Repetitive and predictable, but surprisingly scary, makes EA's first survival horror game a sucess.
Story
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You play as Isaac, he's part of a small time sent to the spaceship USG Ishimura to fix some communication problems the ships has been having, while looking for his wife. However something is wrong with Ishimura, monsters (called Necromorphs) have taken over the ship and killed almost everyone on the ship. The story is cliché and predictable, so there's nothing new here. Furthermore Isaac never says anything, so liking him is completely impossible, it ruins a few key moments in the game, particular one twist is surprising, which is ruined by the lack of feelings for Isaac. Additionally you can analyze each of the chapter names to make out a small sentence. The story is told in-game and around the level are audio logs and text logs scattered, which does a good job with the creepy atmosphere. It should be noted however, that the story is a homage to the science-fiction movie Solaris.
5.5
Gameplay
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The gameplay is a mix of Resident Evil 4, the camera is placed behind you, so there's no camera trouble you'll run into here. It's typical survival horror, you run around collecting important items that advance the plot, and shoot monsters. The monsters (Necromorphs) aren't like normal monsters however, if you shoot their heads they won't die and will sometimes become even stronger, no you have to cut off their limbs. It's a nice change and it's really fun cutting off their limbs, the weapons are designed with this in mind too. The game also has a store, where you can buy items and you collect power nodes which you can use to unlock certain doors or upgrade weapons. You'll also get a stasis device which can slow down certain objects and enemies, and kinesis, which can move objects, both of these things can be upgraded as well. There are also zero gravity sections, where you can jump all around the place, these sections are really fun to play, especially those that are in space. There's also sections where you have to hurry because some rooms doesn't have any oxygen, but it's somewhat made easier by having oxygen stations around the rooms.
There's not really any hub in the game, stasis and health gauge are displayed on the back of Isaac's suit and the ammo counter are displayed when you pull a weapon. Granted you can open the inventory, it doesn't stop the game, but you rarely need to open it, considering there's a button to use health packs and you can switch weapons with the d-pad.
If there's a few complaints, then it's the fact that towards the end, the game becomes predictable, it's easy to figure out which rooms are gonna be put under quarantine, which enemies will appear and so on. There's even a part where your chased by a monster that keeps regenerating itself. Dispite killing it once, you still have to deal with it twice, which is really annoying. I guess you can saw that it becomes repetitive towards the end and a bit tiring. That and I always found lots of ammunition for most of my weapons, pretty much most of the time. The game also pulls most known survival horror cliché's, considering story, puzzles and so on. The way the story progresses is kinda weird too, you always end up seeing people standing behind glass, talking and talking and when their done they just walk away, it's like a play you'd go to see in a theater and it's a really stupid way to progress the story in. Also the gameplay is a big rip-off of Resident Evil 4, but it's ok, mainly because the game is fun, seriously I found it so fun that I honestly don't mind playing it it through a few times, it's fun to explore the ship and fun to just blast off everyone's limbs.
The game also has a great atmosphere, the game is mostly dark, but there's the right amount of scary noises and even crazy survivors that commit suicide, it's a scary game, really scary and the enemies are so disgusting, that their even more scary. One nice addition is that the enemies will sometime play dead in order to fool you; unfortunately it does get old the longer you get in the game and stops being scary.
The game has 12 chapters, which roughly takes around 10-12 hours to complete, good length, but there's not a lot off extras to unlock so replay value is mainly set in the achievement/trophies the game has.
8.5
Graphics
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The graphics are really beautiful, the character looks nice and the environments are good looking too. The highlights are when you're in space or even in areas that has a hole to the space, it looks beautiful. Granted though there is an awfully lot of violence in the game, almost everytime Isaac dies, he gets some part of his body sliced off, the same goes for the enemies too. Overall it's a very beautiful game and it's violent as hell. There are a few frame-rate dips, but they rarely happen.
10
Sound
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The sound design is good too; the background noises are really creepy and do a lot of make the game scary. The voice acting does it's job well, especially for some of the scary sections of the game. The music fits the atmosphere well, but sometimes it just goes crazy over nothing, it's just weird.
9.0
Overall
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Dead Space is a surprisingly good game, even more surprisingly scary. Sure we all know it was a horror game from the moment it was announced, but it's EA's first horror game, so that's a surprise. It's just a shame the gameplay get's repetitive and predictable near the end and that the story is very, very crappy. However it is very fun so I don't mind going through the game a few times, and since it's so fun to kill enemies, you might as well call the ship the USS Kill Beast Buffet. (Yea I know Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw aka. Zero Punctuation said that, but it's a hilarious name nevertheless.