One of the best sci-fi horror games out there. Amazing ambience, story and gameplay. This is the game equivalent of the first Alien movie.

The story puts you on a mining station "Ishimura" after responding to a distress call. On arrival you and your two crew mates crash land on the station and find out that the station is overrun by creatures called necromorhps. It is up to you to figure out what's exactly going on at the station, find your girlfriend who was stationed there and get out.

The story is quite interesting and takes through the different parts of the ships where you gather bits and pieces to solving the mystery of what exactly happened. Takes quite a while to go thrugh all the chapters but it's engaging, interesting and at no point repetitive.

Graphics still hold up very nicely - the level design is very nice and there are just a few areas you will re-visit. The audio layer is amazing and gives a lot to the ambience. The thumps in the air ducts, the humming of machines and the echo of your footsteps. Makes your hair stand up.

As far as mechanics go - this is somewhat of a 3rd person shooter but the array of weapons and the way you fight the enemies is not from a standard shooter. Most of the weapons are energy weapons each with its own distinguish ammunition. The way you use them against the necromorphs is you need to cut off their limbs rather than going for the classical headshots. This makes for a very interesting mechanic where the first thing you aim at are the legs - at least for the most enemies.

Additionally you get a stasis power which lets you slow down the enemies affected by the stasis field which comes in handy with a bigger amount of enemies. There is a couple of different enemy types and most of them differ significantly from each other requiring a bit different approach which is really nice.

The only problem I've had is that you can tell that the game was designed for console. And the sensitivity on the mouse changes when you go into aim mode and feels a bit sluggish. But its not very hard to get used to it and enjoy this great game.

A must play game.

I bought Dead Space at launch on Xbox 360 in 2008. I was going through a (stupid) phase of playing games on hard to start out. My reasoning at the time was "it really makes you engage with games in a way the developer intended!" or something. What proceeded was be ruining a bunch of games for myself by playing them on hard. Dead Space was the final of these. Halfway through the game, I learned that there were cheat codes. Press Start, and on the menu press a series of buttons and boom, free money, free upgrade items, refills to energy meters. So I said "fuck this" and cheated my way through the game, hitting every enemy with stasis like a cheesy clown cartwheeling through a haunted house. I never felt like I truly beat the game, and I always lamented that decision. For years after, I thought about replaying it. On normal difficulty. Finally, in 2022, it was dirt cheap on the EA store. The remake is a stone's throw away. It was October. The time was now.

Dead Space holds up remarkably well, feeling only a little dated at times. The atmosphere can't be beat. It's technically competent. It's scary as hell, with masterful timing (especially in those first few hours). But instead of giving you a breakdown of why it's great as both a game and general horror media, I'll address some of the criticisms you may have read in 2008, and see how much worse/better they feel through 2022's lens.

I recall hearing the same criticisms then: The game is a few hours too long. There's too much back-tracking. The enemy diversity isn't the best. The story has too many "Oh no! Now this thing broke go fix it" moments. The "asteroid" minigame is the worst. The plasma cutter, your starter weapon, is too good and you can (and might want to) complete the game entirely with it.

None of those really drag the game down too much for me, or make the game feel particularly "old". The length did a little, for me, but I'm a weird grump now and if an action game takes more than 7 hours to beat I get all flustered. There's backtracking, sure, but sometimes it works with the tension. For example, in one area early on you see Oxygen refill stations in a room. What for? You leave and never use them. So somewhere in the back of your metagaming head you go "oh boy, something is going to go down here, later." And it works to a degree.

The enemy diversity is a tough one to solve. The game's intentionally slow controls might not work with more complex enemies, so they need to be variations on a theme. Still, I felt the game had enough enemies to keep me busy while allowing me to develop a rhythm once I knew their weaknesses.

The game's narrative flow gets frustrating towards the end, I'll admit. There's not much of a story here, and what we get is mostly told through the audio and text logs. A religious cult. An illegal mining operation. A government coverup of alien life. It's all great stuff, but we don't hear it out of the characters' mouths. All anyone ever tells us is "Isaac, you fixed the oxygen pumps, but now the bidets in the restroom are spraying blood!" You fix one thing, and then 2 more go wrong over and over and over. It happens to often that by the end you just throw your hands up and say "let me just die, then." Again, there is a compelling story here, but it's not Isaac's. It's still a joy to learn all you can about it.

