Dead Space - Review

What do you get when you mix a little bit of Aliens, a little bit of Event Horizon and a whole lot of awesome? Dead Space.

Occasionally a game will come along that I hear very little about. That was pretty much Dead Space. I heard a few people talk about how awesome it was, or how scary it was but nothing really about the game. I resisted playing it because I thought it was a survival horror game, and well me and survival horror games have a love hate relationship.

Then a while back Dead Space went on sale, $15 at Best Buy. My brother asked me if I wanted to go in half on it... well, I generally don't turn down paying $7.50 for a video game so we went ahead and bought it. Seeing as I had a ton of games waiting to be played I let him have a go at it first. I would occasionally come over and see him playing it, even played it myself for about three minutes. Seemed good enough but playing it for that short period of a time wasn't really enough for me to see what the game was really about.

Fast forward to this week.

My brother was going on vacation so I'm house sitting for him. I brought along Tales of Symphonia to play, but then I remembered Dead Space. My brother was going to be gone for five days, plenty of time to beat Dead Space. So I decided to pop it in and give it a go.

I'm glad I did, because Dead Space turned out to be a great game.

Once in a while a game comes around where things just seem to click. Where everything just seems to come together perfectly. This is how I felt about Dead Space. Everything came together to create a tense, creepy experience.

I've often said that in both video games and horror movies, ambiance is the key factor. You have to create a creepy atmosphere before something can be truly scary. Sometimes something not happening is scarier then it actually happening. When there's a monster around every corner you lose something, you come to expect it... but when you hear that monster, but can't find it... when it stalking you and you're waiting for it to pounce on you at every turn... that's where the real tension comes in. That's how Dead Space it. You're kept in almost a constant state of fear about what's going to happen next, what's going to sneak up behind you, what that noise is and where it's coming from. You're constantly on the edge of your seat.

Dead Space performs flawlessly at getting you, and keeping you, on the edge of your seat. You almost never know what's coming next. The next room you go into could be full of monsters or it could be empty. Either way you get the feeling that you don't want to go in there.

The story is great, the atmosphere is great, the game is great. Seriously, you can pick it up for $20 on Xbox360, PS3, or PC... there's no reason not to play this great game. Do yourself the favor.

Squid.