Best action horror game in years.

If you somehow didn't play this game yet, WHAT ARE YOU DOING GO BUY IT!

The first order of business is to make sure you follow the on-screen adjuster to turn your brightness down. This makes a fundamental difference in the atmosphere and experience of playing the game. If you don't, it's just a well lit third person shooter where you murder everything with angry curb stomps and plasma.

Dead Space is one of the few "survival horror" titles where other people have admitted to me that the first time they played it, they put it down and couldn't go on because they were "scared". I personally started it, played the first chapter, and refused to put up with it anymore after that because of the degree to which the atmosphere is perfected. Did not pick it back up for 6 months, but I am so glad I did. It isn't necessarily the game or the story that make the game frightening, and it may sound like this is a discredit, but the lighting and sound design alone make the horror atmosphere.

Every hallway and room you go in, you hear necromorphs scurrying through the vents and behind the walls. You hear them walking around, or you hear objects moving around. Sometimes that ends up being you trolling yourself, because the physics in the game are exaggerated - and glitched on PC especially. If you walk over a limb or a bucket, it will move around on the floor forever and sound like an enemy. The lighting is very well done and the game makes great use of darkness to throw enemies at you - and also to mask the fact that some of them are just scripted jump scares - or to confuse you so that it's harder to see.

One of the best things about the game, and one of the most simple, is the hud. There isn't one. Health and ammo information is projected from your gun model or player model, rather than having you pause, or block parts of the screen. It's a very basic design decision but it goes a long way towards maintaining your immersion in the environment. It also forces you to be decent at the game because there is no pause. If you need to view your inventory, you do it in real time while blocking the majority of the screen, so you better not need to heal. That was sort of a fail on Visceral's part, though, and why they put in quick heal in the sequels.

Storywise, no, Dead Space is nothing original. It is simply one of two modern EA franchises that retells the same story as System Shock (The other being Mass Effect), the franchise they ensured stopped existing after SS2 didn't sell 8 million copies. Anyone who has played those games can see that, but it does so in an enjoyable and interesting way.....that eventually got retconned and ruined in the 2nd and 3rd games.

I have one major problem with Dead Space 1, and it is the same problem as with RE4. There is a point in time, in the game, where your character transcends from alone and helpless, to alone and a super-Rambo. RE4 did this by accelerating the rate at which you gain money, ammo,and more powerful weapons. Dead Space does this by, admittedly, allowing you to cheat to get Nodes, but giving you Nodes in the first place, and giving you force powers. Kinesis and stasis module don't ruin the game, but they do make it tactical and easily controllable so that you can slay hordes of Necros with some careful playing. You will also eventually pick up so much Force Gun ammo that the hardest (and scariest) parts of the game become a joke, as you simply gravity gun everything to death.

Even with that, Dead Space is a 10 out of 10 easily. Superb. It does suck that there's no mod support though.

Best action horror game in years. If you somehow didn't play this game yet, WHAT ARE YOU DOING GO BUY IT! The first order of business is to make sure you follow the on-screen adjuster to turn your brightness down. This makes a fundamental difference in the atmosphere and experience of playing the game. If you don't, it's just a well lit third person shooter where you murder everything with angry curb stomps and plasma. Dead Space is one of the few "survival horror" titles where other people have admitted to me that the first time they played it, they put it down and couldn't go on because they were "scared". I personally started it, played the first chapter, and refused to put up with it anymore after that because of the degree to which the atmosphere is perfected. Did not pick it back up for 6 months, but I am so glad I did. It isn't necessarily the game or the story that make the game frightening, and it may sound like this is a discredit, but the lighting and sound design alone make the horror atmosphere. Every hallway and room you go in, you hear necromorphs scurrying through the vents and behind the walls. You hear them walking around, or you hear objects moving around. Sometimes that ends up being you trolling yourself, because the physics in the game are exaggerated - and glitched on PC especially. If you walk over a limb or a bucket, it will move around on the floor forever and sound like an enemy. The lighting is very well done and the game makes great use of darkness to throw enemies at you - and also to mask the fact that some of them are just scripted jump scares - or to confuse you so that it's harder to see. One of the best things about the game, and one of the most simple, is the hud. There isn't one. Health and ammo information is projected from your gun model or player model, rather than having you pause, or block parts of the screen. It's a very basic design decision but it goes a long way towards maintaining your immersion in the environment. It also forces you to be decent at the game because there is no pause. If you need to view your inventory, you do it in real time while blocking the majority of the screen, so you better not need to heal. That was sort of a fail on Visceral's part, though, and why they put in quick heal in the sequels. Storywise, no, Dead Space is nothing original. It is simply one of two modern EA franchises that retells the same story as System Shock (The other being Mass Effect), the franchise they ensured stopped existing after SS2 didn't sell 8 million copies. Anyone who has played those games can see that, but it does so in an enjoyable and interesting way.....that eventually got retconned and ruined in the 2nd and 3rd games. I have one major problem with Dead Space 1, and it is the same problem as with RE4. There is a point in time, in the game, where your character transcends from alone and helpless, to alone and a super-Rambo. RE4 did this by accelerating the rate at which you gain money, ammo,and more powerful weapons. Dead Space does this by, admittedly, allowing you to cheat to get Nodes, but giving you Nodes in the first place, and giving you force powers. Kinesis and stasis module don't ruin the game, but they do make it tactical and easily controllable so that you can slay hordes of Necros with some careful playing. You will also eventually pick up so much Force Gun ammo that the hardest (and scariest) parts of the game become a joke, as you simply gravity gun everything to death. Even with that, Dead Space is a 10 out of 10 easily. Superb. It does suck that there's no mod support though.