Dead Space aka "DS" is a futuristic third-person-shooter game starring an engineer named Issac Clarke who, being part of a small repair team, boards a spaceship that has lost communications. Something is definitely wrong on the "Ishimura" and things get rather ugly and troubling.

Presentation: EA went through the trouble of making comics prior to launch and also made animated versions of those comics which served their purpose to promote DS and set the setting for the game. Pretty much every menu and interface looks very good, top notch actually. There is also a medium amount of dialog throughout the game which drives the plot and makes Issac's course and goals seem fairly non-linear.

The game begins with a not too long intro starting with a short video of Issac's female friend apologizing for unknown reasons and then shows a planet, debris, and of course the troubled Ishimura and it all looks fairly realistic and extremely well developed, even the ship Issac is in looks amazing and all this draws you in.

Audio: Sound in DS is top notch. Things like menus and item pickups all have their own sound and it's very well done. There is quite a bit of ambiance on the Ishimura, it also at times really makes you feel like you're on a space ship with it's technological and sometimes very bassy noises. Enemies sound pretty good and original, and you can hear them very well with a decent surround sound setup. Having a decent sound setup will improve your enjoyment of Dead Space by a large amount. Issac, as quiet as he is, really sounds good and believable at times with his melee grunts and yells. The weapons sound very nice which is great and as it turns out, most of the weapons are actually just dangerous tools used for industrial purposes which adds a lot to the creative scope of DS.

One of the things that makes DS all the more realistic and engrossing is the lack of sound when Issac is in the vacuum of space. This has the effect of making enemies silent, which adds a slight bit of tension depending on how well you can handle yourself in third-person-shooters. The only thing you hear when in the vacuum of space is the vibrations within Issac's "RIG" which is basically his armor.
The icing on the cake is that you can adjust music, voice, and sound effect levels at anytime.

Video: Everything looks awesome in DS. Most of the menus are rendered in real time and come off of Issac's RIG as 3D holographs. This is amazing to see, has never been done before, and keeps you locked into the game's atmosphere. As you scroll around the inventory tab, Issac's head locks on to whatever you have selected which gives DS some darn good character. The controls are rather limited while in the menu, but you can still move around and avoid enemies to a degree, but it's better to be ready at all times.

The level of detail in DS is unprecedented, and level layouts are crafted so incredibly well that the high amount of backtracking shouldn't bother you at all. As you return to previously visited areas, you will often notice both small and large changes in the appearance and ambiance of the environment. All the design in Dead Space is top notch - weapons, enemies, the Ishimura, and Issac all look very good. You'll be going into the vacuum of space on occasion and the view as you can imagine is fantastic.

The 3D map can be handy for finding stores, save points, workbenches, and oxygen/stasis stations, but visibility in the 3D map is pretty low, it is a little hard to see clearly at times - especially on a small TV, and the map view controls are odd - at least for me (Vertical and horizontal orbiting aren't consistent with each other). Perhaps that is why there is a handy feature which always keeps you on track - Issac's RIG has a module in the palm which can display a line which directs you anytime you want, it looks great, but you can't move while it's active. Superb game design. The lighting in the game for the most part is the way it should be. The game displays a variety of environments ranging from well lit hallways and rooms with outstanding detail to dim foggy areas with airborne particles and dust with sometimes red tinged back lights. Having a high quality and preferably large display is the most important factor in experiencing DS the way it was meant. You can always adjust the games brightness to suit your style, and optimizing your display will make the game all the more intense and frightening. Please note that you should be careful when playing Dead Space because there are sometimes dark rooms with rapid flashes of bright light, it can be irritating, so I recommend you set your TV's picture/contrast and brightness correctly.

There are a few minor graphical problems I've seen. Some shadows look like large black Lego pieces, but while it does take away some of the game's feel, it's not that big of a deal. There is a bit of poor lighting at times, but I see this all the time in video games and it's almost not worth mentioning. The final flaw is that item notifiers, which appear in Issac's RIG's unique display when an item is within pickup range, can sometimes obstruct your view while aiming (but you can pick up items while aiming) or when you might have two notifications overlapping. There have also been times when I had a full inventory and was trying to pick up a money item, but the health pack that was a good meter away was taking priority over the money so it took a slight amount of tinkering around to take the money (One way to remedy this is to use telekinesis to pick up the item).

Gameplay: The highlighted feature of this game is that enemies must be dismembered to be killed (Don't shoot it's head off, it makes it mad). Some enemies present you with slightly different weak points to fire at, and limbs can be severed at many different points so limbs will usually come off in all sorts of ways, even Issac's limbs will be removed if he suffers an attack at critical health.

