I recommend Dead Space if you like action, sci-fi, or horror. I think most of the things that bothered me about it are intractable because I'm no lover of the survival horror genre. The game was good enough to let me work past them.
Dead Space looks great. I loved the movie Event Horizon, and the concepts here evoke the same stark, quiet feel, mixed with the majesty of space and a great ship. I think it's just a common horror contrast. Big, beautiful place with a creepy vibe? There are some magical moments when the game gives you a look at the planet below.
You and your buddies arrive as a repair crew after things have gone to hell, and the few living people you meet are either plot characters with unrealistic survival powers, or nameless madmen that tend to put on a little suicide display in front of you to show you just how SNAFU it's all become. I found that a bit in bad taste.
The ship itself, a massive mining ship called the Ishimura, offers enough character to get the job done. It brings all the expected trappings such as vents, airlocks, locking doors, and quarantines to deliver horror gameplay. Audio logs left behind by various crew do a semi-decent job of evoking the ghostly vibe of a place once crawling with happy humans going about their everyday work.
The sound work is good. Playing with surround can enhance a creepy experience, but I thought the ambiance was a bit overused, making scare noises approach silly and nonthreatening. The weapons, monsters, and environments were all very nice. The vacuum scenes were incredible, as they only give you muffled bits in contact with your suit. Once a few (normally chattery) monsters snuck up on me in a vacuum, I became wildly paranoid in them for the rest of the game.
The story is a bit strange. As the game goes on you become more and more aware of a cult that had quite a bit of control over the ship. The beliefs and actions of the cultists are used to explain away some of the common horror plot holes (i.e. why didn't they just FLY AWAY?!). The player's character, Isaac, is apparently involved with one of the Ishimura's crew, an angle that is used in some fun ways.
Isaac himself is fairly dull. Another game character too cool to talk, which makes all the dialogue with your fellow rescue crew super awkward. It's time for games to stop doing this. I'm looking at you, too, Gordan Freeman. Your engineer's suit is a very neat design, and the upgrades you can earn to it are as visually rewarding as gearing up in an MMO.
As an engineer, Isaac's weapons are almost all based on the concept of tools. Instead of a pistol or chaingun, Isaac uses a Plasma Cutter and a gravity-field-suspended buzzsaw called the Ripper. Later in the game, you can pick up mining tools such as the line cutter or contact beam. The only 'traditional' gun in the game is the plasma rifle. All these weapons do 'shaped' damage. Usually a line of varying length and angle.
The shaped damage is in service to the key combat innovation in Dead Space. "Dismemberment" as they call it encourages you to aim for the limbs of the monsters. It's cool looking, fun to do, and a nice change from other shooters where maybe the head is a nice place to favor. My favored weapon in the game was the Ripper, which hovers in front of you dealing horizontal damage. The resulting combat felt sort of like I was swinging a sword around, panning my camera to try and chop off limbs.
All the weapons and your suit must be upgraded by spending Power Nodes. This is done by unlocking nodes in the upgrade grid, where you would make a path to whatever attribute you wanted to improve, like damage or reload time. Sort of FFX style. I disliked this system, since it encouraged me to focus mostly just on my ripper and plasma gun. All the other weapons were very cool, but I did not have the nodes to support them.
The inventory system also annoyed me, as it effectively just limited the fun you could have with various weapons. You can only keep 4 guns, and ammo shares space with lame crap like air canisters and stasis rechargers. I would have been happier with no inventory management. The various stores throughout the ship gives you a place to bank ammo or guns you want to play with later, so there's really little point for the space limit in the grand scheme.
In the end, I would have liked this game more if it were simpler. The limited resources and storage space that make a game a 'survival' horror just drive me nuts. But, it was still really fun, very cool looking, and I look forward to the many many soulless EA sequels.
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