Forums > Submission Feedback > zippdementia's Dead Space review

I really liked this review. It flowed logically from one point to the next and the beginning paragraphs had strong imagery. Additionally, you pretty much described my exact feelings about this game.

I mastered Dead Space and gave myself all sorts of challenges, eventually getting the one-gun trophy at the same time as Impossible mode, and even bought a lot of the DLC for new skins and weapons. Still, by the time I set down Dead Space and moved on to the next game, I never had the urge to play through it again except for when a friend was visiting and I felt like seeing one of them yell their pants off at the beginning chase to the elevator. I think the reason is exactly what you described - the enemies get boring to fight.

Though Dead Space did get a ton of things right, especially in regards to sound and lighting effects and running into random people who have gone insane. Still, there were some things I think that could have been improved in that area as well. For example, while the game is often dark there is only one section in the game where everything gets completely pitch black due to a power outage that gets fixed in a few seconds. That part was scary as f***! But no sections in the game afterward have you fighting in that entirely pitch black environment. Ultimately, however, Dead Space is still pretty awesome. The Regenerator scared the piss out of me, the whole beginning of the game was brilliant, and that ship that had the Twitcher enemies that were fast as hell and made those horrible sounds? So many classic areas.

Everything begins and ends with Sise-Neg!

Definitely. I just finished playing Dead Space 2 and the mobile-phone Dead Space (inconveniently also called "Dead Space") and have been debating whether I'll review them and how to approach it. I've also been playing through Resident Evil 2 again, which I find got some things right in 199X that Dead Space failed to get right in 200X.

Like you, I love Dead Space. Like you, I wish there had been more adversity pit against the player. Like that dark room is the perfect example. They do it in Dead Space 2 a couple of times, even pushing it to the point where you hear shit moving around in the darkness. But then they turn on the lights before you actually have to fight.

And it's that phrase that does it for me: Have to Fight. I'm getting a little tired of the modern survival horror game, which puts you in a locked room and then tells you to clear it out before you can move on. That's been going on since at least Resident Evil 4 and it got worse with Dead Space 2 and Resident Evil 5. The best part in Dead Space 2 was at the very end of the game when you are being chased by a regenerator and stopping to fight the many necromorphs assailing you pretty much means either death or a colossal expenditure of ammo and health. So you just run. And it's terrifying when you are waiting for a door to open and can hear those snuffling moans coming from right behind you. Ugh. I don't even like thinking about it.

Amnesia got the whole survival horror concept right. In the perfect survival horror game, you shouldn't be able to fight back. Few games try to do this (and even fewer pull it off, Amnesia being the only one I can think of... maybe debatedly Alone in the Dark). Still, the best survival horrors made you choose between standing your ground and fighting and just running. The early Resident Evils, Fatal Frame (which I actually don't like due to its god-awful controls and poor placement of savespots), and the first couple Silent Hills pull this off nicely.

I don't really blame Resident Evil at this point. It's made such a strong transition into an action game that I don't even buy them expecting to get scared anymore. And the Resident Evil monsters stopped being scary years ago. Most of the bosses look like they can hardly balance, let alone chase you (the regenerators in Resident Evil 4 are a piss-your-pants exception).

But Dead Space has absolutely terrifying monsters. I don't like looking at them. They are truly freaky and the sounds they make get my heart racing. So that game has a responsibility to use them in the most frightening ways possible. I haven't seen them quite live up to that in Dead Space 2. I got anxious a lot in that game, but never really frightened.

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."