I had never heard of this game until ITV in the UK ran a TV ad for the game. I got a Playstation 3 as a Christmas present and this for my birthday and was surprised by it. I expected a Resident Evil rip-off but instead this was a different kind of horror. It had better graphics than RE4 and the sut-scenes were original as they were not cut-scenes as such as they did not interrupt the action and weren't distracting as a result. As per the storyline and gameplay itself, the storyline leaves you with a sense of 'trust no-one and believe what you see to be a lie' but the story does get a bit heavy-handed and works because of it. Isaac Clarke is that rarity in games, a character that you feel for and root for when the odds are stacked against him. The gameplay is straight forward. You start off un-armed but you can build up a choice of weapons as the game progresses. Weapon usage is tactical, one of those 'right weapon for the right enemy' scenarios and you have to stay armed as a place that is empty at first but you could soon be ambushed by enemies. You are never stuck as to where to go as you can access a map to show you where to go. The enemies themselves, called Necromorphs, are former crew members who have fallen victim to a curse in one of those done-before story lines. They can take on any form from a baby's head to pregnant females suspended to a wall with razor blade like umbilical cords coming out of their bumps 'spitting' out deadly foetus or taking off Isaac's head at close range. The sound effects are also creepy. The game gives you a chance to take a break from the story to play two sub-games - one is a shooting range, the other is a basketball-style game and the cut-scenes are great, particularly the final cut-scene. Now, I'm almost thirty and as a survival horror fan, have seen my share of scary images, but the final five seconds of the last scene scared the crap out of me. But the game is rewarding, for me the biggest being the chance to play the game over again with the weapons I collected the last time around by creating a 'Cleared Game' file. If you are looking for a better and more terrifying thrill than RE, add Dead Space to your collection, just prepare yourself for the moment in the last cut-scene where the camera does a 90-degree turn around Isaac, what happens after that will stay with you with some time!
Review of Dead Space
