This is what survival horror is all about! There has never been a more amazing survival horror experience.
The story takes a bit of time to get momentum, but once you get to the meat of it, you will enjoy following along. Basically, you have boarded the Ishimura, in an attempt to discover why you have lost communication with the members on board. When you arrive, you find pretty much everything in ruins and strange monsters called Necromorphs stalking all over the damn place. Guess what, things go to hell, you are left alone, and you must fight for your life with mining tools. Not quite as creepy sounding as having to defend yourself from ghosts with a camera, but it's definately a great start.
Now the premise of shooting aliens in space SHOULD sound cliche to you, but the game really delivers on the idea. It's not as washed up as you might think, and you will enjoy battling all the different types of necromorphs while moving around the ships completing tasks. There is a pretty serious amount of backtracking in the game, but it all makes perfect sense with the story, so it doesn't seem annoying or a cheap ploy by the developers to increase play time.
Let's get on to the combat. This is what makes Dead Space so amazing. You will use mining tools to take down these hostile aliens, and trust me, it's fun. You have to strategically dismember aliens to do more damage, or you will blow all of your ammo. Really though, I don't understand how a Pulse Rifle, or a Flamethrower are viable mining tools, but whatever, they are great for taking down aliens. This game is great at making you feel outnumbered and overwhelmed without being overly frustrating. Every combat scenario allows for a great deal of manuevering, and even if things don't go your way, you can still salvage the situation without really feeling the need to reload an old save just to do better.
The graphics and sound in Dead Space are superb. Enemies are grotesque, and the shriek of oncoming foes will make your blood run cold. I have experience zero - yes that's right, ZERO - graphical glitches in this game, which is REALLY nice because the immersion in the game is superb.
Overall, Dead Space has set a new standard for survival horror. It is no longer acceptable for a game to lean either towards atmosphere or jump scares when you can have both. If you are a fan of this genre, and you DON'T get this game, then you deserve to be killed by a necromorph, plain and simple.