Dead Space Preview

It's very bloody and hugely atmospheric

Dead Space reminds me of a lot of things. BioShock has certainly been a big influence. Dead Space presents a claustrophobic horror filled setting where the player battles through the after effects of a place that's clearly gone horribly wrong. The story is told in real time through wickedly cool science fiction versions of BioShock's radio diaries. Its feel, one of dread as the environment reveals the horror of its past, is extremely similar. In many ways you might say Dead Space is BioShock in space, and, well, in third-person too.

And it's because of that over the shoulder third-person view that the game has also drawn comparisons with Capcom's stupendously good survival horror Resident Evil 4. I can't see EA having a problem with this. If you're going to draw comparisons with other games, you couldn't ask for two better examples.

I sit down for some hands on time after the presentation ends. I'm struck by the quality of the graphics, which are clearly meant to be played on a wide screen high definition television. This is an interactive horror movie experience after all. Isaac takes up a massive amount of the screen, his space suit and the luminous blue capsules that run down his back imposing as he lumbers about. He is slow moving and somewhat cumbersome, but that's OK - Isaac isn't a muscle bound marine - he's an engineer, forced to turn plasma tools into weapons to survive.

Camera and character movement are as you'd expect controlled with the thumb sticks. The face buttons are reserved for bringing up your map, which clearly outlines the path of least resistance to your objective. Another is reserved for melee, which proves incredibly useful when you find yourself surrounded by aliens and out of ammo (something that happened to us a lot). Dead Space is quite hard, with plenty of quiet then very loud moments where Necromorphs will tear out of vents or up from underneath gratings and head straight for your flesh. It's quite easy to get surrounded. I found the best course of action was to slowly inch backwards while taking out their legs with horizontal blasts of the plasma cutter, forcing them to slowly crawl to my position. When they eventually found themselves gnawing at my ankles it was curb stomp time.

You won't want to play this in the dark while alone

You'll often see something dart across a ledge or jump onto the ceiling in your periphery vision. These moments can be particularly tense, since you have to think laterally about where the enemy is. Dead Space has a Gravity Gun-type weapon, which allows you to zip blocks and what not to the front of your gun and then fire them out. The best application I found of this was using the plasma cutter to tear off an alien claw then using the gravity beam to use its own arm to finish the job. Nice.

Dead Space also has a slow down time pulse move, given to Isaac by a dying female crew member in the second chapter, which is extremely useful for slowing down onrushing aliens. It also affects gravity, so you'll find bits of dead alien and environmental objects lift into the air within the time bubble you've created. That's when the gravity gun gets very interesting. And, if there was any doubt, you can indeed pause the game, with, shock horror, the START button. EA came to its senses then.

I'm extremely enthusiastic about Dead Space, a game that's at the forefront of EA's new found commitment to new, quality IP. The production values are through the roof, the gravity and limb dismemberment tech impressive and the science fiction cool factor sky high (3D video logs anyone? Done!). It's difficult to say whether it will reach the heights of BioShock or Resident Evil 4 both in terms of story and atmosphere, given our limited time with the game, and so far the Necromorphs don't look particularly varied, which might get a bit boring (just like BioShock's Splicers did). But from what we've seen Dead Space may well be the start of something horrifyingly good. And with three and a half months of polish left to go, it can only get scarier.

Dead Space is due out for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC this Halloween.