In Dead Space there are 2 sections where you have to use a mounted gun to defend the ship against incoming objects. It sucks. It's the worst. But since I was playing on PC I put by controller down and used my mouse and it was doable. If I was stuck doing them with the controller only, like on the 360, I don't know how I'd feel. I remember it sucking then, and it still sucks. It's really the worst bruise on the face of the game, because unless you have a mouse it's extremely frustrating.

The plasma cutter. The issue here for me is less about how awesome the plasma cutter is (it's so good), but more about how not good some other weapons are. The itemization would use some work. I played the game with 4 weapons (you craft them, so you can choose your loadout). Plasma cutter, line gun (a slower, bigger plasma cutter), the force gun (knocks enemies to the ground and gives you time but does minimal damage), and the ripper (a floating buzzsaw that looks cooler than it works). The 2 weapons I needed to use most often are the plasma cutter and the line gun. The ripper and force gun are situational guns that are great against certain enemies but are clunky and weak against others. However the game gave me so, so, so, so, so, so, SO MUCH ammo for the ripper and force gun. My inventory was filled with ammo I didn't need for guns I barely used, while my plasma cutter and line gun were always low. It's like the game read what guns I didn't use and gave me ammo for them specifically. At the end of the game I sold my ripper blades so I would stop getting ammo drops from it. Because at the end of the game ammo can be scarce and I needed to maximize my plasma cutter/line gun drops. I found that to be the most frustrating of all of the issues. The drops. I would leave a room with all the boxes opened, glittering with ripper blades I refused to pick up. I'm sure some people put them to good use, but not me.

In summation, Dead Space holds up really well in 2022. It makes me nervous about the remake, because it's not that rough around the edges. What could they do, other than a facelift to make it that much better? We'll see, but if you want to play the original I urge you to do so. It's cheap and a great time.

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure

Game number 31 was Dead Space. This is a survival horror game that features 3rd person shooter combat. You are an engineer going through a broken down space ship and need to uncover the mystery of how it has gotten to be in this state. Throughout the game you need to defeat waves of aliens in order to repair the ship, discover the mystery, and escape.

The story of this game is centered around the main character: Isaac. Isaac is an engineer who, along with a few other people, have received a distress signal from the giant ship, the Ishimura. They decide to go in and figure out what is causing this distress signal and to fix the ship. Additionally, Isaac’s wife is on board the Ishimura and he wants to save her. Quickly, they find out that aliens have infested the ship and Isaac becomes separated from the rest of his crewmates. Isaac needs to fight through hordes of aliens in order to make his way through the ship and fix all the broken parts.

The combat in this game is actually really awesome and has a uniqueness that sets it apart from the million other Xbox 360 3rd person shooters. Each of the aliens could be brought down by just shooting them, but it would take an extreme amount of bullets and you would quickly run out. Instead, Dead Space wants you to destroy the limbs of the aliens and upon breaking off a limb massive damage is caused to it. This causes you to have different tactics when fighting each enemy and really helps the game not become too repetitive.

In addition to gunplay, you also get some super powers such as freezing time for the enemies. These are very useful and will help you traverse the levels.

Some places in the game will have zero gravity and you will have a time limit because your suit only has x amount of oxygen in it. I like these zero gravity sections and they work better than you may think. You can fly around shooting monsters and you won’t get too disoriented.

Overall, Dead Space is a stand out title in the Xbox 360 library for its unique gunplay and creepy space vibes. I think this game should be played by anyone who likes either horror games or shooters of the era. Really, I think that anyone will find a decent time here and actually found the game super fun. (9/10)

I spent 8 hours, 10 min, and 14 sec playing Dead Space.

I have spent a total of 326 hours and 21 min on the Road to 360 so far.

