Developer: EA Redwood Shores

Publisher: EA

Release Date: Oct. 14, 2008

System: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS3, PC

ESRB Rating: M

Official Web site

0:00 I'm only, what, five months late to the party on this game that everyone says is a must-play? I'm looking forward to diving in, but simultaneously scared that it won't live up to the exceedingly high expectations set by everyone.

0:01 An EA logo fades out and the title fades in on what looks like a reddish dust storm or the inside of a vein or something. Now that's how you introduce a game!

0:02 Before I can hit start, an ethereal voice starts singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as the camera cuts to external space shots of elaborate space freighters drifting. The song continues into the unfamiliar verses: "When the blazing sun is gone/When the nothing shines upon/Then you shine your little light/Twinkle, twinkle, all the night..." As it does the song is intercut with scenes from inside the ships of corpses in space suits and horrible attacks from misshapen monsters making ear-screeching sounds. "Though I know not what you are/Twinkle, twinkle, little star." CREEPY!

0:04 New Game difficulty choices are Easy, Medium and Hard. I don't want to wimp out and pick Easy, but I'm probably going to want to actually get through the game, so I don't want Medium to be too hard. Aw hell, Medium it is.

0:05 "ELECTRONIC ARTS PRESENTS AN EA REDWOOD SHORES PRODUCTION: DEAD SPACE." The scene starts as static, then the camera zooms out to show a blue-and-white video message from a girl. "Isaac, it's me. I wish I could talk to you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything. It's all falling apart here. I can't believe what's happening." She looks kind of harried. Zoom out more to show me sitting on the bridge of a spaceship going through hyperspace, with two others standing in front of me. "How many times you watch that thing?" asks one of them. "I guess you really miss her. Don't worry, you'll be able to look her up when we're on board." We jump out of hyperspace and the pair introduces me to the USG Ishimura, the "biggest planet-cracker in her class." It was on a mining mission, but now we're responding to a distress call. "You'd think with 1,000 people onboard, someone would pick up the phone." Dun dun DUN!

0:08 So of course all hell breaks loose as we approach the ship. My two companions argue about how to fix it as we crash horribly. Everything goes white and then black. "What the hell were you thinking," says the woman. "Were you trying to get us killed?" The guy tells her that he saved our lives! I put on my helmet and stand up. "Hold still, Isaac. I'm syncing up everyone's RIGs with the ship," says the woman. The spine of my suit starts glowing blue, as does the face of my helmet. Guess I'm not going to see my own face here, huh ... She gives everyone a clean bill of health. "Objective added" pops in front of me on a holoscreen of sorts.

0:10 And I'm in control, from a perspective slightly behind my back. Reminds me of Resident Evil 4. The left stick moves; the right stick tilts the camera and my viewpoint. I have to hold LB to run ... that's gonna get annoying in a hurry. I like the menus that gently float in front of me to tell me how to play. Nice animation, too ... this guy has a good gait.

0:12 As we reach the Ishimura, the guy who was on my ship asks me to hack the door pad. I'm expecting a BioShock-style mini-game, but instead the door just opens. Well, that was easy!

0:13 A sign on the wall has a lot of happy people from the Concordance Extraction Corporation, beaming at me and saying "Welcome Aboard!" Shades of BioShock and Fallout 3.

0:15 Clicking the right stick shows me a nice, lit path on the ground toward my next objective. Also, clicking RB brings up a translucent map that floats just off to my right as I move. Every game that includes wandering around should have something like this. I hate getting lost in games almost as much as I hate pausing the game to look at the map.

0:16 I go to turn on the security system and get locked in the room I'm in. Through a window, I see the lights go out and an emergency rotating light flicker in the main lobby where the others are. Then I watch as a hideous clawed muscular thing falls from the ceiling and attacks one of their no-name guys from behind. They open fire on the monster and tell me to run out the back door. I do as they say, fleeing from similar monsters falling from the ceiling as I do. I make it to a lift and try to go down, but one of them tries to pry open the elevator doors using its claw-like hands as a jaws of life. The door crushes it. Thrilling! I hope I get some weapons soon.

0:20 Down the elevator now, off to the side is a corpse. On the wall, "Cut off their limbs" is written in blood. Good advice, that. I find a "Plasma Cutter" and practice firing it. It has a nice, satisfying punch to it. The number of bullets left in the chamber is displayed digitally on the gun itself ... nice. I also practice some melee attacks, in case those things get too close.

