Dead in the water

I have now played Dead Space due to my roommates newly borrowed XBOX 360 and a copy of the game and me having a case of drinking too much coffee from thinking that assignment is due tomorrow which it isn’t. Anyway, back to Dead Space. After six minutes of playing it, the controls are basically Resident Evil 4 in space. Actually technically it’s just Resident Evil in space cause you’re fighting mutated necrotic zombies who want to eat you. Is that a bad thing? Not really. It’s actually pretty big improvement to the Resident Evil 4 considering that everything is in real time. You don’t have to hit pause to go to the inventory screen to pick out a weapon, arm it and then go back to the game. You can switch out weapons in real time which makes the game more fluid.

The environments on this thing are WAAAYYY cool. I mean this is like Event Horizon the game in a way cause they really like to show that you’re in a spaceship….in space. They have zero gravity levels where you can switch views with magnetic boots and then some parts where you go outside through holes in the ship and to places where you have limited oxygen in your odd looking space suit.



STOP BLOWING HOLES IN ME SHIP!

Story? Space zombies that mutate kill and/or eat and/or mutate you. We’ve all been their. We’ve all done that. But the cool thing is that you’re not a soldier but a salvager engineer and you have to fight these monsters with not weapons but with tools. Cool idea I thought to myself considering you actually can’t kill the monsters, you just kinda disembowel them to a point where they can’t hurt you. However this is one of my biggest gripes with the game. It’s nitpicking but if you’re Stephen Sabetti, you know I have to do it.



LIST OF “TOOLS” in Dead Space

Plasma Cutter: Alright. It’s a chainsaw basically. Makes sense considering you have to cut through metal and other stuff a salvage engineer might need to cut through.

Pulse Rifle: Umm…I guess you can come across hostile life forms such as the ones you’re fighting or you need to defend people with SPACE MAADDNESS!!! I’m ok with that.

Line Gun: A gun that shoots out a horizontal line that cuts through anything. Again a tool that can cut through rock and metal. A ok in Michael world.
Secondary fire on the line gun: Timed mine that blows up. Hmmm….well sometimes you gotta blow shit up. Ok.

Flame thrower: What the…why the hell do we have a flamethrower in space? Who needs one? I mean for self defense we have the pulse rifle but even then the flamethrower is a HORRIBLE weapon. You can’t use it outside in space cause there’s no air in space for the fire to ignite. You can’t use it inside of the spaceship because you’ll blow everyone up in the oxygen rich areas which is pretty much the entire damn ship. And how fucking stupid are you to have a flame thrower in the future? Don’t we have better weapons then this? What are the applications of a flame thrower as a tool other then setting…I don’t…each other on fire or cooking some ribs.

I don't think I'm getting my deposit back


The Ripper: A ranged, remote controlled circular saw blade. VERY COOL but…..why would you need such a thing? Who…who would want to make such a thing? I mean remote controlled saw blade equals an accident waiting to happen. Do you need to cut down space trees floating in space? Are there trees in space? I’m betting the ripper has a high accident/mortality rate to it. And you’re inside a space ship! It’s a small enclosed space and that’s just asking for trouble.

Force gun: Wide cone short range high knock back damage force blast. What kind of tool is this? I guess if you’re going to break shit up like a giant rock but is this what we’re reduced to in the future? Seeing how many creative ways we can destroy rocks? (Hopefully rocks)


Stasis and Kinesis modules:
Stasis:
Device that slows something down. Umm….ok….I can accept that.
Kinesis:
It’s a telekinetic device. It lets you pretend to be a Jedi and move things with your mind. Again…I can be down with that.


Alright. Dead Space…not a bad game. Lots of dark ambient atmospheres and things popping out at you and attacking you. Certainly a scary game. But like the other gripe about Dead Space is kinda a trademark of the survival horror genre which is objective upon objective upon objective which, is understandable since it’s a broken down space ship but man does it get tiring. I had to go find a guy, who locked himself in a room and blowing open the door to get to him. But to get the explosives I had to go down to munitions room. But the munitions room is also locked. So I have to get the key which is in sick bay but the sick bay is out of power. So I have to repair power to open the door to sick bay to get the key. But the power room is filled with monsters. So I have to kill the monsters, restore power, get the key, get the explosives, blow the door open and get to the guy to for a passcode to open another door all the while not being killed by the horrible mutated monsters who used to be my friends. Yea. I just want to tear out my hair.

Anyway the web has tons of cool side story websites to the game and it is very gross and creepy and horror filled but in the end the game overall isn’t too bad. It controls well and is a good time killer if you have like a weekend to kill. I haven’t beat it but maybe someday but in the mean time, I'm sleeping with my shot gun. Damn aliens.