Knights of the Cardboard Castle

I wasn’t expecting much from Dead Space, thinking that it was more or less a generic shooter. This was a 2008 game so I mentally prepared myself for less than stellar graphics too. Indeed the game menus seemed to justify this: they smacked of muddy textures and shoddy work. Later I learned that all of the UI elements in the game looked like that because they are all rendered in-game as 3D objects rather than implemented as crisp 2D surfaces. But I’ve since revised my opinion. This is actually one of the best looking games I’ve played recently and a solid, well-thought out game design to boot.

The Good

• It’s well-executed, incredibly atmospheric survival horror. The opening scene which shows your team approaching the gigantic mining vessel USG Ishimura is one of the best I’ve seen in any game. Not only is the first sight of the Ishimura utterly fantastic, you immediately get a sense of what’s going on, who the people around you are and what you’re supposed to be doing there. Just solid worldbuilding there. And I can’t help but give bonus points for any game that includes Oenomaus from the Spartacus series (okay the actor Peter Mensah to give proper credit).

• As I’ve mentioned, the graphics work is excellent. I guess that they only have to render a limited number of actors and all that in a relatively small space so they can devote more resources to making it all look pretty. But it really is impressive. The sound is even better. There are all manner of disquieting sounds throughout the Ishimura, contributing to the atmosphere and the tension. At the same time, audio cues are intelligently placed to alert you to something going on to one side or behind you.

• Dead Space is not a twitchy shooter. It’s played in an over-the-shoulder third-person view with the main character taking up nearly one-third of the screen real-estate. Your character moves and turns like a tank befitting the fact that he’s a janitor in a bulky space suit. You never have a 360 degree awareness of what is going on around you so you are always terribly conscious of being vulnerable should a threat suddenly appear behind you or even beside you. It’s a great design choice after you get used to it a bit and after playing this I may have to revisit Resident Evil 5 which I slagged a while back but works somewhat similarly.
• As a survival horror game, it’s also about conserving resources as much as possible. That means no regenerating health and making every shot count. Playing on hard difficulty, I’d say the game is tough but fair. I did come close to running out of resources at key points in the game, especially when rushed by large numbers of enemies or during boss battles, I always had enough to just pull through. This is a game that has you scrounging in every nook and cranny for every extra medkit and pack of ammunition, which is great!
• Shooting-wise, Dead Space differentiates itself by forcing the player to shoot off the limbs of enemies. While shooting at enemies’ torsos does do damage, it’s so inefficient that you’ll run out of ammo pretty quickly. Shooting off their legs slows them down (they’ll still creepily crawl towards you using their arms) and shooting off their arms will reduce the damage they can inflict when they get close. Learning to deal with all types of enemies involve variations of this. Some enemies for example are vulnerable only when they extrude tentacles that you can target, another is anchored to the wall with tentacles that you must destroy as they will keep spawning enemies while they’re still attached. It may not be that innovative but it’s quite fun.

The Not So Good

• Despite invoking the spirit of legendary sci-fi authors by naming the main character Isaac Clarke, the story is pretty crap. That the basic plot is generic is forgivable. That it relies on the player not playing attention is not. The big twist isn’t that a big of a surprise but in order to maintain plausible deniability for most of the game, the writers set up events and conversations to mislead the player, all of which is incongruous with the final reveal. As good as the journey is, the rationale for it is weak too. You’re literally the janitor in this game, being sent all over the Ishimura to perform various errands: hey Isaac, fetch this part and repair that, get this key to unlock that door. Even the Oenomaus NPC remarks, ‘It’s one thing after another! When will it end!’ Darn right.
• The Ishimura as a setting is great due to excellent graphics and sound work but not that great in the sense of creating a space that is interesting to explore or believable. In this regard, Dead Space falls way short of the System Shock and Bioshock games. Some levels are obviously designed based on what the writers wanted to take place there as opposed to whether or not it would make sense in-universe. For this reason, the jaded gamer takes one look at the implausibly wide expanse of the Ishimura’s bridge and thinks, ‘Uh oh, boss battle coming up!’
• The weapons in this game feel very satisfying to use. They hit hard with a visceral sense of kinetic impact. Unfortunately too many of the weapons are simply useless either because they are not appreciably better than the default plasma cutter or too expensive ammunition-wise to rely on. Since the game has an upgrade path for each weapon and upgrades are purchased with rare nodes, it only makes sense to focus on the weapons that you actually want to use, further discouraging casual experimentation. In a game like this, you’d expect to use whatever weapon you manage to scrounge ammunition for. Instead, you can pick two or three favored weapons and rely on them to get you through the whole game.

• As a minor point, while I liked how all the user interface screens (inventory, message screens, tasks journal etc.) don’t take the player out of the main world, I didn’t like how inconsistently the keymappings for them were. ‘M’ brings up the map screen but doesn’t close it again? ‘Tab’ closes all the interface screens but not the store screen for which you need to use ‘Esc’ instead? And whose bright idea was it to overload the ‘E’ key so much? Not only is it used to open containers, doors and interact with consoles, buttons and such, it is also used to pick up gear from the ground. So when you have a button you need to press in a place with lots of stuff strewn on the ground, it’s a crapshoot whether or not ‘E’ presses that button or picks something up.

Conclusion

I liked it a whole lot more than I expected. Overall it’s not as good as the Shocks though it is arguably creepier. But a very good survival horror game all around. I look forward to playing the sequel in the near future.