upgraded you are. Enemies will come at you from multiple directions at once, grabbing you by the throat as soon as you get too distracted shooting the limbs off the one in front of you. They’ll play dead too, as I discovered while walking up to loot a corpse only to have it casually decapitate me with a single blow.

You spend a lot of time moving around the ship, and frequently return to the same area multiple times. The interior of the derelict ship is labyrinthine, but Dead Space uses a clever mechanic that lets you project your route to the next checkpoint onto the floor. This is also helpful for recognizing the many side-paths that only lead to lootable lockers and boxes. There’s a lot of loot collection to do in this game if you’re so inclined, but it’s not really necessary. I found myself selling off the vast majority of the ammunition I picked up because I just didn’t need it. You get money and ammo off the zombies you kill too, so it piles up fairly quickly, allowing you to purchase new weapons or Power Cells with which you can upgrade your equipment or open locked doors.

All this backtracking can make the game feel a bit repetitive, especially if you’re spending a lot of time scrounging. The game moves along pretty quickly. I finished it in about 15 hours and I was quite thorough. Dead Space offers a New Game+ mode where you can start over with all your upgraded gear and some new toys as well, which helps with replay. They really missed an opportunity by not allowing you to switch difficulty levels between games.

As a gaming experience, Dead Space ranks among the better ones I’ve seen. Yes, the story isn’t particularly compelling and some of the deceased NPC video logs are more interesting than the main characters. The ending is a bit of a cheap shot dramatically, but honestly I didn’t mind. It’s a Fun Game to Play, and that’s really what we want from our sixty bucks, isn’t it?