Next game: Knight’s Contract

When I was in my mid to late teens, Event Horizon came out and quickly became one of my favourite movies within one of my favourite movie genres, sci-fi horror. There was just something about that oppressively tenebrous space atmosphere with shocking imagery that stuck with me for long and made me return to it time and time again. Years after I played Dead Space, I remember watching one of the devs talk about how they took inspiration from that movie when making the game. Suddenly, I realised my overwhelmingly positive view of it was in a big part driven by that emotional connection, which I hadn’t even noticed up until that point. Dead Space is a space horror epic, an influential classic in its own right, modelling itself after pre-21st century space horror to great success.

I had an awesome time playing it again recently and revisiting the Ishimura with its tense atmosphere and horror packed visuals. And more than that, it was a joy to re-experience its groundbreaking limb severing mechanic. There may have been some before it, but personally I had never played anything with such a well accomplished locational damage implementation before this game, and even now I’m hard pressed to find something that feels distinctively better. There are few things as satisfying as shredding necromorphs to pieces, bit by bit. This mechanic, along with the sound that accompanies it, gives every single one of those moments a very visceral, enjoyable feel. And this was just one of the impressive mechanics they implemented, along with stasis, telekinesis and the highly original weapons (the plasma cutter ranks among my all time favourite weapons in any game). All this drastically set the game apart from the competition upon release. Graphically, the game holds up quite well to this day, making use of an incredible atmosphere, lighting effects, and the sense of space wonder it brings to the player every time they look out the station to soak up the exterior setting. Punctuating all of this is an amazing soundscape that never feels out of place and highly contributes to the eeriness. The story is also well told, though if I’m being honest I remember being more taken aback by it when I first played it than I was this time around.

All this praise doesn’t mean Dead Space has no flaws. There is a bit of movement jank, the zero gravity sections are a pain to navigate through, and the menu feels noticeably clunky (all these issues are fixed in Dead Space 2). At the same time, the game may feel a bit too formulaic for some: you get on a tram, get the story told to you via a bunch of audio and text logs, and are instructed to do/go to A. Then something goes wrong, meaning you need to do/go to B in order to fix A, which often involves light puzzle solving, and back on the tram you hop. Most of this wasn’t new and it was actually commonplace at the time - DOOM 3 and Bioshock are just a couple of the known examples that used similar formulas before it -, but it’s still easy to notice the repetitive pattern regardless. However, none of these things affect the enjoyment of this fantastic game in any meaningful way. And none of them keep me from ranking Dead Space amongst my very favourite space horror games. I really hope they don’t fuck up the remake. 9/10.

You play as Isaac Clarke, an engineer who is sent with a small repair crew in response to a distress call from a deep space mining ship called the USG Ishimura. You dock only to find that everyone have been brutally killed and mutated into an aggressive alien species called the Necromorphs.

Unlike your standard zombies the Necromorphs are basically impervious to shots aimed at the chest and head. Instead you need to severe the limbs in order to take them out. Armed with only your plasma cutter and other mining tools, you need to find out what happened and get off the ship before you are killed.

I played this on PC and it holds up very well for its age. The cramped, dark, labyrinthian decks of the Ishimura along with excellent lighting, sound design and music provide a very immersive, isolated feel to this survival horror game.

The story isn't ground-breaking but it keeps you moving as you find out about death cults and alien artefacts. It has a very Event Horizon, Alien movie vibe to it.

The controls are a bit sluggish but I think the developers intended to make Isaac slow in order to increase the tension. Some people might find that annoying but you get used to it pretty quickly.

Definitely give this a try if you like horror and sci-fi.

I really liked Dead space. Back in 2007, when it was first announced, I got hyped up immediately. The whole concept of the game, the horror, the atmosphere, it was something fresh and new. And my God, it looked so damn beautiful.

The story is really strong and whole spinoffs, movies and extra lore has been created from it. It is dark, creepy and full of plot twists. In the basics, you are Isaac Clarke who joins a rescue operation on the big colonization ship the USG Ishimura after they lost contact with it. After 15 minutes, the game changes from a rescue mission, to the deepest desire to be rescued. Along the way, you do everything in your power to survive and get the hell off of the USG Ishimura that the horrors, called Necromorphs, have taken over. They are all guided and mutated by a strange object called the Marker. You feel its presence everywhere and it drives you to insanity with hallucinations.