Issac obtains the ability to hinder the movements of enemies in an area as well as machines using the "stasis module," which would normally be a tool used in mining operations. This give the player the option to strategically slow down a singular or small group of enemies and stasis is also used to solve minor puzzles. Issac's environment is full of movable objects which can be moved using "telekinesis" or just by running into them, the same is true for the various body parts you'll see during the course of the game. Telekinesis will allow you to levitate enemy limbs and explosive canisters and fire them at enemies which can be very effective.

One thing you might find strange is that body parts tend to get tangled in Issac's legs, but it doesn't effect his movement whatsoever because the body parts don't seem to have much mass to them, it's kind of a physics flaw in my opinion and doesn't fully look correct, but it keeps Issac from getting stuck on things. Things like severed heads roll around like boccie balls and the noises that various debris make can be a little annoying, so it's best to walk around dead bodies.

EA spent a lot of time and effort to capture/create high quality animations for almost all of Issac's animations. Issac truly acts and moves in a realistic manner and this, along with the creativity of not having a traditional HUD, makes the gameplay look rather cinematic. The one animation that makes Issac act robotic is when you aim the camera behind him and then draw your weapon making Issac snap a 180 and aim in no time at all, but it's for the sake of the game. One could argue that they should have made a 180 command to compliment the feel of the game, but nobody's perfect.
Everything else is also beautifully animated - guns, the Ishimura's advanced technology, the enemies, floating objects in Zero Gravity, etc.

The weapon designs are very creative and futuristic and it is great fun utilizing whatever weapon that you want to remove threats. One thing I noted was that a certain enemy can be killed the same way every time which kind of removes some of the feel from DS because you'd expect those enemies to behave more randomly, but unfortunately, dispatching them can be fast with two easy steps, that is, if they aren't scurrying through vents trying to flank you - which they do often and well. The enemies themselves don't vary greatly, and while the basic enemy comes in a variety of different styles the game would have been better with a few more enemy species.

Weapons can be upgraded and certain rooms can be entered using rare items called power nodes. Items can be "sold" at "stores" in exchange for resources used to "buy" weapons, power nodes (for about the price of a weapon), med packs, ammo, and higher tier RIGs, but you need to find items called schematics in order to buy these things. Issac's inventory space and armor is enhanced when buying RIG enhancements which is very convenient or, if you have the XBox Exclusive Elite RIG, you are granted maximum inventory space, which saves time and can make the game a little easier. Items can be stored safely in stores and they can be dropped on the floor and picked back up at anytime the player decides. There are various aspects that can be enhanced for Issac's current equipment at the workbench so upgrading can be applied to weapons, Issac's RIG, and the stasis/telekinesis modules within a sort of grid system which reminded me of Final Fantasy X. All this gives the game a very cool balance and gives the player the opportunity to make unique decisions.

The controls are very easy to learn and feel much like that of Gears of War. The button layout is awesome, with one of the buttons set to quickly heal Issac by consuming the lowest tier health item you have in stock.

When exploring the Ishimura, you might find that some doors (Usually the larger ones) take a while to open. It's almost as if the game was seamlessly loading more of the level, but it shouldn't be a problem because depending on what difficulty you play on, Dead Space is a survival horror game and having patience and a cool head go a long way.

If there's one thing that really puts me off about Dead Space is that even on Hard I get showered with health items and excessive amounts of ammo, which leads me to believe that the hardest setting "Impossible" (Only available after beating the game once) is all too possible (Which is very disappointing). Perhaps this is because I'm used to the difficulty of games like Ninja Gaiden Black.

Synopsis: Dead Space isn't just a solid, high quality game, it's a symbol of what a next generation, high definition experience should be. So if you got a "game room" in your "man cave" or something like that then this game should be in your collection. It has a good captivating story and flow in a futuristic setting and great sound, visuals, and gameplay. All those things together give Dead Space a lot of "atmosphere" and it can make the game feel very intense because it makes you feel like you're there. Dead Space is also casual player friendly and could easily be someone's first "scary game" experience because of it's 4 difficulty settings to suit anyone's style of play.

If you took Doom 3 for it's space setting with monsters, Resident Evil 4 for it's hit zone battle mechanics and "merchant" features, The Thing for it's style of monsters and horror, and Gears of War for it's controls and put them together in an amazing, original, and unsurpassed way, you got yourself EA's first survival horror game, Dead Space.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/21/08,