DEAD SPACE
Summed up in a line: Atmosphere
Memorable quote: OCHEDIN VALANNOR!
Genre: Survival Horror
Online: N/A
Open-world? No
Feels? Yes.
Platinum Hunt: Medium difficulty
Atmosphere. This game has an atmosphere—something most modern horror games lack. It’s not “oop, there’s a zombie, shooty it in its head and yay, we’re good”. It’s tense. It’s chilling. It’ll make you jump at sounds. It’ll make you want to NOT play it because of how terrifying it is.
Dead Space is the best horror game I’ve played, despite being released more than a decade ago, in 2008.
Gameplay
You play as Isaac Clarke, an engineer who’s been sent to a space mining colony aboard the USG Ishimura, a spaceship that’s gone completely silent. Upon reaching there, your ship is destroyed, and you find the residents of said USG Ishimura have turned into horrendous monsters—Necromorphs.
Unlike most horror games, Dead Space is different in that it specifically tells you NOT to aim for the head. Aim for the limbs, using ‘strategic dismemberment’, a quote from the game itself.
Unlike most action games, Dead Space is different in that you DON’T use guns. As an engineer, you make use of simple mining equipment, modified for slashing and dashing through limbs.
Expect lots of blood, guts and gore. And scares.
Story
There’s a story… I think. It’s not very good, but that actually helps it since you’re better able to imagine yourself as Isaac, instead of being forced to play as somebody else. Isaac is a silent protagonist; he never utters a single word throughout the entire game. But this very absence of any personality allows the horror to flourish. When Isaac gets his head cleaved off or split vertically down the middle (yes, that happens), you’re not living (well, dying) vicariously through him—it’s happening to you directly.
Give mama a hug!
Setting
Welcome to the USG Ishimura, a Planet Cracker class ship designed to mine materials from the farthest reaches of space. Mining isn’t a silent job. It’s loud. There’s lots of banging and loud sounds coming from everywhere. This only adds to the atmosphere, since you can’t tell whether the sounds from the vents are just the clanging of pipes… or a more sinister force lurking in the shadows…
Oh look, it’s a completely normal vent.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
Dying
If you die in the game, you die in real life. Dead Space features spankin’ new technology that allows the Necromorphs to actually jump out of your TV screen and kill you! Just kidding. But it is impressive that the game is coded to show the aftermath of your gory death. So when a literal skull moving with tendons jumps up at you and kills you, it’s not just going to hop down and go about its merry way.
It’s going to replace YOUR skull with itself and take control of your body, freakily ambling away in search of its next victim as the screen fades to black…
This…
…leads to this.
SHOULD YOU BUY IT FOR THE:
Graphics: Yes
Story: No
Gameplay: Yes
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