Finishing games - something that the vast majority of professional reviewers never do... preferring to form opinions based on the size of their backhanders from the publisher and let's be honest if you've not seen a review that was so overhyped that seemed more like a press release and less like a review... you've never spent time at Gamespot or IGN (allegedly) - can sometimes be a disappointment... a crowning moment of awesome or leave you with kind of a lingering sadness, knowing that... it's all over.
Dead Space is one of those genuinely involving gaming experiences where you want to play until you get some answers... it's not really spoiling a lot to say that (despite the fact you have the opiton to replay and find out more stuff upon completion) Dead Space leaves you scratching your head... the gist of what has happened is obvious but many details are vague.
The game seemed to have unfortunately picked up the title of "Half-Life... IN SPACE!" which really isn't fair at all. First off - Dead Space isn't even an FPS. It's all played out (for good or ill) in the third person. Secondly - it's not a shooter game. It's survival horror. Half-Life and it's spawn have had their creepy and tense moments but you're seldom counting rounds or taking care to off enemies in the most conservative manner possible.
You'll seldom - if ever - have a wealth of ammo in Dead Space and even when you do, it can all slip through your fingers very easily... and while in Half Life one would often laugh in the face of a few dozen enemies... one can often find that the lack of ammunition makes for few fights to be considered "easy"... although - setting difficulty to hard might have something to do with that.
And of course, the not very often named enemies - "necromorphs" - are in and of themselves the reason one may not have a bag full of ammo... unlike pretty much all other enemies... they're not really bothered if you pump a mag into their chest and even decapitation doesn't bother them too much. As you'll learn very quickly in the game - otherwise your gaming experience will be rather tedious... you've got to dismember them. A strange achilles heel... but it makes the game that much more interesting because you're not just indiscrimately firing guns at people and expecting them to drop dead.
Of course - this is survival horror... so, you've got a few things going for you. Mainly, your shiny space armour can be upgraded (more hitpoints, more inventory space, less damage taken... and more air... that one is pretty useless) and all your weapons can get improved clip size/damage/reload etc. which you get from power nodes... of course, this does force you to choose weapons - and you can only carry 4 anyway... you get money too. So you can spend it on ammo, though generally the suit upgrades and power nodes are a better investment than ammo...
If you want a comparison - this game is a lot like System Shock 2... Your gun doesn't break after shooting it twice... there's no need to hack but... well, there are plenty of plot parallels and the the enemies are oft similar. Yahtzee seemed to compare it to Doom 3... but beyond the obvious notion of hell being unleashed (in this case, entirely metaphorically - vs. the very literal version in Doom 3) it's not a valid comparison. Oh, sure - logs all over the place to show the things that led to it all - but that was very much taken from SS2 to start with... so, let's not toss additional pretenders in... this game is very much System Shock 2's spiritual successor. Much, much more than upstart Bioshock.
A couple of levels into Bioshock, you could laugh at the enemies - murder them easily and just generally not worry about anything but Big Daddies... who you engaged at your discretion and even on hard weren't THAT worrisome with proper preparation. Dead Space seldom allows you such luxuries. Enemies appear from air vents that are EVERYWHERE, creepy music pervades and they like to sometimes play dead. In fact, the AI is such that even if you run away from the reanimated carcasses, they'll sometimes still follow you. Not to mention the fact they'll sometimes play dead and of course - drag themselves along the floor to get you.
The story involved is fairly interesting - if only for the mystery involved. You're still asking questions at the end. With SS2, you pretty much knew what the deal was midgame. Dead Space gives you a notion but there's a LOT unanswered even after the end credits roll. It's nice to be able to walk around a game and NOT have a character pop up and spew forth a long expositional dialogue. In fact, some of the logs are in rooms you have to access with power nodes - presumably to entice you to play through again to get a better idea of the events of the game. Which you can actually do - WITH all your equipment from the first try.
It's a nice touch, as improving weapons is a fairly important thing to do in the game - given that as you progress, enemies become rather more recalcitrant about actually... y'know dying... again. As well as the weapons (you're only allowed four and... it's fair to say that the fact the game seems to have a bias toward the ripper - read, space chainsaw -means the choices become fairly obvious), you can upgrade your stasis module (make enemies and machinery slow down... NOT bullet time), kinesis module (NOT the gravity gun - about all it's good for is moving specific game objects and getting out of reach ammo) and your suit. Which means you've some greater level of choice in gameplay... although, in fairness - if you don't save up for the suit upgrades, the suit improvements and such... you're fucked. At least on the hard difficulty. Which any reasonably experienced gamer should use... because it's a decent challenge level... Although, PC gamers will NOT appreciate having to wrestle with the 3rd person perspective, which is at times - a greater foe than the enemies.
Speaking of the enemies - they come in a multitude of shapes and sizes. Most of them prefer closing to melee range to jam various spines into you, with actual ranged attacks being the exception - from the smaller, weaker enemies. Which is just as well, as the larger enemies can sometimes off you with casual ease. Especially the mini-boss characters, who will just go straight to the "I'M EATING YOU!" cut-scene death.
The dismemberment makes for an interesting variation on the standard playbook of either shooting things in the head or just pumping the bastards full of enough rounds to kill them... and it's probably the first PC game that can truly be dubbed "survival horror" without the words "Resident Evil" involved... not that RE was really a big PC title. All, in all - if you like survival horror, sci-fi and so on - it's definitely the creepy game for you and really shouldn't be sullied by comparisons to FPS games. It has that element to it - but it's really a lot more.
