Postmortem: Dead Space

Months after its quiet release, Scott Jones once again enters Dead Space. The game's senior producer bursts wide open in the postmortem.

I thought it was excellent, just a few minor problems i thought it had.

1. No option for first person would of been fantastic as when the aliens got too close it was fiddley to see the enemies close up on the floor when your back is against the wall.

2. Camera was a bit too close, ie..When you back was against the wall it was hard to see, shame the camera didnt raise up over his head. It would of been great if the camera was a bit further back...

Other than that it was fantastic...

When I first saw the previews for Dead Space, I knew I had to have it. I've only played it for a few hours (also sharing my time between Fallout3 and BioShock) and I am very impressed.
At first I died horribly (even on easy level) and then I started to figure out the controls (I've only owned my PS3 for 3 months.) I really like the game. The only thing I don't like is when the bad guys get too close to you, it's basically over. Would have liked a combo or something to be able to do a last desperate "push" or "kick" at the mutant, hopefully getting enough time to level your weapon at them. Very cool game, reminiscent of the atmosphere in the original "alien" movie. That's what I like about it. Survival, exploration, and explosions! Rock on!

I agree with the posts above that said they got into Dead Space right away, I did as well. I did not experience the "slow burn" Scott did, but everyone doesn't have the same experience.

(Spoiler warning!!!) One thing that I found really annoying was the spoiler given away in the achievements. The Chapter 11 achievement gave away a huge part of the plot! Since there were only a few humans in the story I now knew what was going to happen, it was just a matter of who would betray me. Many game's achievements require that you collect all of item x, etc throughout the course of the game so I checked the achievements early in the game and saw it. Please don't do it in Dead Space 2!!! (End of spoilers).

Another thing I didn't like was that if you change the difficultly level after you beat the game you lose all of your weapons, upgrades, etc. Why? I played through the game twice to max every weapon and my suit and now I can't use them on the harder difficulty settings? Also, the shooting the asteroids sections was difficult for me (yeah I'm getting old, ha ha). It seemed kind of out of place game play wise.

Despite my nitpicks above, for me Dead Space was one of the best games released last year. You could tell that tons of time, polish and care were put into the game. The graphics, sound, gameplay were all very done and they combined to give a great gaming experience. I can't wait for Dead Space 2! Keep up the good work EA Redwood and keep giving us new IP EA!! (Just don't release it during the xmas release crowd next time.)