Did you know that Dead Space released more than a decade ago? I remember watching the trailer and being excited to play the game. I also remember playing the game, being spooked and realized that this is a game that I would want to play every year because it was so good. Alas, this will be the last time that I partake in the space horror/adventure game because it seems as though it will not work correctly for me anymore.
In the beginning I turned off V-sync and got punished for it as it would not let me pass through right after the necromorph kills an innocent person. THE ENEMY JUST NEVER SHOWED UP. After watching the beginning cut-scene some number of times, the door let me through and I began an adventure that was riddled with issues that I actually never confronted before while playing before.
Dead Space is an action/ horror game that was developed by Visceral Studios (now EA Redwood Shores) and published by EA in 2008. It was received positively by most gaming websites and gamer’s alike.
Dead Space starts off with a rescue team attempting to board a planet-cracker mining ship, the USG Ishimura that went dark. Coming to fruition later on that the captain of USG Ishimura, a devout member of the church of unitology, ordered his crew to bring aboard a Marker. By bringing this Marker aboard, the crew lost their minds and thus began the horrific inundation of the necromorphs. As Issac clears the ship of the terrible creatures, he learns that the necromorphs are controlled by a “Hive Mind” that lives on the cracked planet (Aegis VII). One of characters that Issac traveled with, Kendra, attempts to re-take the Marker under order from EarthGov, but is killed by the Hive Mind. The game obviously has to end with a cliffhanger because there is a second and a shitty third game. The game’s plot is something interesting and I always wanted to read up on the lore and find out what happened to Issac in the third game and beyond but the third game was utter garbage and EA took Visceral games out of public sight, shot it and buried it behind the shed before the conclusion of the series could come to fruition.
There was not much to the game. Being an action game kind of made it more sell able to the public. The main mechanic that was introduced was “strategic dismemberment.” Giant Bomb defines it as: To separate an enemy’s limbs from its body without killing it, disabling limb-specific functions. The necromorphs need to be dismembered to be killed and the game gives you the arsenal to do just that. The Plasma cutter severs limbs with intense accuracy, the flamethrowers burns (obviously), the line cutters shoots a fucking laser fence and the contact beam shoots a powerful blast that cripples enemies.
Dead Space is a damn fine game, do not get me wrong, but I did have an awful time playing it this time around. I did attempt to fix the problem with turning V-sync on and fixing the frame-rate issue but nothing actually help the issue, so I continued with playing the game. I haven’t laughed so hard in my life. The rag doll physics were absurd. After the necromorph that I had just killed takes it’s last breath, it would shake then shoot into the ceiling and clip through. There was an instance where I stepped off the tram and the body bags were floating down the hallway and making such loud noises. Before releasing the asteroid with the distress beacon attached to it, I had opened the door to three dismembered bodies doing cartwheels at incredible speeds. I killed those things that attach to walls and are meant to startle the player, which it did and it just kept stretching. If I jumped at the incorrect angle Issac would just stop…then suffocate, died and then folded into himself.
All of these things did in fact happen to me on my most recent play through of Dead Space, but I still do not find it a bad game whatsoever. The scare tactics get old with Isaac getting trapped in a small room and surrounded by enemies but that is still fun. Dead Space will always be a good game and maybe I’ll come back to it when I can fix the issues that hilariously plagued me this time around.
Grinds and Games 