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| Isaac Clarke on the command deck of the Ishimura. |
Isaac Clarke is a member of a crew sent to determine why the starship USG Ishimura sent out a distress signal. Onboard Iasaac and his colleagues discover that the ship has been overrun with undead human/alien monsters called Necromorphs. It is up to Clarke and rest of the crew to escape the Ishimura while learning the origin of the Necromorphs and what they did to the ship.
The player controls Isaac as he makes his way through different parts of ship, completing whatever objectives he has been given by his crewmates.
The main enemy is the army of Necromorphs that have infested the Ishimura. Necromorphs are not bothered by weapons fire (though it can impede them), and like to attack Isaac up close, so the player has to kill them before they reach Isaac. Isaac has several weapons of varying effectiveness depending on the player’s skills at his disposal, like a flamethrower or a sonic boom gun.
The best way to kill the Necromorphs-which the game instructs the player to do early on-is to sever the Necromorphs limbs to kill them. Except for the first weapon Isaac acquires, none of the weapons are suitable for cutting off limbs at a distance, so the game is not being fair in that regard.
As the game is of the survival horror genre, enemies do not initially come in large groups, instead appearing suddenly around corners or out of vents to surprise the player. Near the end of the though, they stop being surprising and start attacking in lager groups, and the challenge becomes having enough ammunition to finish them off.
Scattered throughout the ship are items called power nodes. Isaac can use these nodes to upgrade his weapons in armor by making them more powerful, reload faster, etc. However, nodes can only upgrade one feature of a weapon or armor at a time, and the nodes are extremely rare. So the player has to decide what is the most important to upgrade.
Isaac will also find money lying around the ship, which he can use at the shops onboard. The shops carry items like weapons and health packs, as well as more power nodes. Like the nodes money is very limited so the player has to decide whether it is more important to buy nodes, new weapons, or ammo and health.
There are four types of puzzles the player will run into in the game involving slowing down fast moving objects, lifting heavy objects out of the way, running quickly through a vacuum, and maneuvering through a zero-g environment. None of these puzzles are frustrating, but they are never desirable diversions either, and only the vacuum and zero-g areas are impressive challenges.
The Ishimura is a very scarily-designed ship. Not a single hallway or room is well lit, at least not for very long. What few light sources there are create a dull orange and brown haze or cast shadows. Most of the hallways are black, gray, or dark brown. There are vents everywhere, perfect for Necromorphs to jump in and out of. Since all of the ship adheres to the same dark decorum, it could start to feel a similar after a while. But the different designs corresponding to the different sections of the ship, like the medical wing looking more sterile, the engine area being filled with pipes, or the atrium being a garden, keep the game from feeling redundant.
What Dead Space really has going for it is its addictiveness. Exploring new parts of the ship, systematically cutting the limbs off of enemies, finding new logs, and upgrading weapons are all so simple and rewarding that it is easy to keep doing them again and again.
The storyline is okay. At the beginning it feels like the game is just coming up with excuses to have Isaac run across the ship to fix things. It becomes more reasonable later when more important events start to happen. The back story is nicely fleshed out through the discovered logs. It perhaps shares a little too many similarities to the 1999 computer game System Shock 2.
It is not really scary though. The Necromorphs are horrifying to look at, but there are only about a half dozen, so it is easy to get used to them. Same with the ways that they surprise the player, they can only jump out of the ceiling before it stops being a surprise.
The game can be a bit short, taking a little under twelve hours to complete with no serious challenges. But it stops before the limited types of enemies and the same dark atmosphere really starts to get boring, so it is fine.
Dead Space is a fun shooter that anybody can enjoy. It is not really scary, but it is very interesting.
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