[iPhone] Review - Dead Space

 [This is an opinion piece on "Dead Space" by Electronic Arts. The official website is here.]

I used to have Dead Space on the Xbox360. I wasn't really impressed to be honest. I barely put 2 or 3 hours into it altogether. Complete waste of money ...

So when I saw the chance to give EA Games even more of my money by purchasing the same game in a watered-down version for the tiny iPhone screen -- I jumped at it.

Dead Space by Electronic Arts

But seriously I only bought this because it's on sale for $1.19 right now. I've spent about 30 minutes playing, so I feel more than qualified to give a thorough and accurate appraisal of it.

Dead Space is a survival-horror game. The ambiance is pretty much "Event Horizon" meets "Aliens" meets the Space Hulk universe. You walk around a lot, and get to blast the limbs off insectoid monsters which come crawling from everywhere, trying to slice open your face.

Graphics - Brilliant. The screen shots on this page have lost a lot of detail during e-mailing, rotation, convert to .jpg and then resize into the blog -- an original 1.2mb screenshot becomes 50kb for the blog. That means what you're seeing is 4% of what it actually looks like. So times these pictures by a factor of 25.

A light source behind a roof fan? Seriously. That only happens in video games.

You get the point. Sharp graphics, smooth FPS, and quick load times all contribute to the moody atmosphere, which is helped a lot by the ...

Sound - I'm a big fan of sound in games. It can really make or break the atmospheric atmosphere of the environmental environment. In Dead Space's case, atmospherically and environmentally, they got it right. The monsters sound nasty, the ominous music sets the mood, and the startling string noises that play when a monster scampers across the corridor in front of you can really make you jump. But none of that matters, unless the game has good ...

Gameplay - Hmm. The problem (for me) with the original Dead Space on Xbox is that the main character has no agility. You feel like you're walking in mud or something. More realistic? Maybe. But not more fun.

They haven't fixed it here. It's an over-the-shoulder view which kind of sucks, since almost half of the screen is blocked by your character's back. Do you really want to stare at his back for the entire game? No.

A lot of the detail lost, but it's very atmospheric when you're actually playing.

Apart from that it's OK I guess. You can aim pretty easily, and cut off the monster's legs, arms, or head. Blast a leg and they'll still crawl towards you. When they get close you can swipe downwards to stomp them into a pulp. A couple of other gestures are used when you get grabbed by a critter.

I didn't manage to take screenshots of the battles, because I was too busy shitting myself and trying not to get eaten.


It's got plenty of gore too:

"Cleanup in aisle 12! Janitor to aisle 12, please ..."

Oh also your character has some extra tricks, like a "stasis thingy" which slows down moving machinery, and a "kinetic whats-it" which let's you throw around boxes. And probably monsters. Like I said, I'm about 5% through the game so I'm not sure about everything yet.

Value - For $1.19 I'm not upset. If I paid $8 I wouldn't be thrilled. Especially when I noticed this:

Increase your fun! Just send us more money!

This is absolute bollocks. You pay for a game, and then you find another 100 ways to spend more money on it by upgrading your character, buying new weapons, etc. I know it's only single-player so there is no disadvantage to not buying the upgrades ... But it's still cheeky to even ask players to spend more. It's not like you're buying more levels or gameplay ... All they seem to be selling are "cheats" to make the game easier. What kind of moron would actually buy these things, I can only imagine ...

Anyway, it's not really my type of game to be honest, but to be fair -- it looks nice, sounds nice, smooth controls, hasn't crashed, everything loads super fast on my iPhone 4, and has good production values (as far as quality of sound, music, graphics, pacing, etc.). I even noticed a few options in the main menu for playing a specific level, and a button called "5 minutes to kill" which I guess lets you blast the monsters and aim for a high score, or something.

Dead Space - 4 out of 5 (If you enjoy over-the-shoulder shooters, treat this as a 5 out of 5 score)
Solid.

-Gray