I just finished Dead Space and I had a ton of fun playing it. I also hope you get a chance to play this game as well, so I’ll provide my thoughts and reflections on this experience.

The Premise

You get to play Isaac, a space commander sent out into the depths of space when reports of a planet-sized spaceship have gone awry. When Isaac and his crew get to the spaceship (more like a space station), his crew gets sucked into the spaceship, which is conveniently wrecked. Once you gain control of Isaac, you have to find out what has been happening on the ship, to the crew, and most importantly, get yourself off of the ship and back to safety.

Sounds pretty cool, right? You even get to see how this game takes on the dimensions of the Alien universe, bad B-rated horror movies, and how the occult in outer space merge together in this very fun and interesting third-person shooter.

The High-Points and Fun Aspects

There was a lot of really good stuff in Dead Space. From an interface and control aspect, the designers put in many tools to help the gamer get through the ordeals they set up for you. First, they gave you the “mystical blue line that tells me where to go”. By tapping on the right control stick, Isaac puts out his hand and a blue line appears, telling you the direction you have to go. This is very handy because the environments are quite large and dark, and can also help in preparation for many of the ambushes the designers have set up in advance. Another cool aspect is that all of the necessary information from a gaming standpoint (i.e. health, ammo, stasis (the ability to slow enemies down)) was all on the body of Isaac: his spine was his health, his stasis was on his back, and his ammo was displayed whenever one is readying the trigger. Isaac also had some pretty cool telekinetic powers, too.

The designers also did a very good job setting up the mise-en-scene for the game. The lush environments are very reminiscent of the Alien movies, and all of the setups that come from that universe (e.g. scariness and cheap scares). The sounds and the music made me feel like I was actually in the derelict spaceship and I felt a little tense, even though I knew I was playing a game with many cheap B-horror movie scares in it (it got close to the feel of playing Silent Hill, but didn’t get all the way there in terms of scary/creepy). Each chapter (read “level”) was also a convenient section of the spaceship, which you had to explore because new things would go wrong with the ship and Isaac was in the convenient section of the ship to take care of the problems.

All of these great aspects of the game, including relatively simple and straightforward puzzles, kept me interested in this game and I rarely put it down. These great aspects covered some of the parts of the game that ruined many parts of the game for me and turned a great movie/game into utter frustration and horror.

The Let-Downs

While these may be an equal amount of let-downs to the greater aspects of this game, these flaws are pretty obvious and should be brought forward to help other games improve upon them. Isaac’s controls weren’t the best. I found myself fumbling through their controls (but thank goodness I was able to invert the y-axis) and using up my stasis power at times where I wanted to use the telekinesis (pressing left-trigger and X was stasis, and left-trigger and B was telekinesis – their locations were so close and not expected that I would fumble through them and take damage often from this confusion). Isaac was also ridiculously slow – he can stomp enemies and swing at them, but would take an eternity for him to wind up and swing. This was horrible, because there would be many times I would run out of ammo, and the game mentioned to use these tactics if necessary (they mentioned to save ammo, which also means it’s a valuable means to deal damage as well). Also, the mechanism to hold the gun and shoot was horrible as well: using left trigger to aim and the right trigger to fire. Yeah, you read that right – double trigger. If anything, since this game looks like Resident Evil 4 and 5, except that Isaac is on the other side of the camera, I should be able to use the right-trigger to aim and then A to fire, which is certainly more natural and responsive in desperate situations than the double trigger approach (there are A LOT of ambushes in this game where quick timing is necessary for survival).

Another let down were the environments and puzzles the designers put in the game. Not only were some of the puzzles tough and intimidating, but the mystical blue line of awesomeness wasn’t even helpful. Some of the pictures on the side here showcase my point – trying to run through engine turbines or using cover to prevent oneself from being burned alive. Or even trying to send an asteroid out into outer space to bring a help beacon into communications range of another ship. Or even the random turret challenges that send thousands of annoying things at you. Yeah – that’s b-e-a-utiful – and like they say in Galaxy Quest “makes no sense!” (well, it sorta does if one looks at the story as a whole, but in the middle of the experience, it seems as if many of these just appear as mere annoyances that are much larger and deadlier). I found myself dying a couple of times to find out what the designers wanted me to do, rather than having me use the cues in the game as a helpful mechanism for success.

While there were many ambushes, they only helped to reinforce the fact that I was playing a game, and not in an actual spaceship. Whenever I saw a large room, whether circular or rectangular, I knew an ambush was coming. And the ambushes were quite large, too. Lots and lots of enemies that I had to sever their limbs off to make sure they die quickly (but the fact that they spouted items was a good idea – it helped me to see when they were dead). These ambushes would also happen when I had to go outside in outer space too, where there’s an air meter, and I would get blindsided multiple times before I could find out how to defend myself. Not fun whatsoever (but, I’m not advocating for easiness, either – a good challenge is always good, but it should be a challenge overcome by my skills and not through taking advantage of code or multiple lives).

So, it may look like I may be ranting more about some small details about the game, they are indeed quite large ones that I feel are still prevalent in the gaming industry. Maybe I’m just blowing things out of proportion, but these small things are the things I look for in the gaming experiences to make me enjoy them even more.

I’ll have more thoughts on Bayonetta, which I just finished, too. And that game has a large reflection waiting for it too.