system: PS3

one sentence description: Play the role of some poor space engineer schmuck named Isaac who just wants to talk to his girlfriend, and ends up having to kill a bunch of undead crewmembers with various ship-fixing tools instead.

Talk about a bad day…

graphics: 10 | sound: 10 | playability: 9 | challenge: 10 | value: 9 | bias: 10

total: 9.6

the low-down

You have no idea how awesome this game is.  Seriously.

Beautiful visceral carnage. Those are the three words that come to mind when I start thinking about how this game plays. I’m not sure how the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘carnage’ fit together in the same sentence because they shouldn’t. But they do.

Isaac is an engineer who is sent with a crew to investigate a communications failure aboard a giant ‘planet cracker’ class ship called the Ishimura. His girlfriend, with whom he has recently not gotten along well with, happens to be aboard the ship. The game opens up with him reviewing a transimission from her and the crew making some observations about the ship and the mission. All of a sudden,  the ship you’re aboard takes a nosedive, and  you find yourself aboard the Ishimura…which seems to be abandoned. And that’s where the trouble begins.

You are given some idea of your impending experience when the lights go out and a giant nasty looking creature pops down and slaughters one of the soldiers you are with. Two of the other people take off, and so after the thing is done feasting on the solider’s succulent brains, it turns to come after you. Keep in mind at this point you have absolutely zero on the weapons front and running is your only option. The thing looking like some kind of a freakish alien (from the movie Aliens)/zombie mix combined with the insanely dischordant and creepy music, lights flashing in the dark and people screaming at you to ‘run’ because you have no weapon is  unnerving and sets the pace & tone for the rest of the game.

While easily fitting nicely into the survival/horror genre, Dead Space sets the bar at a new level on a lot of different fronts.

Graphically, the game is nothing short of amazing. The developers took great pains to create an atmosphere that will scare the poop out of you. Narrow, gore-filled corridors, futuristic industrial contraptions and atmospheric lighting brings everything to a disturbing life. Or death…however you choose to look at it. Character movements are fluid and beautiful with few awkward transitional movements. Of particular note are your adversaries, which you come to find are called ‘necromorphs’. These things are creepy. At one point you are walking down a corridor when, rounding the corner comes a little baby crawling quickly on the floor. Cute…except for the fact that it’s undead and sprouts long tentacles that shoot out little spiky bullets…the better to kill you with, my dear.

Where sound is concerned, I’d highly recommend playing the game on a surround system (if you have it). If not a surround system, then definitely with headphones. You realize how integral sound is when it comes to inpiring terror. Where the visuals might serve to hammer home the fact that you’re in a fairly awful situation, the sound is a constant affirmation that things aren’t going to get better anytime soon. The ships creaks and hums. Short-circuited doors pound open and closed…and even when you leave them in the distance, the sound never goes away…it merely gets quieter or muffled the further away you get. When you step into the vacuum of space, sound is almost non-existent, yet still there is a ‘cotton in your ears’ effect. The near-silence is deafening when you find yourself firing away at something coming at you while you’re in the vacuum. You’ll also notice that the game uses sound in subtle ways such as drawing your attention one way…and then surprising you with the gift of a nasty creature up in your grille when you turn back around.

Gameplay doesn’t get much better than this, from the way you have to take down your enemies to the way all of your heads up display items are integrated into your suit rather than a disparate part of the screen. By that, I mean you know how much life you have left by a glowing ’spinal column’ on your back.  You know how much ammo/energy you have when you aim and see the numbers clearly displayed in a small screen. And videos, maps and inventory are all displayed in nifty little holographic displays that project out in front of you from your suit’s helmet.

Fighting enemies is a little different than you may expect. Instead of simply aiming for the head or chest, the game has implemented the idea of ’strategic dismemberment’. In other words, sweep the leg, Johnny. If something is lumbering towards you looking to tear your head off, aiming for (and eventually blowing off) a leg is far more effective than hitting it somewhere in the middle. But taking off legs doesn’t necessarily mean instant death, as the thing will usually begin dragging itself towards you with its giant spiky arms…which you’ll have to blow off as well if you want to kill it. This makes for a little bit of a challenge, seeing how intelligent these things are. While one is attacking you up front, another may decide to bust through the vent to climb up and around you, dropping down directly behind you to tear you to shreds.

A suit/weapon upgrade system and special ’stasis’ and ‘kinetics’ powers used for mild puzzle-solving round out the overall gameplay experience.

Make no mistakes…Dead Space is a deeply disturbing, scary game. I jumped a couple of times for sure and found myself moving  very, very carefully to avoid any nasty surprises. This is definitely one to buy.

pros

• HIGHLY atmospheric, utilizing visuals & audio to great effect
• Unique ‘fighting’ mechanic with the ’strategic disememberment’ idea
• Pretty good voice acting
• Beautiful-yet-very-disturbing imagery
• Perfectly paced gameply
• Challenging but not overly so
• Good storyline
• Very detailed graphics (full 1080p resolution display)

cons

• Maybe a little over-the-top on the violence for some
• Getting mobbed by enemies is difficult and can become frustrating

I would like to ask these people to please step out of the gene pool. I’m so glad the Republicans have followers like this.

Keep it up. It just strenghthens my resolve.

…just when you think people can’t really be as stupid as they are, you get to see heartbreaking sh*t like this.

I just read an article here (also where I saw this photo), and it’s disturbingly true.

Honestly, I don’t think John McCain is a bad person. I think he’s an honorable man. I think he’s probably a smart man. I think he has a drastically different view of how things should work when it comes to government and such…but just because someone thinks/feels different doesn’t necessarily make them wrong.

The scary chaos factor in this whole equation is personal perception.You have people out there…very, very scary people out there who put signs like this up…who you know are hearing the words like ‘terrorist’ and ‘untrustowrthy’…and they start thinking…things. Scary things that I don’t want to even think about.

And so what WILL make me question McCain as a person is if he does not address these issues immediatley. That’s challenging because, frankly, it puts him at further risk of losing votes. But, as a person of good conscience…losing votes should be NOTHING if it means stopping hatred, ignorance and stupidity.

I pray that McCain is not willing to do anything to win, and anything includes letting these kinds of thoughts germinate in his following.

____

On the subject of addressing these concerns immediately:  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/john-mccain-hea.html

I knew McCain was a better person than the way his campaign is being conducted. It just sucks that it comes down to this being the tactics being used.

You’ll still be a little disappointed in the complete stupidity of people after reading the article, though.

“He’s an Arab.”

Update: Ahh, Tom Willis.  Sometimes you make me feel bad.

Let me interject something here. These people in this video are not representative of the people I know and love in the midwest. Not in the least bit.

However…living in another place that is more liberal, I can safely say that I feel much more at home. Afterall, I think that’s just natural. You feel more comfortable when the majority of the people around you share the same views and opinions about a number of things.

I can safely tell you that if you were to ever visit the city of Cincinnati and you were to run into Tom Willis, you’d be meeting a great person. He and a number of other folks are what made my (very long) time in Cincinnati good.

___
While I certainly have not moved to the most liberal state in the union, I at least happen to live in a very liberal city. And BOY HOWDY am I glad about that.

Here exemplifies one of the reasons why I am glad I don’t live in the midwest anymore. This is some of the most pure and unadulterated idiocy I’ve seen in quite some time.

The blonde is awesome.

I must have this just because…well…because it’s LEGO TURKEY, for god’s sake.

Yeah, let me say it again. LEGO. TURKEY. If you don’t want a giant Lego turkey leg, you are a communist.