Dead Space
EA (Xbox 360 / PS3 / Windows)
I didn’t think it was possible to actually scare your pants clean off while playing a game. But Dead Space managed to make my pants fly ten feet across the room. It is atmospheric, dramatic and completely thrusts you into a darkened confined hell.
Dead Space sees the main protagonist, petty engineer Isaac Clarke, charged with fixing all that is wrong with the a troubled vessel called the Ishimura, a giant mining ship whose 1000 inhabitants have gone missing.
Suddenly you are greeted by the first (of many) Necromorph - a twisted and disgusting ex-human creature with giant savage claws instead of arms. They really don’t like the ‘repair crew’ and make it their mission to jump out of the darkness and scare the crap out of you before attempting to kill, kill, kill.
The bad (and ugly) guys are pretty difficult to dispatch, which adds to the tension as you never know when they’ll drop out of the darkness to get you. There are so many of them that you find yourself terrified in sheer anticipation of their arrival. Dead Space is one really scary game.
Game play and storytelling are brilliant and you will be totally engrossed in the adventure. Deep Space throws some great new features into the mix for its genre too. First up is ‘Deck Nav,’ which is like a Donnie Darko wormhole that guides you to where you should be. It lets you explore your environment without having a giant glowing arrow above your head.
The other thing I really loved about this game is the lack of OSD (on screen displays). No life bar as we know it, rather an energy light which is part of your space suit. No ‘bullet counter,’ rather a small figure behind your weapon only when you aim for fire. It really makes it feel like a movie, and you’re the star.
All in all, this is an amazing game that you’ll really enjoy. The missions may become a little repetitive, but you’ll be too scared to notice. The graphics blew my socks off right after my pants were scared off. And the sound effects were also so freaky I had to take my top off and wrap it around my ears. By the end of the game I was naked.