I’m just going to throw this out there, but I’m a huge fan of the scifi horror genre and most things related I tend to enjoy more than the usual viewer. Movies like Alien, Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sunshine, Cloverfield, and games like Prey and Fallout 3 I love and cherish. What I love most about scifi horror stories is the multiple elements of fear that each story has to draw from. First and foremost in every scifi horror is the environmental fear and danger posited by the extreme conditions of space, a foreign planet, losing atmosphere, or claustrophobic environs of space craft. Being trapped in a space ship is akin to Descent’s cave in and the claustrophobic, low-light, lack of contact with the outside world automatically gives it a one up on usual horror stories. Then there’s the element of aggressors: aliens, artificial intelligence, crazed humans, it doesn’t matter. Aggressors in science fiction have the ability to be as scary as the worst nightmare, unconnected to the requirements of terrestrial baddies. Finally, the most important and most interesting element to the genre is the human element which is an absolute requirement. The setup is usually perfect with a small cast of characters which can be completely developed under isolated and difficult conditions in space stressed to the max by evil alien chest bursting bad guys. It’s almost as though the genre has so much going for it that it can’t fail and sadly time and time again it does.

SciFi Horror Survival is not a new genre for the video game world. Generally the games are first person shooters and have titles like Half-Life, Quake, Doom, SystemShock, Fear, Resident Evil, and Prey. Some scifi horror games tend to focus on the action like Quake, Doom, and Fear while retaining some elements of the genre through creepy blood stained darkly lit hallways and monsters that appear out of nowhere and mob from behind. While this usually works for a short game of a few hours, its difficult to drag it out for nine or ten hours and keep it interesting, original, and fun. The best game in this group would most likely be Crysis and it’s younger brother Warhead which focus almost entirely on the action and throw mean freezing aliens and a cool zero G spaceship sequence into the most unusual scifi environment, a tropical island. The truly exceptional horror survival games try their best to blend the most important scifi horror element, the human experience, with a good storyline, combat, and an original environment. SystemShock and Half Life are the best of this breed combining role playing elements such as inventories and selectable upgrades with realistic human counterparts and character development.

So this leads us to the newest game in the genre, Dead Space. Dead Space is a good game. Not the greatest and by far not the worst of its kind. Dead Space excels possibly more than any other game in its environmental setup. The space craft layout, details, and general flow throughout the game was fantastic. The creepy blood stained corridors, indoor gardens, giant engine machinery, and Zero G environments were designed perfectly and were visually stunning. I got the feeling I was in a real mining class space ship full of unfinished tiny maintenance areas, heavy machinery, and large cargo holds. The scale of the ship was impressive and mixed tight confined areas easily with huge open spaces such as the asteroid processing room. Some elements of the level design we’ve seen before such as the dark bloodstained waiting rooms and halls a la Doom 3 and biomass covered walls via EVERY scifi horror movie and game, but somehow it fit as though we had stepped into the set of Aliens complete with wall attached humans calling out for death. Prey employed gravity changing buttons, wall walking platforms, and portals to play with the player’s perspective, but I felt that Dead Space’s 3D Zero G environments went a step further with giant leaps from wall to ceiling to floor and bad guys with the ability to do the same. The Zero G leaps required the player to reorient after every leap which I would imagine is realistic of Zero G movement.

Dead Space unlike most of the games in the genre employed a third person view with no HUD and instead utilized a space suit called the RIG that was something straight out of Steampunk. The suit was upgraded five times throughout the game and I liked its design with the metal ribbing for armor and tough looking material. It reminded me of a deep space plumber’s outfit, although it was missing an essential tool belt to sling the weaponry and inventory items, every space plumber’s standard arsenal of course. The RIG displayed crucial information like a HUD and when aiming displayed weapon information. The video cutscenes and menus were displayed as holographic pop ups in front of the character and generally I though it was a cool and interesting way to display the standard information. But when it came down to gameplay I would have preferred a first person view. The game didn’t utilize any good elements of third person control like peering around corners or ducking under ledges and I wound up holding the aim mode almost constantly to keep the flashlight up in the dark conditions. I feel as though games today have shifted from the PC market to the console market where third person games are easier to control and aiming isn’t as exact since thumbs are rarely more acute than arms and whole hands. One cool plus in the environment is the weapons. Almost all the weapons have a basis in mining and stick to the idea that you are on a mining vessel. Laser cutters both big and small, a saw, high energy beam, and concussion launcher all appear to have uses in the setting and aren’t the usual shotgun, assault rifle, pistol of most FPS games. Another plus is the relative lack of ammunition although ammo should have been fewer with a greater abundance and use of med packs which I rarely used during the game.

