Dead Space

Dead Space is a third-person survival horror game set on a derelict ship in deep space.

CONTROLS: The controls are fairly solid, but can be stiff and unresponsive at times. Your actions have inertia, and you can't animation-cancel out of them if you change your mind.
One thing to keep in mind is how aiming is handled; you have laser lines showing the path of your projectiles instead of a crosshair. Your projectiles WILL follow these lines, and the lines will properly terminate when they run into a solid object. Besides looking nice, this actually makes aiming a bit easier.

GAMEPLAY: As a third-person shooter the basic mechanics are as you would expect, besides four gimmicks. The first is Kinesis, which is your standard gravity gun and used for solving most of the puzzles in the game. The second is Stasis, which slows down whatever it hits and works into some of the puzzles. Of the two Stasis has more combat utility, which is likely the reason why it's the only one with an ammo limit. The third gimmick is Zero-G, which basically means you move slower and can jump between walls. The jumping mechanic for Zero-G is disorienting and annoying, particularly in one or two sections where you have to use it to navigate complex environments. The fourth is Vacuums, which is simply areas where you have a timer counting down till you die.
It's fairly close to its traditional survival horror roots; ammo is precious, and the enemies in the game are bullet sponges. In a deviation from survival horror, rather than running away wherever you can and saving your ammo for things you have to kill you are expected to kill basically everything you encounter swiftly and economically. Rather than accomplishing this by aiming for the head, you instead blow their limbs off. Since most enemies in the game are melee this may seem easy, but they're pretty quick and use swarm tactics.
There's no cover mechanic, thankfully.

SOUND: The audio here is excellent. The ambiance really sells the settings, and the enemies make fitting sounds
GRAPHICS: Dark and ominous, check. Space, check. Alien goo, check. Creepy scrawling, check. Yep, it's all here, and it looks pretty good.
STORY: A massive ship that stopped responding to communications, so a team is sent to fix whatever went wrong. The protagonist, Issac Clark, is very upfront about his primary reason for joining the mission being that his girlfriend is on the ship and he's worried about her.

NOTES: It's basically Die Hard in space.


Grade: A
Site: http://www.ea.com/dead-space
Current Price: $20