Dead Space ( 311008) for Xbox 360

Dead Space, EA's entry into the wildly popular survival horror genre of gaming, has a lot of things going for it. It's creepy, it's unrepentantly violent, and it's got enough gore to make a grizzled combat veteran toss his cookies. Yet, despite all these things, I can't help but think of it as something of a missed opportunity. That it draws so much of its inspiration from the film Event Horizon (which is a cult classic, but another missed opportunity as well) seems almost fitting.

Don't take the whole "missed opportunity" thing the wrong way-I liked Dead Space. In fact, I liked it a lot at various junctures. The problem is that the game often feels content to rest on the laurels of what it's already achieved (no small feat for a brand new gaming IP) when it should be pushing onward in an attempt to create something magical.

Take, for instance, the game's story. It's survival horror 101, only set in outer space instead of an abandoned house or isolated town. A group of people find themselves trapped on a spaceship where monsters are running amok. There's a traitor in their midst. There's a missing loved one to be found/saved. There's even the ubiquitous crazy doctor character (although, to the game's credit, there's no scene where he injects himself with something guaranteed to make him a monster in order to thwart our hero. Thank god for that...). The game redeems itself in the presentation of the smaller narrative details, but would it have killed EA to actually try to push the narrative boundaries just a bit? That's the sort of question I wound up asking myself at various points in the experience.

Players take control of Isaac Clarke (see what they did there? Isaac like Isaac Asimov, Clarke like Arthur C. Clarke...very clever EA, but I'm on to you...) an engineer sent to explore the USG Ishimura. The Ishimura is a mining ship that "cracks planets" then sucks out all the minerals so they can be used back on Earth or wherever it is mankind is now living. Unfortunately, something's happened to the Ishimura and Clarke and a few other people are dispatched to find out what's wrong and fix the problem. What's wrong is that the Ishimura has discovered some kind of strange alien artifact and brought it aboard the vessel. Said artifact starts turning people into necromorphs-these scary mutant monsters who really enjoy killing people. It's up to Isaac and company to stop the necromorph menace and escape with their lives.

What follows is twelve chapters of Murphy's Law in action-meaning everything that can go wrong will go wrong. I understand that games need constant conflict to keep them dramatic, but the narrative of Dead Space stretches the willing suspension of disbelief farther than the elastic waistband of Oprah's sweatpants. Any time Isaac accomplishes anything, players can rest assured that there's some other problem lurking right around the corner. It could be argued that this happens in order to keep the tension of the game ratcheted up throughout-but the problem is that all it really succeeds in doing is making players tired. Even the most extreme horror flicks take a break here and there to let the audience catch their breath.

One area where Dead Space deserves some major kudos is in making Isaac an engineer. The boring and uninspired thing to do would have been to make him some sort of soldier or space marine. Instead, by making him an average (albeit intelligent) guy, the game becomes more intense. Isaac doesn't know hand to hand combat nor is he proficient with a bunch of weapon types. In fact, all of his weapons (save for one) are created by finding schematics on the ship and modifying mining equipment. This is one of those moments where the "missed opportunity" vibe kicks in-EA got this right, so why couldn't they have put the same level of consideration into everything else?

Gameplay, meanwhile, struggles through the same doldrums. The bulk of Dead Space revolves around Isaac navigating a seemingly endless series of corridors on the ship as he traverses to the next item he needs to repair. Naturally, these dark hallways provide ample opportunities for necromorphs to attack. Unfortunately, after a few hours, this begins to feel slightly redundant. The developers do their best to make it feel fresh (each area at least looks somewhat different than the one that came before it) and the combat remains engaging throughout, but it's hard to shake the feeling that all players are really doing is running a seemingly never-ending sequence of fetch quests. Go fix this, come back and fix that, find this item, take it here, rinse and repeat. If there was more variety to the missions and objectives, the feeling of redundancy would be far less pronounced-but Dead Space doesn't seem particularly interested in trying to hide the formulaic nature of its gameplay objectives.

Luckily, the constant fetching is broken up by the combat, which is frenetic, stressful, and a lot of fun. The game is presented in a third person over the shoulder perspective that works beautifully about 95% of the time. Isaac can carry up to four weapons at a time and his upgradeable suit has a different number of storage slots depending on which model it is. The necromorphs are strong creatures, and shooting them in the head or the torso isn't enough to kill them. Instead, players need to dismember the creatures with their weapons-shooting off appendages and crippling the beasties before finally dealing the killing blow. It's a great addition to the game's combat because it takes what would have been a standard shooter and infuses it with something just different enough to make it feel unique. Plus, chopping off limbs with the saw blade-shooting Ripper gun just never gets old. Limbs and blood are literally everywhere when players pull that thing out of the bag.

Dead Space likes to throw in a few other gameplay wrinkles from time to time, including some segments in zero gravity, timed races through areas with no oxygen, and shooting asteroids with a giant cannon (which feels a lot like a playable segment of Star Wars). The zero gravity thing is an interesting idea, but it's also the one place where the combat seems to falter slightly. This is because the camera has a weird tendency to not move properly in the zero gravity environments-meaning something can be hitting Isaac from the side or behind but he can't turn around and actually see it. There aren't a lot of zero gravity sections in the game, but this is an issue in most of them.

The environments on the Ishimura are breathtaking (or as breathtaking as the environments on a dingy mining ship can be) as are the rest of Dead Space's graphics. It's odd to think of a game featuring a lot of dark brown shades, dismembered limbs, and blood spatter as "pretty", but the visuals in this title are uniformly excellent. Isaac's suit of armor is particularly good (because it keeps changing as he upgrades it). Also, special mention must be made when it comes to the character animation. As Issac's health decreases, his movements become more labored. That's a nice touch.

Just as captivating as the visuals are the game's sound effects. Horror games in particular rely a lot on sound, and Dead Space delivers in spades. The score provides numerous zingers for jump scare moments, but just as impressive is the way it makes the occasional bit of silence just as disturbing as the more raucous segments. Play this one in the dark with a good surround sound set-up and be prepared to jump.

For a brand new IP, Dead Space does a lot more right than wrong, but it still stumbles here and there. The missteps are mostly minor, though, and don't ruin what is an otherwise engaging experience. Here's to hoping that the sequel pushes ahead with the things the first game does so well while striving to eliminate the minor gaffes. If that happens, the Resident Evils of the survival horror world will have some stiff competition in the scary games category.