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Original IPs have been quite the rage with EA these days and it’s hard not to get misty-eyed upon seeing Dead Space, a third-person action/adventure horror escapade developed by EA Redwood Shores, in action for the first-time. Reggie and I were invited to EA India’s office in Gurgaon today to have ourselves an intensive hands-on session with a near final-build.
In the beginning of the game, we’re treated with an in-game cinematic of lead protagonist Isaac Clarke with a space crew heading towards the USG Ishimura, a giant orbital ship that suffered a huge communications blackout for whatever reason unbeknownst to its curious approachers. Eventually, stinky poop hits the fan when your crew’s vessel gets pulled into the Ishimura’s magnetic field and you’re forced to make a landing inside its hull. Voodoo vibes are in full effect, and this is pretty much were you come in.
Starting off, you have no weapons of any sort – just your strangely bronze coated armor and your ship crew barking directions in a quick and dirty tutorial on how to manoeuvre in the game. The lack of on-screen HUD indicators ala Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is a nice touch and help immerse you while you try to figure out which scripted cutscene you’ll have to trigger before the nasty scythe-hand wielding zombies (called Necromorphs) pop out and adequately greet you. After a short-run with a few Necromorphs, you’ll eventually stumble upon Dead Space’s first and primary weapon of choice – the Plasma Cutter. The Plasma Cutter, spoiler alert for the uninitiated, runs on plasma energy which you’ll find stashed in breakable boxes or dropped after downing an enemy, and allows you to sever various limbs and body parts of your choice provide you have the appropriate aiming opportunity.
This style of play aptly called Strategic Dismemberment comes up a lot in Dead Space and reminds us a lot of how Capcom handled Resident Evil 4; from the first mission, it’s woefully apparent you’re not a towering force of nature with a huge arsenal. Fire-fights are taken more into consideration as pumping a Necromorph’s body full of lead with an Assault Rifle or even a headshot doesn’t always yield the best results. Precision goes a long way of making you’re life easier and the sense of satisfaction from taking down an enemy with a carefully aimed shot from your Plasma Cutter followed up by a Gears of War-like head stomp (which can even back-fire, if you’re not too careful) can’t be denied. Additional weapons, armor and ammo can be purchased at store depots whereas weapon enhancements are made at upgrade benches. Why these two facilities couldn’t be combined into a single solution isn’t really fully explained, but both require their own forms for currency – credits for weapons/ammo and data modules for upgrades. Our Plasma Cutter could be upgraded based on the following parameters: capacity, damage, reload and speed. Another notable weapon we later acquired was the Flame Thrower which doles a ferocious ball of fire as it’s a secondary function.
Aside from gunning, there was a fair amount of puzzles to be tackled with. But since Isaac didn’t have an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device to carry around with him, he had the next best thing: Gordon Freeman’s Gravity Gun, or in Dead Space’s case – the Kinesis Module. This along with the Stasis Module further adds to your growing inventory of hurting with the added mix of mystery solving. For example, we had to use the Stasis Module to slow down a rapidly-sliding door leading to the next area and the Kinesis Module to manipulate a platform from side to side and back in order to cross over a gap (sorry folks, no rocket-jumping here). These are just rough examples to give you a general idea of their capabilities as puzzles later in the game do become a tad more intricate. There’s also Zero Gravity jumping which, by pressing Left Trigger + Y on the 360 controller, allows to you zoom across any scalable surface. However, we were only able to fiddle around with this for a bit.
And now for what we didn’t like! Character movement was tight and generally manageable, but the exclusion of a quick-turn is sorely lacking. One EA India representative argued that this would eliminate the tension found in combat but if it comes at the cost of navigation, we would’ve rather let it be implemented. Which brings up another point: the game’s overall scare factor. Now, the general rule of the thumb when you’re watching a horror film is that you have to dim the lights and preferably be by your lonesome. Horror games more or less work in a similar fashion, but the conditions in which we played Dead Space didn’t really give us a fair impression on just how suspenseful everything really was. Oh sure, the random appearance of a Necromorph during gameplay or this one scripted scene of a female shipmate operating on her former co-worker’s corpse and then later slitting her own throat may have jiggled a synapse or two, but we couldn’t interpret these moments as genuinely scary. Creepy as hell, of course, but not “I have to change my drawers” frightening. Lastly, although enemies later in the game do get meaner and freakier, we’ve yet to run into a single boss battle of any sort. Or at least the general impression of what boss battle might feel like (although this could intentionally be by-design).
Dead Space will be released in North America on the 14th of October for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 and the 20th on Windows PC. While these dates don’t necessarily reflect the release plan here in India, you can be sure to see it in stores in a week or two’s time. And judging from what we’ve played thus far, you can expect an in-depth review of this highly promising survival romp.
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| By N2H | |||||||||
October 10th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
[...] Preview: The Ghouls and Gibs of DEAD SPACE [...]