Isaac’s initial, panicked run as the team docks on the Ishimura and it becomes clear something has gone horribly wrong starts the game off right. It just took a game genre that hadn’t received a lot of love and it polished the hell out of each individual element. When it comes to the brass tacks of the story, characters, basic mechanics and environment, Dead Space didn’t do anything unprecedented and wild.
#DEAD SPACE 2 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS SERIES#
A small cast of supporting characters who are trying to guide you through this nightmare by giving you a series of missions over voice comms? Dead Space had that. A Resident Evil 4-style over-the-shoulder camera that gives players agency enough to aim, maneuver, and flee? There’s that too, along with the new “strategic dismemberment” mechanic and some sci-fi gadgets. Messages smeared in blood from survivors, or breathless diary entries recorded in someone’s last moments, warning an unlucky protagonist about critical plot or gameplay elements? Dead Space has those aplenty. It was a survival horror game at a time when the genre wasn’t in vogue.ĭead Space was more than happy to borrow a page from previous titles in the same genre. Dead Space came from a studio that hadn’t made an original IP yet, EA Redwood Studios. A massive space opera RPG with romance and danger like Mass Effect or a musical party game for the gang like Rock Band was easy to sum up and easier to market. These were new titles and games that took interesting balls and ran with them in wonderful directions. A Dead Space surpriseĭead Space came out of Electronic Arts at an unexpected time, alongside titles like Mirror’s Edge and Mass Effect. The setting’s horror worked best on the USG Ishimura, with a silent protagonist and a small supporting cast. It wasn’t the Necromorphs or the Unitologists that doomed the world of Dead Space it was the inexorable scope creep that marched forward. or maybe with the expectation that there be a franchise at all. While Dead Space 3 famously fell apart, the franchise’s problems started with Dead Space 2. A light flickers, you pause, and just when you finally feel close to safe, there’s a noise - the rattle of a vent, the sound of bone and flesh scraping against floor - and you remember you’re not safe, and you never were.Įven as you graduate to deadlier weapons and larger, more horrific enemies, the best settings in Dead Space are intimate, quiet and carefully balanced to provide the right amount of detail while still allowing the player to project themselves into that heavy, slow-moving engineer suit. His spinal indicator shows your health, which is often as comforting a light as you can get, and you can hear his breath rasping inside his helmet.
All rights reserved.The tensest moments of the Dead Space trilogy are usually centered around a very simple image: Isaac Clarke, in his bulky engineer suit, stands in a narrow, dark corridor of an abandoned spaceship. This nightmare has just begun and it’s up to you to get to the bottom of what happened here. That means any action you take, whether it be reloading or digging through your inventory, gives the Necromorphs a perfect opportunity to attack. Switch things up with alternate fire modes, and purchase upgrades to increase ammo, power, and reload speed. Send horizontal or vertical blasts of energy at enemies with the Plasma Cutter, remotely control a high-speed sawblade with the Disc Ripper, and fill hallways with wide swaths of destruction with the Line Gun. There aren't many traditional firearms aboard the Ishimura, but there's plenty of stopping power in Isaac's toolkit.
To survive, you'll need to dismember their insect-like limbs, one at a time. Headshots do about as much damage to them as flicking rubber bands. The Necromorphs are unlike any enemies you've seen before. Fortunately, your offense is equally unique, as the high-powered mining tools at your disposal provide the means to fight against the threat. The undead have become Necromorphs horrific zombie-alien hybrids that won't succumb to traditional means. You are, however, the last line of defense between the remaining living crew and deadly reanimated corpses. You are Isaac Clarke, an engineer on the spacecraft USG Ishimura.