Back in 2008, Dead Space was the scariest game I ever played. And playing the first F.E.A.R. games, that is saying something. The perfect atmosphere and the constant feeling of dread and danger kept me on edge with every step. You never knew when some of those 4 armed abominations would jump out of the nearest vent.

Of all the Necromorphs, the first ones you encounter are the most disturbing. Their half-human appearance and their missing jaws send chills down my spine. The Necromorphs come in different variants and some are just human heads with tentacles, walking hands or a screaming guy, pinned to the wall with four murderous tentacles. When you get killed by an enemy, the small cut scene that follows is just brutal. You get sliced in half, the head with tentacles that I mentioned earlier will behead you and attach itself in your body, letting you shamble around like a lifeless shell. It’s so violent and epic.

The gameplay mechanics are excellent. You find new weapons on your path to safety and can collect power nodes to upgrade them. You can also upgrade your health and statis (slow-motion attack thingy) with these nodes. You can find cash, laying around that you use to buy ammo and health packs in the store. I also really like the idea that your health meter is on your back and that there is no visible GUI. Every counter or information is either on the weapon itself or on you. You can open a holo-screen with a map and objectives but you still see Isaac interact with it, rather than the game pausing and showing you an overlay.

Like mentioned, Dead Space looked, and still looks, amazing. The graphics are realistic with the ultimate dark and grim horror theme. The animations and walk cycle of Isaac, in which he carefully moves one step at the time is just perfect.

The music is just perfect, because there is no music. The only thing you hear are creepy sounds in the distance, a metal pipe that falls over without anyone present near it, creepy voices, rumbling in the vents around you and when one of those jaw-less, spawns of hell is creeping up behind you, you don’t hear a damn thing and get an instant heart attack.

Every step in Dead space can be deadly and you never know what it going to happen next. This mechanic is so incredibly well implemented that I got the actual feeling of fighting to stay alive, that today, I did not experience in any other game. I also cared a lot for the main character Isaac and felt a deep desire to do everything in my power to keep the poor soul safe and alive.

The ending gives lot of room for more story and more games, something that eventually happened in the future.

Dead Space defines my “modern history” of gaming, back when the PlayStation 3 was hot and new and it will always be one of my all time favorites.

Playtime: 10 hours 10 minutes (Easy playthrough)

Intro

Dead Space is a third-person shooter with RPG and horror elements. You move through a space ship, shoot aliens, gather/sell/buy stuff and listen to people on the opposite side of impenetrable windows. Along the way you get/upgrade weapons and skills.

The Good

• Looks really good for a 14 year old game. The graphics are still quite decent.
• The ship, weapons, set pieces and suit are all realistic parts of the mining operation.
• Cutting off enemy limbs is fun. Yes, i kinda miss Soldier Of Fortune.
• Stasis and (tele)kineses are nifty powers.
• Surprisingly decent story.

The Bad

• Inventory bullshit (too small, clunky).
• Terrible save system that uses in-game objects.
• Checkpoints don't count as saves (thankfully i only lost a bit of progress).
• Too much backtracking/revisiting areas.
• Very little variation in environments.
• So. Many. Doors. And you have to manually open them each time.
• At 10 hours it's kinda short, especially for a €20 game.
• Lots of cheap jump scares.
• Stasis recharge stations are super common at start and end but rare in between.
• Can't change difficulty during game (DS2 does allow this).

The Ugly

• There a couple of boring vehicle sections in which you just shoot stuff with a static cannon.
• Load times are insane. It takes 26 seconds on my Ryzen 5 1600 with 16GB RAM and a SSD.
• Terrible final boss battle. I've seen worse but this was so disappointing.
• Too much time is spent on item management. Lots of backtracking to retrieve items you couldn't carry. Sometimes you have to go back quite a bit to find a store or forge.

Review

Dead Space is a really solid shooter that is fun and holds up quite well. It is somewhat clunky and samey, but definitely worth playing overall.

7/10