Medium difficulty
19 hours
EA Play
First off, let's get the technical issues out of the way. There are big framerate drops in chapters 9 & 10. The game only crashed once and was in the final boss fight. There was one point where the EA servers had issues, due to this, I couldn't even start the game. It's really stupid that a single player only game is tied to an online server to even play it.
The game's UI lives up to the hype with the only issue typically being when how annoying it is to specify what you want to pick up when there are multiple pieces of loot close to each other.
Initially, I was disappointed by how weak the plasma cutter sounded, but the other guns sounded great, and playing the game with headphones kept me on edge because I could constantly hear the necromorphs climbing around and the ambient music. The game is quite great at knowing when to stop playing music while exploring the ship.
In terms of combat, Dead Space's biggest strength is its weapons and this is why I don't view it as a "survival horror" akin to the old Resident Evils. The game generally wants to or goes out of its way to put you in combat scenarios where you must kill every enemy because it is an action game. Every weapon generally starts out feeling great and only feels better as I upgrade them. The upgrade tree is fairly simple, but in an action game like this doing little things like expanding your magazine from 50 shots to 150 shots makes for a huge difference in combat. Due to this, the game wants you to swap through weapons during combat because all weapons are very effective at killing necromorphs.
In terms of enemy placements and level design, I believe there's a strong hint of randomization to the former while the latter tends to be divided into hallways, locked rooms, and open zero-g areas. necromorphs spawn from vents, shafts, air conditioners, or around corners. There are very few scenarios where Isaac ambushes necromorphs, it's typically the opposite.
The game will also spawn enemies in that manner within save rooms, with the only exception of save rooms that are very tiny halls with little space in them, I believe this was done because one can't jump in dead space. The other thing is that enemies can't open doors and except for the first few scripted hunter encounters, enemies can't follow you through different rooms.
In terms of enemy variety, there are about 8 enemy types in the game and there will never be more than 4 or 5 necromorphs on screen at once. Within hallways and long rooms, the game also loves spawning enemies behind Isaac and in front of him at the same time. This jump scare is utilized very frequently.
Knowing all of this, I started approaching much of combat using a few strategies. Once the music changed to something more sinister or tense, I would run to have the nearest door to my back since I knew an enemy couldn't spawn since a door was behind me and they couldn't open or go through it. Afterward, I just unload on as many enemies as possible. Since head shotting or shooting center mass typically won't kill most enemies, Dead Space ends up being unique by making you shoot at limbs. Shooting at weakpoints isn't new in shooters, but making it almost necessary for all enemies is what makes it stick out. The enemies I ended up disliking the most were the hunter and the huge titan that walked on all fours. I do not like the fact that an invincible enemy is just introduced halfway through the game that only returns intermittently. There's no real reason to engage the hunter, you just end up running away and the game will cheat a bit by making him climb through vents to then follow you but only within the first adjacent room you enter and it only happens sometimes. The other titan/brute, I disliked for being a huge bullet sponge in a game where you typically can kill enemies in a few shots. I didn't get this enemy, I rarely shot off limbs because it took too many shots and at times it was difficult to tell you were even doing damage because it wasn't losing limbs or much mass from being shot.
On the topic of survival horror. I think Dead Space makes a lot more sense as a horror shooter or action horror game than survival horror. The game is incredibly generous with ammunition, healing, & other supplies. There are 8 guns and all are found by the halfway point of the game. Every single enemy in the game will drop some form of random loot when killed in the form of credits, health packs, ammo, oxygen, or stasis packs. This makes sense in terms of the setting because all the necromorphs we fight are the citizens of the Ishimura. So while it's possible to run out of ammo for 1 or 2 guns, you have 6 more at any time to switch to and you are encouraged to kill more necromorphs because they will always drop something useful and there's a high chance it will be more ammo. This is what I mean when I say this game leans far more into action territory than anything. It can be quite scary but it wants me to actively engage and kill as many enemies as possible and regularly rewards me for doing so. This all works because the combat itself feels good due to being visceral, the atmosphere and sound design, and swaps through hallway, zero-g, and arenas fairly frequently to reduce monotony. For a game that almost entirely takes place in a ship, the ship itself is not just a shade of dull brown or gray.
The armor and weapon upgrades are the long-term rewards that typically come from exploration but this is gated by the plot. Except for chapters 9 & 12, all of Dead Space takes place in one contiguous location: The Ishimura spaceship. However, one can't go to all parts of the ship because there are locked doors and trains that block access to areas. The locked doors that gate the major section of the ship are only opened when you reach certain chapters and Isaac's allies give him access there, or when Isaac's allies give him security access to locked doors. Due to that, there isn't much voluntary non-linear exploration in Dead Space. There are a few side quests in the game and they give strong context to the characters that lived in this ship and how things got as bad on the Ishimura, how some coped with it, and what others did. I liked the side quests because they weren't fetch quests and they gave good characterization to the side characters we heard of that died right before the story began.
As for the ship, it's a great locale and it is a convincing location in terms of being a place where people lived and worked. The way it is designed makes sense from a non-videogame perspective with its use of various doors that just lead through the various sections of the ship without feeling like a fake maze. Elevators are in place because people would need them to get through various floors. There's a huge medical bay because a lot of doctors/scientists worked on this ship and they grew their food and took care of patients there. There's a big mining deck because the ship is a planet cracker and is used to extract minerals from planets. There's even a place of entertainment showing that the citizens of Ishimura played Zero gravity basketball as recreation. There's a big train system so the citizens could quickly get through the entirety of the ship in quick order, but even when I walked throughout the ship, it only took about an hour through most of it and each sector was connected in a manner that wasn't a winding maze that you typically find in many video games settings. That's on top of their fictional church, restaurants, etc.
