[Multiplatform] Dead Space. Drop-kicking babies in space.

Alternate title: "Holy Shit EA makes an orginal game and it's GOOD!"

I picked this up last week after I saw the trailer and had a sudden craving for some ultraviolence. I expected a fun zombie killin' spree, but what I got is the sci-fi horror equivalent of Bioshock. It's that good. The graphics, audio design, and plot are all polished to a level synomymous with EA's ridiculous sums of money. Hopefully this isn't just a fluke, and EA will continue to make quality games instead of the quantity of carbon copy games they are known for.

Granted, it's not all original. The camera angle and gamplay are very reminiscent of RE4, but oddly enough, EA has improved upon it instead of copying it directly. Dead Space has a great sense of immersion as the HUD is completely removed. Instead all useful info you need is shown on the back of the main character's suit, or in holographic displays that pop up in front of him. Also, the kinesis module is basically a grav gun. But hey, Bioshock's telekinesis plasmid was the same thing too.

The necromorphs are not typical zombie fare either. Sure, some of the basic ones will walk up slowly, but more advanced versions will sprint up to you, or even leap across rooms at you (especially in Zero-G environments). Also, the standard zombie-killin rules need not apply. Shooting the torso or removing the head often just pisses them off. Hacking off the legs and arms is where the big damage is, and different types of necromorphs are best handled in different ways. You quickly learn that shooting the bloated belly of the necromorph dubbed the "Pregnant" leads to a nasty surprise.

What really amazed me was the quality of the sci-fi. When you are in a vacuum, you can't hear anything except your own breathing and the beating of your heart. The only other sounds you hear are vibrations that come through your suit, be it a necromorph ripping into you, the firing of your weapon, or vibrations through the hull you are standing on. Another nice touch is that the flamethrower doesn't work in environments without oxygen.

Long story short, go buy it if you are a survival horror fan. We need to let EA know that we like it when they put out a quality game, and EA listens best to the type of talking wallets do.

For more info on drop-kicking babies, see this dev diary video.

Edit: For those of you who get it for PS3 or 360, there are DLC suits available, so far they are all recolors of the level 5 suit. Each console gets one suit themed after the console (black armor, blue-glow visor for PS3, white armor, green-glow visor for 360), and these suits are free to download for a couple of weeks from the game's release date. A third DLC suit that you have to pay for is the Scorpion suit, which a red recolor with a red visor and a scorpion logo on the helmet. I guess the scorpion suit also came for free with preorders.

Just thought I would take a moment to clarify this because on the EA forums there are tons of questions about the suits. Also, copy-pasta from journal entry:

Originally Posted by me

Word of warning though, using the DLC suits makes the game a lot easier. Normally you'd have to find the schematics for suit levels 2 through 5 to unlock them, and then save up enough money to buy them too, which is over 100,000 credits for all of them. With the DLC suit you have a level 5 suit at the first store you come across, for free. And, you can't switch back to a lower level suit once you put the DLC suit on.

The suit doesn't add much armor, but you gain five inventory slots per suit level, so ammo and health pack conservation become way less critical when you use the DLC suit.

Another edit: Trailers for you! (go to youtube page to watch in high quality)

YouTube Video

YouTube Video

YouTube Video

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Meia

We'd kid each other when we saw they carry MONEY.

Well, they were all crew members once, and a lot are still wearing tatters of their former uniforms. It seems plausible enough they'd have money or ammo left in the pockets.

There's only one part that I thought was kind of a ridiculous plot point in terms of plausibility, and that's at the very end of chapter 8. I won't spoil it though.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yeah, I watched those. They aren't crucial to the plot of the game, but the game does occasionally reference something from the comics. And yeah, the comics do take place before the game. They tell what happened to the colony on the planet, and how the infection spread to the mining ship the game takes place on.

Not sure where all they are available, but I watched them from gametrailers.com.

Gametrailers.com - Dead Space: Reviews, Trailers, and Interviews

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Hah, I just added the info about suits to my first post since it's such a common question. Yeah, you guess correctly. Level 2 suit adds 3 slots, level 3 suit adds 5 more, etc.

Originally Posted by Meia

Even babies? XD I still fucking laugh at that. "HEY there's a baby, shoot it, lets see how much it'll cough up.

Er, yeah. That's a bit harder to explain I guess. I dunno, babies put everything in their mouths right? I guess undead ones shouldn't be an exception. And hey, whatever they stuff in their faces wouldn't choke them to death, for obvious reasons.

What amuses me more is when you find a container marked "emergency supplies" and open it to find money. Different kind of emergency, I guess. "But I really really really need that pair of shoes! It's an emergency!"

Edit: Since the developers of this game are obviously fans of sci-fi, I wonder if the main character's name, Isaac Clarke, is a reference to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.

Another Edit: Looool, there's even an achievement for drop-kicking babies! I got it last night.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Heh, nice observation. I totally missed that. I've mostly been scratching my head over the meaning of the ending. I mean, it's a great ending, it just raises a lot of questions.

Just curious, what difficulty did you beat it on, and which weapons became your favorite 4?

I was speaking idiomatically.

I actually liked the contact beam, but I seem to be in the minority. I found myself calling it the "boss cannon" and the "brute rifle", as that's pretty much all I used it for. Unless contact energy started taking up too much of my inventory, then I'd waste some for extreme overkill on regular enemies.

It is ridiculously powerful though. I also played on normal, and even without any upgrades it could one-shot the final boss's weak spots.

My fave 4 were the Ripper, Force Gun, Line Gun, and Contact Beam.

Edit: A couple things I didn't realize until my second playthrough:

Spoiler:

The two crew members that you get a lot of audio logs from, Joseph Temple the engineer and Elizabeth Cross from hydroponics, are the ones that Dr. Mercer executes in front of you in the mess hall. Made me sad because they seemed like two of the most competent survivors on the ship, and they survive all the necromorphs only to be killed by that bastard. I enjoyed re-killing him a lot.

Another small one: on one of the mining decks you get an audio log from a mining engineer that blows off three of his limbs with a plasma cutter so he'll be an ineffective necromorph when he dies. Well in the room just before that one, you encounter a necromorph that only has one arm and no legs. A nice touch.

How ya doing, buddy?

Yahtzee bump.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...333-Dead-Space

FELIPE NO

He's incredibly biased and rarely has anything nice to say, but he is amusing.

It is true though, the game is excellent at startling you, but not so good at scaring you. All the scariest bits are completely harmless. Of course, you don't know that on the first playthrough.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

There seems to be one Wii game every year that makes me wish I had one. This is this year's one Wii game.

Jam it back in, in the dark.