How can something be scary/moody with good combat and still boring/bad game tho? It's unclear indeed. I imagine 90% people who loved RE4 would enjoy this for the combat mechanics alone. Figures.

As someone who loves RE4, this is not a good RE4-like game. Dead Space 2 sure gets to a nice middle ground where that ends up being the case, but the combat itself here is rather lackluster when challenged.

RE4 has spectacular setpieces, likable characters, and an endearingly silly storyline. Dead Space has...none of these things.

I feel like RE4's strenght was mostly in how good the guns felt, how addictive the progressions systems were, and how fun the enemies were to shoot at. Dead Space I think has all three. I can't say that the characters or especially the setpieces were what kept me going in RE4, but that's just me