I just finished Dead Space a few days ago. The delay in a review culminates as a result of a chance to reflect upon the game (and the fact I've been addicted to Metal Gear Solid 4).
But before I begin the review it's important to know that I'm a big fan of survival horror games. Not so much for the reason that they are scary and I like a good fright. Or for the resource management requirements to complete the game. It's mainly because they're generally hard games, especially if you play on the normal difficulty.
The story begins with your character, Isaac Clarke (in a thinly veiled homage to sci-fi writers Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke), a system engineer who happens to be placed on a mission to determine why a planet-cracker star-ship has not been transmitting any communications. Add this to the fact that Isaac's ex-girlfriend is on the ship and the emergency transmission she sends directly addressing Isaac by name and you're good to go on this mission. Once you arrive- things generally go down hill from there, as you face off against an alien organism which reproduces by infecting the bodies of the dead. Suddenly you're separated from the rest of your crewmates in a giant self-sufficient ship with nothing more than a plasma cutter and your rig (a suit protecting you from vacuum and other lethal environments). Horror fans should generally recognize this. To set this apart from other horror-genre games, Dead Space does what System-Shock 2 (possibly the greatest game ever) and Bioshock (the System-Shock 2 ripoff) did. You get a handle on the rest of the story through a number of audio, video and text logs you find strewn about the ship from the former crew members. With that you are able to piece the story together of what went wrong and how you might get out of this alive.
Gameplay wise, think Resident Evil 4. Isaac is controlled through an over-the-shoulder camera view. Button configuration is designed similar to RE4 as well, with one button bringing his weapon up and other button to run. Thankfully, Isaac is able to side-step, strafe-run and actually continue to move while aiming his weapon which makes battles a much more fluid affair, which is an advantage that you'll need. The Necromorphs (as the enemy in this game are called) aren't like the standard zombie-fare- these creatures dash towards you, employ hit-and-run tactics and are intelligent about evading your attacks. While most of the enemy fights are scripted, they are positioned in such a way that there are several ways of fighting back, whether by brute force, using the environment, or under extraenuous circumstances...running away. The weapon choices while meant to be creative and 'futuristic' still adhere to the standard FPS fare. One weapon is a pistol-like weapon (Plasma-Cutter), one is a rapid fire (Pulse Rifle), one is a shotgun like (Force Gun), etc.
What saves the game from the standard survival-horror spiel, however are three things. The story, the sound and the enemies. The story while taking advantage of techniques pioneered in SS2, is paced in such a way that the player is genuinely interested in continuing to play. Each chapter you play through brings you closer to understanding the Necromorph hive-mind and creates a disconcerting view of the characters you being with, slowly making the game less about an alien horror and more of a psychological horror. This is, in turn, helped by masterful audio. In some places, it matches a horror movie, with a string quartets playing a high stacatto when Isaac opens a door to witness a grisly scene. And speaking of grisly scenes, this is probably the goriest game ever made. In addition to the blood on the walls, writing on the walls in blood, and the obligatory buckets of blood, there's a lot of limp-lopping going on (enemy deaths and even Isaac's death brings about sometimes ridiculous results with regards to the strength and durability of his body- since when did a door shutting on you result in your entire body exploding?). Which brings me to the third point- the Necromorphs are constructed with the remains of their human host with a number of sharp blades and point appendages sprouting out from their shoulders, backs and whatever else. A surprising revelation early on is that head-shots no longer work. Instead, Dead Space awards you by lopping off the limbs of your foes and punishes you for adheering to the head-shot mentality found in most other games. Removing a limb reduces the enemy's health as well as reduces their means of attack to simple bites, whereas removing the head just makes them more aggressive and wastes ammo. It is a mistake most first-time players will make but the game is paced well enough to give you the time to appreciate this discovery.
A decent one-sentence way to describe this game would be to think Resident Evil meets Event Horizon (a movie with very similar premises featuring Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne). But regardless of whether you're a fan of either of those two, Dead Space still stands well on its own two (or more) legs.
