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Are you scared yet?"Interactive horror movie experience." That's how Derek Chan, the game's global product manager, describes Dead Space, due out on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC this Halloween. He's talking in the basement of a darkened London gallery, and at the same time showing off a game EA hopes will be the start of a hugely successful series. We sit back, relax, and prepare ourselves for a frightful assault on the senses.
"Can we have the lights turned off please?" the EA demo guy, PS3 pad in hand, asks from somewhere behind us. We see some of the lights go off, but it's still not the pitch black he's hoping for. "Can we have all of the lights off please?" We detect a hint of annoyance. We don't notice any change in the lighting.
AdvertisementAh well. The point has been made. Dead Space is best played with the lights off and, we imagine, as few drinks and breakables within touching distance as possible. Around every corner of the Ishimura, the spooky space ship in which the game is set, hides what's intended to be a jump out of your seat shock. I've always found jump out of your seat shocks, well, a bit naff. Extended periods of silence in horror movies, from which Dead Space has obviously taken many of its cues, are more likely to send me to sleep than give me a heart attack. How refreshing then, as I cautiously make my way through the ship's Medical Deck during a personal hands on demo of the game's second chapter, to find myself jumping out of my skin on more than one occasion.
But I've jumped forward in time somewhat. Let's go back to Chan's presentation. The development team can see the light at the end of the tunnel and have just entered a three and a half month period of pure polish. Chan offers a Dead Space refresher course for those who haven't been keeping up. The game is set 500 years in the future, a time when mankind has been forced to mine planets with giant 'planet crackers' to compensate for dwindling resources on earth. One of these, the Ishimura, has mysteriously gone quiet while orbiting a deep space planetoid. This is where you come in. You play Isaac Clarke, part of a small engineering team sent to find out exactly what the hell is going on. What you find, of course, is the crew slaughtered and the ship overrun by terrifying Necromorphs, or what look like humans bastardised by some sickening mutant disease. Dead Space is all about the horror, and surviving that horror.
Legs are torn off - so it crawls. Arms are torn off - so it snakes. A close combat curb stomp puts it out of its misery, bones crunching, throat gurgling and blood spraying.
With the lights not quite off our demo begins. Chan gives us a bit of background into the Medical deck. When things started to go bad on the Ishimura, the medical bay became overrun with patients. As things got worse the number of people needing help overwhelmed the medical staff to the point where they were forced to turn dying crew members away. Unfortunately this didn't sit well with the dying crew members. In response, the medical staff barricaded themselves in the medical bay, keeping everyone else out. And, as we're about to see, the ordeal hasn't had the healthiest impact on their mental state.
Isaac creeps around a corner as he makes his way into the medical bay, a combination of completely dark areas and blindingly white rooms. We see a human survivor being assaulted by a Necromorph, deadly claws on the end of spindly alien limbs carving into flesh, blood spewing everywhere. The unfortunate victim slowly starts to change, screaming as his body is torn apart and reshaped as one of them. It spies Isaac from behind a glass window. With a deafening scream it jumps through the glass. Our demo guy uses the plasma cutter, an engineering tool re-purposed for alien death bringing, to show off the game's limb dismemberment system. Legs are torn off - so it crawls. Arms are torn off - so it snakes. A close combat curb stomp puts it out of its misery, bones crunching, throat gurgling and blood spraying.
Did you know Dead Space uses an enhanced version of The Godfather engine?Isaac turns another corner and enters what looks like a medical theatre. Lights are flashing on and off, making it difficult to see what's going on. We hear screams and what sounds like someone packing meat. On the theatre table is a still alive human being carved up by an insane surgeon. Our demo guy centres the camera on the action, giving us a good look at the gory scene. Then, almost oblivious to the violence, he continues down a corridor. These types of events are clearly par for the course on board the Ishimura.
And then the demo jumps forward and we're shown for the first time Dead Space's Hunter mini-boss, a fearsome Necromorph who stalks Isaac inexorably throughout the game. Here, in what looks like some sort of containment field, Isaac goes up against the Hunter. "Isaac is going to die," says Chan.
The Hunter appears, a barbecue coloured monster with giant claws for arms that stands much taller than the other aliens we've seen in the game up to this point. It clearly doesn't like Isaac, and rips into his neck. After a second's worth of futile resistance, the Hunter tears his head off then carves his torso in two. Blood is everywhere, and screams are still ringing in my head as blood fills the screen. Expect to die often in Dead Space. And when you do, don't expect it to be pretty.
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