19 hours
EA Play
First off, let's get the technical issues out of the way. There are big framerate drops in chapters 9 & 10. The game only crashed once and was in the final boss fight. There was one point where the EA servers had issues, due to this, I couldn't even start the game. It's really stupid that a single player only game is tied to an online server to even play it.
The game's UI lives up to the hype with the only issue typically being when how annoying it is to specify what you want to pick up when there are multiple pieces of loot close to each other.
Initially, I was disappointed by how weak the plasma cutter sounded, but the other guns sounded great, and playing the game with headphones kept me on edge because I could constantly hear the necromorphs climbing around and the ambient music. The game is quite great at knowing when to stop playing music while exploring the ship.
In terms of combat, Dead Space's biggest strength is its weapons and this is why I don't view it as a "survival horror" akin to the old Resident Evils. The game generally wants to or goes out of its way to put you in combat scenarios where you must kill every enemy because it is an action game. Every weapon generally starts out feeling great and only feels better as I upgrade them. The upgrade tree is fairly simple, but in an action game like this doing little things like expanding your magazine from 50 shots to 150 shots makes for a huge difference in combat. Due to this, the game wants you to swap through weapons during combat because all weapons are very effective at killing necromorphs.
In terms of enemy placements and level design, I believe there's a strong hint of randomization to the former while the latter tends to be divided into hallways, locked rooms, and open zero-g areas. necromorphs spawn from vents, shafts, air conditioners, or around corners. There are very few scenarios where Isaac ambushes necromorphs, it's typically the opposite.
The game will also spawn enemies in that manner within save rooms, with the only exception of save rooms that are very tiny halls with little space in them, I believe this was done because one can't jump in dead space. The other thing is that enemies can't open doors and except for the first few scripted hunter encounters, enemies can't follow you through different rooms.
In terms of enemy variety, there are about 8 enemy types in the game and there will never be more than 4 or 5 necromorphs on screen at once. Within hallways and long rooms, the game also loves spawning enemies behind Isaac and in front of him at the same time. This jump scare is utilized very frequently.
Knowing all of this, I started approaching much of combat using a few strategies. Once the music changed to something more sinister or tense, I would run to have the nearest door to my back since I knew an enemy couldn't spawn since a door was behind me and they couldn't open or go through it. Afterward, I just unload on as many enemies as possible. Since head shotting or shooting center mass typically won't kill most enemies, Dead Space ends up being unique by making you shoot at limbs. Shooting at weakpoints isn't new in shooters, but making it almost necessary for all enemies is what makes it stick out. The enemies I ended up disliking the most were the hunter and the huge titan that walked on all fours. I do not like the fact that an invincible enemy is just introduced halfway through the game that only returns intermittently. There's no real reason to engage the hunter, you just end up running away and the game will cheat a bit by making him climb through vents to then follow you but only within the first adjacent room you enter and it only happens sometimes. The other titan/brute, I disliked for being a huge bullet sponge in a game where you typically can kill enemies in a few shots. I didn't get this enemy, I rarely shot off limbs because it took too many shots and at times it was difficult to tell you were even doing damage because it wasn't losing limbs or much mass from being shot.
On the topic of survival horror. I think Dead Space makes a lot more sense as a horror shooter or action horror game than survival horror. The game is incredibly generous with ammunition, healing, & other supplies. There are 8 guns and all are found by the halfway point of the game. Every single enemy in the game will drop some form of random loot when killed in the form of credits, health packs, ammo, oxygen, or stasis packs. This makes sense in terms of the setting because all the necromorphs we fight are the citizens of the Ishimura. So while it's possible to run out of ammo for 1 or 2 guns, you have 6 more at any time to switch to and you are encouraged to kill more necromorphs because they will always drop something useful and there's a high chance it will be more ammo. This is what I mean when I say this game leans far more into action territory than anything. It can be quite scary but it wants me to actively engage and kill as many enemies as possible and regularly rewards me for doing so. This all works because the combat itself feels good due to being visceral, the atmosphere and sound design, and swaps through hallway, zero-g, and arenas fairly frequently to reduce monotony. For a game that almost entirely takes place in a ship, the ship itself is not just a shade of dull brown or gray.
The armor and weapon upgrades are the long-term rewards that typically come from exploration but this is gated by the plot. Except for chapters 9 & 12, all of Dead Space takes place in one contiguous location: The Ishimura spaceship. However, one can't go to all parts of the ship because there are locked doors and trains that block access to areas. The locked doors that gate the major section of the ship are only opened when you reach certain chapters and Isaac's allies give him access there, or when Isaac's allies give him security access to locked doors. Due to that, there isn't much voluntary non-linear exploration in Dead Space. There are a few side quests in the game and they give strong context to the characters that lived in this ship and how things got as bad on the Ishimura, how some coped with it, and what others did. I liked the side quests because they weren't fetch quests and they gave good characterization to the side characters we heard of that died right before the story began.
As for the ship, it's a great locale and it is a convincing location in terms of being a place where people lived and worked. The way it is designed makes sense from a non-videogame perspective with its use of various doors that just lead through the various sections of the ship without feeling like a fake maze. Elevators are in place because people would need them to get through various floors. There's a huge medical bay because a lot of doctors/scientists worked on this ship and they grew their food and took care of patients there. There's a big mining deck because the ship is a planet cracker and is used to extract minerals from planets. There's even a place of entertainment showing that the citizens of Ishimura played Zero gravity basketball as recreation. There's a big train system so the citizens could quickly get through the entirety of the ship in quick order, but even when I walked throughout the ship, it only took about an hour through most of it and each sector was connected in a manner that wasn't a winding maze that you typically find in many video games settings. That's on top of their fictional church, restaurants, etc.
stephenage
4 months ago