A new concept that I’m a huge fan and was truly original but was not executed to nearly a satisfying degree was surgical attacks on the bad guys. In order to kill the necromorphs, as they were called, with an economical use of ammo it was required to cut their limbs off instead of the standard shoot till they die tactic of first person shooters. Awesome! Slicing limbs off of space monsters can never get old. The failure of the game was with the monsters themselves. There were literally 8 monsters in the whole game. Eight. And none of the monsters had more than 4 limbs. If you’re going to have evil space monsters with a requirement of cutting off limbs then at least have some six armed monsters or evil octopi or something. The monster designs were cool but far too few and far too repetitive. Half the monster quantity but twice the variety and difficulty to kill would be awesome. After all, many scifi horror movies feature very few or a single monsters, ie. Alien, Alien 3, Sunshine, and focus more on the human element of the horror. Another failure was the lack of wall walking monsters. Much of the game’s atmosphere was based on Alien and what made Alien so scary was the ability of the monster to hide on the ceiling, in walls, under the floor. There was not nearly enough of that element of 3D space with most of the bad guys popping through easy to see panels or walking around corners. Another underutilized big concept in the game was monsters that feign death. It was touted that monsters would hide amongst dead bodies and spring up to surprise you. This only occurred a few times throughout the game and felt very pre-programmed. It would have been much better if the dead bodies that litter the ship would grab onto a leg and require de-limbing or better yet if a couple mobs out of a group of three were killed and third would feign death amongst it’s fallen comrades until you reached striking distance and sprouted up when you went to collect dropped items. Another possible addition would be mobile limbs from all of the mobs. Since the player had to hack off the limbs it would be fantastic for some of those limbs to continue to attack the player and take another shot to finally put down. Only one mob upon death would sprout a collection of evil limbs including a face-grabbing hand a la Alien and a head on three tentacles.

*Spoiler Alert*
The game’s biggest disappointment is the story. Dead Space is supposed to be more horror than action but because of the awful story and terrible voice acting it simply returns to action game minus plot. It starts off well enough with a repair mission gone awry and the quick descent into chaos. The inclusion of your wife on the ship creates a human element that completely get’s forgotten until at least half way into the game so the player’s character wins the ice king award for least caring spouses in a video game. The game also starts with a need driven, let’s figure out what’s going on and get off this ship but loses its urgency about 3 hours in with side mission after side mission that go from urgent to monotonous. And then it really takes a plunge with the inclusion of a cult/religion that apparently most of the crew belonged to and the end let’s just say is so epically bad that it doesn’t even have a definition. It turns out that the main character is delusional and under control of the evil monster but never really acted in a crazed manner and never has the choice to be good or bad. What I’d want want form that ending is either acceptance or giving in to the evilness completely and dooming himself and humanity or becoming the ultimate champion by vanquishing the monster and riding off into the sunset, without the little to be continued scare at the very end.

What I would wish for from in a game of this style would be an open ended environment with the entire ship virtually accessible at any time and about 10 open objectives and 10 side-objectives laid out right at the beginning. Reasonably speaking the crews on space ships would know how to fix emergency situations and wouldn’t need someone holding their hand with a big arrow pointing them where to take each step and instead would meet up now and then to compare what they’ve done and what needs to be done to salvage the situation. A slow leak of oxygen or decaying orbit with a global “impending doom timer” would force the player to choose which objectives to prioritize and side-missions would add time to the global timer or unlock certain areas of the ship that require greater skill like boss areas or goodie stashes. Most ships don’t just leave weapons, armor, and money in every part of the ship and the choice to head straight for the armory to get better weapons at the risk of running out of air or to increase air supply with limited weaponry would be a difficult but useful plot point. Another absolute inclusion I would have in a game of this kind would be an enemy spawner much like that in Left4Dead where sitting around would call more enemies to your position further heightening the need to stay constantly moving. Dead Space allowed unlimited time to walk around which was nice to see the beautiful set design, but would a real person be checking every box and drawer for goodies when the hunk of space ship they’re stuck in with evil alien creatures was running out of air and crashing into a nearby planet. The problem with most of these games is a lack of urgency that is constant in movies of the same genre. The movies also tend to have choices that the characters make that either mark them as ethical or unethical and don’t have preset plot twists that only confuse and annoy the viewers like so many of the horror scifi games.

Overall Dead Space is a good game and does justice to a well explored genre. It may not be ground breaking or the best but it deserves some kudos for some interesting concepts that hopefully will be increased further in the future by other titles. If you’re a fan of the scifi or horror genres then it might be a good game with excellent immersion and set design that you will enjoy. The first few hours and last hour are fun and very immersive and make the game worth trying out.