Thread: Dead Space

As most topics on the Entertainment forum start: I was suprised that there was no thread on this game yet.

Anyway, I played it, and all I really have to say is this:

It was fun, at the beginning. As I progressed through the final chapters, I contracted such a LOATHING for the developers I quit at the last one.

The weapons selection was very satisfying, but the game itself wasn't really truly scary. Also, the Ishimura is now the official capital of malfunctioning equipment. The reason I started to hate the game was because of several factors: Ammo problems plagued me everywhere. Until I had the Ripper I walked many a hallway with only 3 rounds in my Plasma Cutter and 0 in my Assault Rifle. Also, quarantines were ridiculously hard, with necromorphs coming from every direction to make you watch that death scene time, after time, after time. Furthermore, the vaccum environments were terrible. If you thought making it to the other side while taking cover every other second from meteor showers on a limited supply of oxygen in Zero-G with a confusing navigator with Issac gargling mucus in his throat wasn't hard, try doing it with various Necromorphs shooting, stabbing, lunging and flying at you. Also, the screaming wall man that had a lethal tentacle in his stomach which multipurposed into shooting out sacs that would produce a barbed stinger that shot at you and knocked you back while you tried to cut off it's shifting tentacles... sucked. Especially when there were more than one. Especially when there were more than one AND other Necromorphs were shooting at you, with limited ammo, a sticky floor, horrible lighting and malfunctioning gravity panels that turn you into sauage if you put a toe on one. I would also like to point out my ultimate desire for the regenerating Necromorph to be omitted from the game. Often I would find myself quarantined and wasting ammo on something that would come back to life anyway. And there's no hiding from it, because it uses vents. Oh, and throw in a couple of super-necromporhs in there for good measure. And Lurkers, can't have too many lurkers. And those extremely annoying suicide bombers. Oh, and expect to come down in an elevator with those right in front of you. Plus the gangly morphs that explode into little friends that instant-kill you by taking off your head and dooming you to a thirty-minute death animation. And money is also hard to come by. After buying ammo, you have about enough left for a medpac. Which there also weren't enough of. Plus, the camera is so tight you can't see what is stabbing you from behind. AND the game expects you to recharge your stasis, use air cans and the like IN REAL TIME, when you need it, like in a quarantine, with the lighting and the morphs dropping from above like so much rain... you get the idea. Also, the devs delight in giving you no contact with another human being. They all shoot themselves or die before you can talk to them. No contact with any SANE person... because you were just seconds too late. In the one case they do, with the Captain, he is horribly killed while you watch helplessly. Oh, but just as he's definitely not going to be rescued by any legitimate plot device (when his head comes off) THEN you get to fight the monster, which is almost impossible to kill without stasis that you are either out of and need to recharge in real time or completely devoid of. I am also mentioning the failed attempt at making you like the (apparently now mute) Issac and making you care about his lover.

You have to understand, this is SCENE after SCENE after SCENE. In the place where you have to jump on the asteroid before the swirling bars kill you, the place where you have to bring a battery through 100 feet of spontaneously igniting engines, the place where you have to survive regenerators, super-necros and super-lurkers while holo-lady is working on unlocking the door the doctor closed, the place where you have to survive the insanely hard "basketball" match with super-lurkers... I HATED IT. Did I also mention that when you get an objective, you also have to access it in real time, which is really hard when you have no idea what to do and are fending off super-morphs and regenerators as you run around in circles around something you have to do something with and stasifying all the new necros coming out of the floor, ceiling, vents, walls, other necromorphs... ARGH. Plus the ever so fun minigame of blasting thousands of incoming asteroids with a slow, overheating blaster or you blow up?

2 stars out of five.