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America - Front

America - Back

Review Scores

VGChartz Score
8.4
                         

Ratings

   

Developer

EA Redwood Shores

Genre

Shooter

Other Versions

All, PC, PS3, Series, XBL

Release Dates

10/13/08 Electronic Arts
(Add Date)
10/24/08 Electronic Arts

Community Stats

Owners: 343
Favorite: 33
Tracked: 1
Wishlist: 4
Now Playing: 9
 
8.6

Avg Community Rating:

 


drakesfortune

User Score
8.1
                         

Presentation - 7.0
Gameplay - 8.0
Value - 9.0
Dead Space is good third person shooter fun. It has no major flaws, but it also doesn't stand out as being something special.

If you really like third person shooters, you can stop reading the review here and just buy the game and form your own opinion on it.  Fans of third person shooters will get their money's worth out of this game, and will most definitely enjoy it.

My biggest complaint with Dead Space is set up right from the start.  The opening cinimatic is a perfect example of what went wrong with this game.  What I mean by that is that when you're flying up to the derelict space ship for the first time, it's a truly epic, and engaging moment.  It's a great hook.  My imagination went wild, thinking of all the cool things I would be doing on that ship.  Then you get in the ship, and you start running down bland brown and gray, corridors, which lead to brown and gray rooms, with the occassional amazing set piece.  Some of the set pieces are excellent, but much of the game takes place in brown and grey corridors and rooms. 

Intro Sequence Pic

This game is trying very hard to be Bioshock.  It's copied a lot of what Bioshock did well.  However, it's not as interesting as Bioshock, the environments are nowhere near as well crafted, and this world is nowhere near as well put together as the world of Bioshock's Rapture.  I don't think I'm being overly harsh about that either.  There are some great set pieces in the game, but the vast majority of your time is spent in dark, brown and gray corridors and rooms.

Dead Space Corridors

Dead Space's story is convoluted beyond recognition.  They tried to weave a tale like that of Bioshock, and they failed.  Sadly, they had a good core concept for the story, they just failed to tell it in a way that sucked me into the game.  MINOR SPOILER - (but a spoiler that will make the game more interesting to play most likely) You're sent to this ship, which is being run by a Scientology-like cult because of a distress call.  Their leader believes that the government covered up the existence of a powerful ancient religious artifact and buried it on the planet the ship was mining and then restricted that area of space to ensure the artifact stayed hidden.  Much like scientology they were well funded.  This group built an armada of ships like the HUGE space freighter/mining ship that 95% the game takes place on, to spread out and search the restricted parts of the galaxy for this artifact.    SPOILER OFF 

That's a fairly interesting premise for a game.  If they would have told me that at the beginning, I would have been profoundly more interested in what was going on in that ship.  I didn't understand what the hell was going on until about 80% of the way through the game, when I picked up a random text document on the floor that clearly explained the history of the scientology like cult, what they thought, what they were doing there, and why the ship was built in the first place.  I think they were trying to get these story elements out piecemeal while I was playing the game, but none of it clicked until I read that document at the end of the game.  After reading it I thought, huh, that's actually interesting, why couldn't they have told me that little bit at the start?  Most people probably don't even read the document, and there it is, the most coherent telling of the story, randomly strewn in the world, at the end of the game.  Yeah, it takes a minor bit of the mystery out to know that going in, but the mystery is so poorly handled that you end up finding the story, the environment, and the missions to be without meaning for 80% of the game.  They should have spelled this out clearly at the start.  Bioshock tells the story the same way Dead Space tries to, however the Bioshock creators did it in a way that was both interesting, and coherent. 

Ishimura's Lead Scientist

I know I sound negative on the game, but that's because the game IS fun, and as a person who loves space themed movies, and space themed games, I was left feeling disappointed at the promise of what it could have been.

To sum it up, this is a very good package.  The graphics are very good, every element of gameplay works very well, the controls are right on, and the areas where they tried to break the Bioshock mold (the 0 gravity sections) feel fresh.  If you go into this game not expecting to be blown away, you'll simply have a good fun time with the game.  If they had spent more time on the story, this truly could have been what they wanted, which is to say, to be as good as Bioshock. 


Sales History

Total Sales
0.00m
Japan
0.89m
NA
0.39m
Europe
0.13m
Others
1.40m
Total
1 n/a 137,284 n/a 24,227 161,511
2 n/a 44,605 50,783 16,138 111,526
3 n/a 31,697 25,853 9,803 67,353
4 n/a 18,196 14,233 5,528 37,957
5 n/a 13,877 11,820 4,373 30,070
6 n/a 12,034 12,746 4,199 28,979
7 n/a 17,243 15,287 5,532 38,062
8 n/a 12,790 15,818 4,832 33,440
9 n/a 14,685 16,530 5,282 36,497
10 n/a 17,095 17,404 5,850 40,349

Opinion (52)

yo_john117 posted 24/09/2011, 09:09
The scariest game I have ever played.
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Mr Puggsly posted 18/03/2011, 02:58
I decided to give this game a try recently and I loved it. Can't wait to play the sequel.
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primogen18 posted 04/02/2011, 04:42
Nice this game grew some bigger legs in light of the sequel! More people need to play this game so they can grab Dead Space 2!
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Monges79 posted 18/01/2011, 05:01
This is one of my favorite games of all time. When I beat this on insane, I felt like I was Isaac Clark. Awesome, awesome game!!
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Salem posted 14/11/2010, 03:58
I guess because everyone who waiting for the ps3 redesign/price drop wanted this too
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chickenLittle posted 30/03/2010, 02:49
huh, how did the ps3 version went to outsell this and reach 1m faster?
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