Thursday, December 11, 2008

Dead Space Review: Meh, it was alright

I had this sitting game installed on my desktop for a while now but I never got a chance to play it until last weekend. So the developers from EA Redwood Shores in California, have made this 3rd person survival horror action game that was release back in October on the 14th (20th for PC) for the PS3 and xBox360. Apparently there's a comic for the game as well which acts as a prequel to the game.  Also apparently there's an animated movie coming out which is also a prequel to the event of the game. Anyways, hit the jump to read more.

Story:

You play as Issac Clarke who is part of a rescue and maintenance squad deployed after receiving a distress signal from a mining/drilling colony on some planet. Anyways, your girlfriend who you have not been in contact with much, is on that ship and you run around the ship trying to find her but all you get are these video logs all around the ship.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is quite an interesting concept. The game has NO heads up display, meaning the only thing you see on the screen is literally, your character and the environment. How do you know your health and ammunition? Well on back back of Issac's suit is this circle that tell you how much health he has and as for ammunition, you can see it off the gun itself, which is pretty neat.

Combat System:

Well like any 3rd person shooter, the shooting is probably one of the most interesting things they did to this game. The monsters/zombies and things you have to kill, can only be killed by dismemberment, meaning that you have shoot off all its limbs. Head shots are NOT one hit kills anymore which is nice to see and an interesting change from typical games. So the shooting part was pretty cool and a nice touch but the melee combat system is broken. I can't do anything with it, can't kill anything because I don't know how to aim it and then even if it does hit the monster it just stuns it for a bit and I STILL have to use my gun to kill it. Kind of bad when ammunition doesn't come by often or when your running out of ammo and just want to get back to the store thing to buy some.

Zero G Movement:

So being called "Dead Space" there are part of the game where the player has to go through environments that have no gravity. I'm just going to be honest about it, it sucks. When you jump from one wall to another it feels like a zip line and you can't do anything while your in the air pretty much your stuck watching it. So it does NOT feel like your in space but visually it looks good, I'll talk about this later.



Presentation:

I think that everyone spends the most time here in a lot of the games nowadays. The looks of the game look really amazing, especially when your are outside in space. The effects they put did were really nice and the sound effects and music went really well with it as well. Like the first time you go out into space, you really get that "Wow" effect. You can hear all the air get sucked out and then nothing but silence and the sunlight with things just floating around, it was done really really nicely and then when you go back in you hear air rushing backing to re-pressure the environment. It feels very real.

Character design was probably a bit medicore, Issac's suit was a smart design because it goes well with the game because there's no HUD, which give a difference vibe to the game. The monsters on the other hand, there isn't a lot of variation in the designs. Like I think 2 or 3 of the monsters look pretty much the same but they do different things. Now if that was intended then I take it back but it not then yeah, not much variation.



Summary:

Aside from the nice graphics, and the sound effects, the game does not really stand out as a horror action game. Like, there's not a lot of new things here.

- There's the no HUD which is nice because it pulls the player into the game more

- The way to kill monsters is a something different and not offered in other games

I think they did a good job in trying to pull themselves apart from other horror games but they didn't fully  explored the things they could of done.

- Monsters lack in variety

- Melee combat system is broken

- Zero gravity rooms need some work with, the physics of it mainly

-annson

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