Intro: Traveling into the echoed emptiness of a classic was an intimidating task. Dead Space, a horror action-adventure title originally released October 18th 2008. This game was the first of its kind that inspired such titles as Alien Isolation and Returnal. Dead Space honed in on atmosphere, a slow burn, and brilliant voice acting but falls short when delivering a strong narrative. A Waiting Game: Throughout my journey with Dead Space, there were down moments and high impact moments, the down moments held little to no substance and the high impact moments were either a hit or miss most of the time. There were four moments throughout the game that I thought truly hit the marker for me. Meeting the introduction of Dr. Mercer, the death of Hammond, Kendra revealing the truth of who she is and the story of the Marker, and Kendra showing Issac the full tape Nicole had left him. That’s it, those where the significant story points for me as I traverse through Dead Space. Other than that it was incredibly predictable and created little to no interest for me as the game progressed. There is a story, and there are important themes and plotlines, but it’s so submerged in the chaos of fighting Necromorphs and fixing things that I feels as if the story didn’t shine the way I had hoped it would. I See Dead People: the Necromorphs, Infectors, Lurkers, leapers etc all had a promising first impression, I loved seeing the Necromorphs when I played a bit of the original and now seeing them all polished up and even more deadly looking was a treat. After a while though, the charm wore off and at certain points they even started to get a tad annoying. With the honeymoon phase quickly wearing off and, me slowly but surely becoming more and more irritated with the fact that this game was becoming rather repetitive I found myself at a possible stalemate around chapter seven where I wasn’t really enjoying myself but I knew I wanted to finish the game and give it a chance, which is what I did. seeing the different cut scenes, hearing the transmissions, and viewing how the character interaction grew and evolved I can say with confidence that Dead Space was great for its time but for someone like myself, and possibly other players who have a de-sensitization to horror and/or are playing for the first time this year it is underwhelming to go through. I understand this games significance and importance in the horror genre, but as someone who has played so much horror over the course of my life it takes more than cutting off limbs and creepy looking atmospheres to really wow me anymore. Isaac’s journey with seeing dead people on the Ishumura, fixing other people’s problems (and equipment), just to purely survive by the skin of his teeth and to be left broken and exhausted left a sour taste in my mouth. I hoped for a resolution, I hoped to better understand the story but instead I was left with crumbs to try and piece together. Cut off the Limbs: The mechanics in this game (besides the voice acting) is the best part. The variance in the ways to kill an enemy is really creative, and borderline disgusting which, isn’t that the fun part? The intensity with which Isaac smashes creatures, stomps on them, or even conducts conversations with other characters is intense and you feel how over everything he really is at certain points. The voice acting in this game is on another level of incredible. From emotionally charged scenes of finding out Kendra was essentially the bad guy, to seeing that Nicole, in the end was dead after all made me not dislike the whole game. It shocked me how incredible the voice acting, the atmosphere, and the graphics were but the pacing and flow of the story just didn’t connect in the same way as everything else did or in a way that I had hoped for. That Nauseous Feeling: I would be remise if I didn’t talk about the quality-of-life aspects of this game, that made it a chore in certain sections to go through. Very seldom do I get motion sickness, but during a lot of the anti-gravity sections of this game which were fun, but very stressful on my stomach. In a lot of those moments, I felt nauseated, and dizzy. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve never wanted to try VR, I get motion sickness and vertigo very easily. Not only that, but there were bugs and FPS drops riddled throughout the game. This is a PS5 game, so why are there frame drops, Isaac moving uncontrolled and body parts glitching through the door? Games are complex creatures; there is a delicate balance much like an ecosystem that needs to be met. There are bugs we can see, ones we cannot see and ones that just break the game entirely. There was one game breaking bug that happened during my time with Dead Space, where it would not move on to the next segment of the game and I had to restart from the manual save. In the Name of Being a Classic: Having finished this game in 13 hours, I feel a sense of incompleteness, as if there could have been more stories to tell within the world of the first game. I guess that’s why there are two others Dead Space games that come after the first. Dead Space Remake had interesting points, some unique motifs, and a beautifully crafted atmosphere, but with a story that lacked immersion. This game raises a point that I implore you to think on. Just because this game is a classic doesn’t mean that it’s going to be fun or reach everyone in the same way.
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