Dead Space is an Action Horror game. I watched an interview with the creator who stated the game took inspiration from Resident Evil 4 and Half Life. The 3rd person perspective was inspired by RE4, whereas Half Life inspired the idea of a silent protagonist, and the physics equipment.
Isaac Clarke and a team go to a mining facility to investigate what happened to the crew; Isaac is particularly interested in finding his girlfriend Nicole. They find it overrun with an alien species called necromorphs and find that the crew had been slowly losing their sanity.
I started playing the game before EA’s announcement to remake it. I thought the graphics have held up really well and it doesn’t need to be remade. The gameplay doesn’t feel dated either, so it’s going to be interested how they approach the remake.
At times the camera is zoomed in a little too much, so combined with the dark areas, it can be hard to view your surroundings at times - but this could be an intentional design choice to make you feel more claustrophobic or tense.
The lighting effects are great and the game makes good use of them to add tenson. Even more impressive is the sound design. The facility’s ambience, the necromorph screams, the squelshing of limbs, the whispering in your head - is all unsettling. Even the sound when the game boots up and shows you the menu was unnerving. There are sections where you step out into space and then sound is limited so you have to rely on visuals which is unnerving in a different way - it’s the lack of sound that creates the tenson.
Instead of cluttering the screen with a HUD, all the info is shown on your equipment. So the health bar goes up your spine on your suit. A radial meter shows your stasis charge. Your gun displays the ammo count, and communications are projected from your visor.
The first weapon you find is the Plasma Cutter. This fires a blast of 3 concentrated energy bolts either horizontally and vertically. It is great for cutting which is the necromorph’s weakness. Instead of going for headshots like in most games, you need to cut off their legs and arms which does more damage and restricts their movement. There’s different types of necromorphs which can have slightly different strategies.
The standard “slashers” are the most frequent enemy, then there’s faster variations later on in the game. The “Lurkers” run close to you, then raise their tentacles that will fire projectiles at you, so you need to slice these. “Infector” try to reanimate dead bodies, so it’s always a good idea to stamp on dead bodies when you find them just in case Infectors are in the area. There’s many other ideas, and some boss fights.
You unlock and can purchase weapons as you play through the game. I stuck with 3; Plasma Cutter, Pulse Rifle, and Flamethrower. I thought the guns were weak until you upgraded them. Each weapon has an upgrade tree which is displayed as a circuit of connected nodes. You have to place a power node into empty slots and not all nodes give you an upgrade, so you may have to use up to 3 power nodes for the upgrade you want.
The Pulse Rifle can fire fast but isn’t too good at dismembering the enemies. Flamethrower was decent for clusters of enemies, and seemed to stall enemies to allow you to back off.
If enemies get close you can melee them to push them back, and if they are on the floor, you can stamp them. This is quite risky because these techniques are slow and don't have much range so it is easy to miss and your enemies will also be trying to attack. Even if an enemy has no legs, they will have their scythe-like arms to slice you.
Enemies can drop ammo, health-packs and cash, but you mainly find them in lockers and crates. There’s a type of crate that can be smashed, so you can also use your stamp to open these. You can also buy ammo from the shop which is an electronic terminal.
You unlock some abilities called Stasis and Kinesis. Stasis slows things down which can be used in combat or to navigate the environment. When it is introduced to you, there will be malfunctioning doors that repeatedly open then slam shut. So you use stasis to slow their movement down so you can go through. Kinesis can pick up objects and you can then fire them to use as improvised weapons. It’s used in puzzles so can drag large objects into position, or pick up energy blocks and reposition to power doors. Stasis is limited use so you need to use an item to replenish it or find a charging station. For “puzzle rooms” there will always be a charging station so you cannot get stuck.
There’s some zero-gravity sections where you can leap across to other surfaces. These could be quite interesting but I often found them very disorienting. Once I leaped across and the camera pans back into position, I ended up having to look around to understand my new position.
The game does use a lot of jump scares, intentional or otherwise. Some scripted sequences occur where you will see aliens move under the floor or ceiling, or run across your view when you open a door. There’s plenty of grates on the walls that enemies can pop out of. In the “arena”-type fights, these are used as their spawn positions. The game did seem to mix up the spawn points, so if you had your back against a wall with a grate behind you, the game will definitely spawn an enemy there. “Arena” fights usually involved locking the doors and turning off the lights for “quarantine” then things will go back to normal once you defeat all enemies.
Sometimes you will be introduced to new enemies behind glass so you will see them attack a human whilst you watch. Most humans you encounter are already dead, but there will be occasions where you come across them in their final moments. For example, you see someone repeatedly headbutting a wall, then as you get close, they collapse dead.
You save the game at dedicated save points and I found these to be very frequent. When you die, you don’t necessarily get placed back at the save point, because there are also checkpoints in many sections. When you die, you usually get a brutal death scene with Isaac being gibbed.
It’s easy to find your way around because you usually navigate through fairly linear areas, with locked doors guiding your way. You can also press the Ctrl key which draws a line towards your destination. You have a map but I rarely used it. You often return to areas but new enemies will appear. The game is split into chapters with a tram taking you to the next area.
I don’t play many horror games because being constantly on-edge doesn’t really appeal to me. I had been meaning to play it for some time after seeing it being covered in various YouTube videos (some on game design, some top 10 Horror games, top 10 games that need to make a comeback etc), and one of my friends recently revisited it. It’s easy to see why people rate the game highly. I had a great time with Dead Space and it really surprised me how well the game holds up.