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Dragon
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Kansas, United States
Posts: 2,744
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And now for something completely different.
Dead Space is one of my favorite video games of all-time. Probably the most sickly satisfying, survival horror game known to man, Dead Space is a landmark horror game. So, this is a short collection of my thoughts on a few things that make Dead Space one of my favorite games. If you want a full review you can go find one on any number of sites, but I just want to discuss a few things I liked about it here. I am not going to discuss the plot or anything, so this will be a spoiler-free review for the most part.
Isaac
Where do I begin with Dead Space? Well, the engagement for me begins with the player character, Isaac Clarke. Similar to Half-Life, Isaac is a mute main character. As the game begins, a very large starship, the Ishimura, sends out a distress signal, and a small service vessel is dispatched to investigate. Isaac, the player character, sits in a seat inside the small space craft as it heads to the Ishimura. As the lead technical expert, Isaac's role in the mission is to aid in the repair of the vessel if needed.
None of this is important.
The reason I bring this up is because as the ship flys through space, several of the other crew members discuss the status of the Ishimura, and a few directly talk to Isaac, but he does not talk to them. He is completely silent. In fact, you never see Isaac's face, only the back of his head. Once you gain control of Isaac, he puts on a helmet and you never see his head again. This is what I like about how Isaac is presented: he is supposed to be you. He is silent, you never see his face, and he never speaks. It is one of the coolest applications of the 'silent protagonist' I have ever seen. It is very strange to see this in a third person game, and that makes it even better.
Another reason Isaac being silent works so well as an avatar of the player, is because Isaac is relatable to players. He is not a soldier, he is a technical expert with no knowledge of combat, and he is not even armed as the game begins. He uses weapons salvaged from dead crew members and a few security personnel as make shift weapons. Sure, his suit is neat looking, but he can be killed very quickly.
Presentation
The other thing I wanted to talk about is the graphics and HUD. While tight, dank, wet corridors are the hallmark of the horror genre, and make no mistake, the game has those in abundance, Dead Space contains a fair amount of large, brightly lit, and exterior (more on that later) areas as well. There are a few very large rooms and open areas in the game that allow the rendering distances in this game to really shine. On the note of the rendering technology, is the in-game HUD. Part of the game's immersion stems from the fact the player is not given a HUD of any sort. Instead, Isaac's suit (called a RIG) monitors his health, his movement via a minimap, and his ammo in his current weapon. While playing the game, there is nothing on the screen except Isaac's view. No ammunition counter, no health bar, no compass, no nothing. If the player accesses their inventory, Isaac's RIG generates a large projection of his inventory, in real-time.
Furthermore, the projection originates from a unit on the front of Isaac's chest, and if you rotate the camera, the projection does not move because Isaac does not move.
What's that? You do not find that interesting? Well **** off. This is genius game design people. If consumers only knew how hard it is to code something like that into a game...then they would know how hard it is to make something like that.
Nerd Stuff
Alright, moving on. Earlier I mentioned "exterior areas" and at a few points during the game, Isaac takes a journey into space. The scientific accuracy of these segments bears mentioning. In a zero gravity environmemt, Isaac's boots are magnetized to allow him to walk, and there is no sound apart from the vibrations that travel up Isaacs's boots from the ground. That is precisely how sound behaves in space, and it greatly increases the player's feeling of isolation. It is a very original approach to navigating a zero-g environment. The surreal silence also may allow you to notice the sound of Isaac's heartbeat, which is always audible, but is most of the time drowned out by ambient sounds. As a sci-fi nerd, I find all of this to be awesome.
Enemies & Horror
Last, but not least, I want to talk about the actual horror aspect. While Dead Space has its share of the overused horror-cliche the jump-scare, it is used sparingly, often times when you are already alerted to the presence of enemies. Where Dead Space separates itself from other survival horror games is the atmosphere, environment, and what it does more effectively than any horror game that I know of, the fear of dying, and not the dying in your sleep kind.
A huge, weathered space vessel littered with corpses sounds like a wonderful place for a vacation, but there is no time for relaxing here. When Isaac is not trying to keep the five horrible fiends that just appeared from the shadows from trying to see what his intestines look like outside his body, he is navigating the quiet, unsettling halls of the ship. Isaac is isolated, with only sporadic voice memos of former crew members serving as his main form of human interaction. He never knows if the next corridor half-illuminated by flickering lights contains more fiends, is empty, or is home to an enormous creature that will drag Isaac to his doom.
Speaking of DOOM, and unlike DOOM 3, the designers of the fiends in this game did a good job not making the enemies look like they were ripped from some B-rated horror flick. They yell or growl, move at the pace of zombies at times and will sprint and leap towards you at others. Some are agile and aim to cut Isaac to pieces, others are massive and want to pulverize him into the ground. Still more are not interested in confronting Isaac directly, but seek to create more enemies for Isaac to fight. There is a fine line to be walked between designing awesome looking creatures as enemies, and designing ugly, scary ones, and this game is firmly in the latter's domain.
GORE! GLORIOUS GORE!
Finally, there are the death scenes. Gone are the days when dying in a video game meant you saw this:
Not with this game.
There is not even a game over screen. What you are treated to instead is seeing Isaac die, and rarely is his death a quick one. Surely, if there is a game that has followed in Resident Evil's footsteps, it is Dead Space. At worst, Isaac will meet his doom in a disturbing, shocking, and of course bloody display. The first time I played this game, I made several mistakes that rewarded me with seeing Isaac die in ways I would not wish upon even the Batlord. Dismembered, decapitated, and impaled are just a few of the ways Isaac can see his life cut bloodily, tragically short. This is not 1993, and it is not DOOM either, so you get to see Isaac's body be dismembered with surgical precision thanks to modern day graphics. Sometimes, one death scene contains one or more of the above. One death scene in particular is so personal and long that I shudder to think of it. It made me want to insert myself into the game to personally apologize to Isaac for allowing him to be killed in such a nauseating, torturous fashion. Avoiding dying in Dead Space is a form of motivation to do well all by itself.
Of course... the sequel is FAR more bloody *shivers*, but that is a topic for another day. So, there you have it, those are my thoughts on Dead Space. Any way you want it, Dead Space is a fantastic game.
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