An action 3rd person shooter, Dead Space is EA’s entry into the horror genre of gaming which has thus far barely been touched.

An action 3rd person shooter, Dead Space is EA’s entry into the horror genre of gaming which has thus far barely been touched. With rare exceptions, this has happened for good reason: making a compelling horror title is very difficult, and has thus far been mostly unsuccessful.
Dead Space does a few things differently from the standard slew of games.

Based around the story of a lonesome engineer on a mission to repair communications between mission command, if you will, and a deep space mining ship named “Ishamura”. Sent alone into the dead of space, you find that lo and behold, everyone on the ship is dead. Not so much dead, but turned into horrible, terrifying creatures hellbent on killing you.

However, these monsters don’t simply stop because you shoot them. They aren’t human anymore, so headshots or bullets to the heart don’t do the trick. Instead, players use what’s called “strategic dismemberment”, which is the art of removing limbs from enemies to kill them. The monsters aboard the Ishamura can’t fight back if they run out of arms, legs and tentacles, and after losing so many fluids…well, you get the picture. Point being that attacking in a conventional way doesn’t work on these baddies.

It’s also a horror, meaning there are lots of dark corners with things that bite waiting to be found. It isn’t like Doom 3 horror; the third person part makes it less scary. The horror comes from shocking images and random attacks that require quick thinking. One such attack came from a giant tentacle that grabbed Isaac, the protagonist, by the leg and slowly pulled him towards the hole in the wall it came from. If he fails to cut off part of it, he’ll have strategic dismemberment happen to him, to a vital limb (note: head). If successful, then you can take a second to let your heart rate drop down to normal, brush the dust off your shoulders and move on.

The developers are also hard at work to make everything as realistic as possible, to make sure the experience isn’t lost on menus and such. This means everything that happens is run on the in-game engine (which looks great) and that there is no real pausing (yes, start does pause the game, just like pressing play/pause pauses movies). Bringing up the inventory screen shows a holographic image of your inventory which actually plays a part in the game, as part of Isaac’s suit that pops out and shows the image. Players can actually turn the camera and swivel around the inventory menu.

This works with everything. There are no outright menus. Upgrading weapons, regenerating health and finding items is all done through either holographic displays above said crates or items or is automatic. As far as keeping the experience completely in-game, nothing witness in 20 minutes of gameplay has taken away from that experience.

Weapons are almost all based around the strategic dismemberment, with such weapons as the line gun and plasma rifle. Both of these weapons shoot lines of energy which are perfect for taking off limbs. The plasma rifle has a secondary ability to turn the direction of the plasma it shoots, so making it fire vertically is good for taking out arms while horizontally is better for removing legs. The two other weapons seen were the flamethrower and contact bean, which charges and shoots a devastating energy attack.

All weapons are upgradeable using a system of nodes, which are collected throughout the game. These nodes can be used to upgrade weapon strength or abilities, and can also upgrade Isaac, his health and suit powers such as stasis (which temporarily slows down a targeted enemy).

However, there are a limited number of available nodes and lots of weapons and suit functions to upgrade, and not enough to go around.
Already nearly complete, Dead Space will release for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC simultaneously this Halloween, on October 21st in North America and Europe.