0:21 Through a locked door, I hear muffled sounds of someone getting mauled. Maybe ... maybe I'll just leave it locked and wait here. Is that OK?

0:22 OK, so I open the door and, sure enough, there's a guy getting mauled. The monster turns his sights to me and leaps, its crab-like claws grasping at me. I fire back reflexively right at the head, killing it just as the door closes. I get 6 plasma energy to partially refill the eight shots I fired. I want my mommy.

0:24 Walking down some smoky corridors now ... I find a health pack and $1,000 in credits. The latter seems ... less useful right now, actually.

0:25 Benson was kind enough to record an audio log telling his shipmates that "they use the vent" to get around the ship. While he was recording this, of course, he got mauled, by the sound of it. Oh well, at least I picked up the message off the ground. Thanks, Benson!

0:26 A video hover-screen pops up with Kendra and Hammond, the two people from the ship. They're shocked I made it this far. They tell me the tram system needs repairing and I'm the only one who can do it, because they're trapped, thanks to the quarantine. So it looks like I need to find a data board somewhere. "You fix the tram, and I'll help you find Nicole," says Hammond. Aw, gee, that's nice. You scratch my back, I help you find your special girl.

0:28 Apparently I can replay all my videos back at any time. I play back the last one as I walk around and shoot another monster. Neat. Makes me feel less lonely.

0:31 Hammond is now like the third person to tell me to shoot the monsters in the limbs instead of the chest. The computerized voice pipes in, too. God, I GET it!

0:32 A malfunctioning door is opening and closing with super-speed. Luckily, I can fire a "Stasis Module" to slow it down for me to go through. That seems like a very handy power, and one that'd be easy to abuse in the real world. Late for work? STASIS MODULE!

0:33 Whenever I come to a fork in the hallway, I can just click the right stick and see where to go. I freakin' LOVE this feature!

0:36 At a repair dock of some sort ... I need to launch these mechanical arms onto a tram car, then slow them down with a stasis field and run to the center to start the process of moving a stuck tram out of a tunnel. This seems very badly designed, both from a real-world and game-puzzle standpoint.

0:40 More often than not, aiming for the limbs on these enemies means actually hitting the air just above their shoulders. This is bad because I run out of ammo just in time for a sort of dog without legs (or, er, skin) to appear and start leaping at me. I find some ammo on the ground, reload, and shoot off one leg. The skinned dog flails around miserably and ineffectively until I shoot the other one off. That's an image I won't soon forget.

0:41 When I run by enemy corpses, they bounce around kind of like empty pi?atas. It's as if they have no mass as soon as they die.

0:43 Oh, boy ... four of the monster things attack at once as soon as I leave an elevator shaft. I unload six shots to take out one, but then I have nothing to shoot at the others who quickly overpower me. Next time I need to remember the melee!

0:44 So I just shot the arm off one of these monsters and it went down. When I walked over to examine it for items, it got up and started clawing at me with the other arm. Holy crap, they can play dead?!

0:46 I just used a health pack and the blue bar running down my spine got a little higher. I'm loving the subtlety of the interface here. Also, am I going to be this low on ammo for the entire game? Because that could get kind of annoying.

0:49 To conserve ammo, I've started letting the monsters get real close, so every shot is an easy hit. It's risky, but it works so far.

0:51 I stumble upon a BENCH system, where I can upgrade my Plasma Cutter, RIG or Stasis Module. Um, only one of those is saving my life routinely at the moment, so I upgrade its damage capacity a bit.

0:55 Finally got the plasma board; now I'm taking it back to the tram station, and taking out four more of the monsters on the way. I've gotta say, they're already getting a little tired. I hope the monster design gets more varied.

0:57 I activate the tram and get a video message: Kendra and Hammond are on and headed for the bridge. They're still bickering, too: She's sure we're gonna die; he's being a good soldier and telling her to keep it together and shit.

0:58 I dig the flickering lights and sparks falling from the ceiling in this elevator. The atmosphere is very ... atmospheric.

0:59 I fire at one enemy coming out of an air duct on the wall. He slithers away just as another crawls out from the air duct behind me and attacks. Now that's teamwork! It also makes me wish there was a quick-turn button I could use to flip around quickly.

Would I play this game for more than an hour? Yes.


Why? Crazy, engrossing atmosphere, excellent controls and interface and some truly thrilling horror moments ... in space. The hype was well deserved.

This column is based on a retail copy of the game rented from GameFly.



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