Dead Space was one of the many major 7th console gen blind spots for me, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. Wonderfully tense with very cool art direction and lore help it live up to its hype.
Definitely more action-shooter than survival horror, I felt like while it was very tense and scary at parts, the fear was more from the overwhelming amount of enemies flooding a room at a time rather then the slow-burn dread feeling of item and resource management that titles like Resident Evil or Signalis offer. I can't help but feel the game is very easy - I played on normal difficulty but constantly had so much ammunition and healing items I would sell them off for more space. I'm sure this is remedied in higher difficulties but was probably my biggest problem with it.
Enemy design is gross and spooky and I like it. There's not too much variety but the game is pretty short so it doesn't feel too bad. Most of the weapons felt sort of useless but the ones that felt good felt great. The Plasma Cutter is an amazing weapon and is incredibly satisfying to use. The dismemberment and gore feels really impressive for 2008.
The story itself didn't really do anything for me but the backstory to the game and its pretty substantial lore spread throughout audio and text logs do a good job of worldbuilding and I found the whole Unification cult to be pretty interesting. I wish they did something a little cooler with it in the context of Isaac's adventure but what we got is fine.
Zero-G is cool, a little overused and repetitive but there's some cool moments with it. Love the audio design in these sections. The oxygen supply sections felt a little forced as most of them are incredibly short and those that aren't you're able to completely refill your oxygen repeatedly. Never really felt like anything more than a slight annoyance, kind of felt like the suit oxygen upgrades were pointless.
It's not groundbreaking but it's incredibly well made and I had a lot of fun playing it. While I wish it had a little more survival horror in it and a little less action shooter, it controls well and at a brisk 8-10 hours it doesn't overstay its welcome.
Definitely more action-shooter than survival horror, I felt like while it was very tense and scary at parts, the fear was more from the overwhelming amount of enemies flooding a room at a time rather then the slow-burn dread feeling of item and resource management that titles like Resident Evil or Signalis offer. I can't help but feel the game is very easy - I played on normal difficulty but constantly had so much ammunition and healing items I would sell them off for more space. I'm sure this is remedied in higher difficulties but was probably my biggest problem with it.
Enemy design is gross and spooky and I like it. There's not too much variety but the game is pretty short so it doesn't feel too bad. Most of the weapons felt sort of useless but the ones that felt good felt great. The Plasma Cutter is an amazing weapon and is incredibly satisfying to use. The dismemberment and gore feels really impressive for 2008.
The story itself didn't really do anything for me but the backstory to the game and its pretty substantial lore spread throughout audio and text logs do a good job of worldbuilding and I found the whole Unification cult to be pretty interesting. I wish they did something a little cooler with it in the context of Isaac's adventure but what we got is fine.
Zero-G is cool, a little overused and repetitive but there's some cool moments with it. Love the audio design in these sections. The oxygen supply sections felt a little forced as most of them are incredibly short and those that aren't you're able to completely refill your oxygen repeatedly. Never really felt like anything more than a slight annoyance, kind of felt like the suit oxygen upgrades were pointless.
It's not groundbreaking but it's incredibly well made and I had a lot of fun playing it. While I wish it had a little more survival horror in it and a little less action shooter, it controls well and at a brisk 8-10 hours it doesn't overstay its welcome.