In my previous post I talked about games based on films and films based on games, which leads quite nicely into this post about the game “Dead Space”.  Strictly speaking it is not directly related to a film yet it feels very much like playing through an amalgamation of several sci-fi and horror films, most notably “Event Horizon” and “Aliens”. In addition the developers actually released a full length animated film at the same time which I believe explains events leading up to the game, but I’ve not seen it.  There’s even an animated comic you can download for free on XBox Live so they’ve really made an effort to try and immerse you in the game universe, and immerse you it does!  Not since “Bioshock” have I found myself getting so sucked in to a linear shooter and the two games certainly have a lot in common.

So what is it all about?  You play a slightly mysterious character called Isaac Clarke who, during the game intro, is identified as being the “Systems Expert” on a spaceship investigating a distress call from a mining operation on a remote planet.  Things start to go awry very quickly and the rescue ship crashes into the mining craft orbiting the planet, leaving you and the rest of the crew stranded on the seemingly deserted, floating city with lots of unanswered questions.  Where are the hundreds of crew members?  What happened to the colony on the planet?  Why are whole sections of the ship quarantined?  There’s only one way to find out, but it’s not going to be easy…

To say much more would spoil the story so instead I’ll concentrate on the gameplay.  First off it’s worth saying that playing through the whole game on Medium difficulty took me 13-14 hours.  When you compare it to an open-world game like Fallout 3 or GTA it doesn’t seem very long, but for a linear game that seems to be pretty standard and puts it on a par with Bioshock, Halo and the Gears of War games.  Like GoW it is a Third Person Shooter (TPS) but it lacks any kind of dynamic cover system and so plays more in the sideways strafing style of Halo and L4D.  What does make the combat different, however, is that rather than the traditional head and body shots you are forced to lop off arms, legs, tentacles and other appendages instead. As a result the weapons you get are made up of various cutting implements, from lasers to circular saws which you can control remotely.  You also get equipped with a rather nifty stasis weapon which lets you slow down advancing enemies and a kinesis device which let’s you grab hold of distant objects in a Jedi stylee.  The addition of some occasional zero gravity set pieces also mixes things up a bit. While all that stuff is groovy the thing that grabbed me most was, as I said before, how immersive the game is. It makes great use of surround sound (if you’ve got it) and there were a few horrible moments when I suddenly heard something gurgling behind me and nearly leapt off the sofa.  It was also able to make me freeze to the spot by simply turning out the lights and leaving me in the pitch black with only some unerving sounds for company.

If the game has got a fault it’s that the combat can become a little bit repetitive if you stick to the same weapon all the time, which I admit I found myself doing. It also isn’t particularly challenging mentally so I never really got stuck trying to work anything out like I have done on the Resident Evil games, something which might have increased the playing time.  Finally, it hasn’t got any multi-player mode or any other play modes at all, so once you’ve completed the story that’s it.  Your only option is to play it through again trying to get some of the achievements you missed the first time, which I’ve just started doing.  Overall though, it’s definitely worth a play through if, like me, you can borrow a copy or pick one up cheap second hand and especially if you’re a fan of sci-fi and horror films.