Fixed LCD #5- DEAD SPACE

One of the main games that I had been salaciously coveting since its release, although I was sure I would never be able to play it, was DEAD SPACE. In fact, the release of DEAD SPACE: EXTRACTION on the Wii was really the catalyst that inspired me to initiate Operation: 360. Why pay $50 to play a Wii-ed up version of the game when its cost was ¼ the cost of a new 360 system? The die was cast at that point, and now a couple of weeks later I've played through the horror/sci-fi title and of course I have some opinions on it.

In case you didn't know, DEAD SPACE is a survival horror game very much in the RESIDENT EVIL vein but the elevator pitch is that the whole thing is set on a deep-space mining vessel. It's a conceit that works in spades, particularly since it offers opportunities for some really outstanding setpieces where you are tasked with doing something on the outside of the ship, tumbling around huge zero-g spaces within the ship, and watching your oxygen gauge trickle down while you're running from monsters. The storyline is actually kind of sparse, handed down mostly through logs and audio diaries and some of it was vague in a good way. Avoiding spoilers, the conceit is that this mining ship found something when it cracked open this planet and both a Weyland-Yutani surrogate and a stand-in for Scientology are involved in wrongdoing around said events.

It's not hard to play through the game and pick out the homages and influences, and that's OK. Fortunately, the game skews more toward ALIENS than EVENT HORIZON and if there was anyone on the production staff who had not seen THE THING, I'm sure they were made to do so at some point. There is also a story element- again, one that I'm not inclined to give away- that is very close to some of the themes and ideas in SOLARIS (the book and both films). I love SOLARIS, so I picked up on the allusion and loved it right away. Some of the game actually made me think that it was almost like a Lucio Fulci or Clive Barker version of SOLARIS.

But DEAD SPACE is not BIOSHOCK, and there were times when I felt like the overall story was pretty negligible and some of the more interesting elements only provoked thought by making me wish that there was more meat to the narrative. I was kind of disappointed that it turned out to be more of a space zombies conceit than something darker and more metaphysical. Some of the more interesting ideas were almost throwaways that never came to any fruition in the story. Did somebody say "mausoleum ship"?

But what the game does have in abundance is atmosphere, intensity, and tremendous amounts of gore and that sums to a pretty fun game overall.  The threat feels real, and much like in the RE games ammo and health are very limited and restriction creates a sense of desperation and helplessness.  The creatures are actually pretty terrifying in a surreal, biological horror kind of way and watching some of the smaller ones skitter around the walls illuminated by a flashlight is real creepy-crawly stuff. Interestingly, most of the creatures apparently have very vulnerable limbs so the idea is that you blow them to pieces. The weapons are sort of geared toward that, and most are industrial implements repurposed for monster slaughter. I really liked this Line Cutter thing- imagine shooting electrified piano wire at a slobbering monster.

Some of the game reminded me a lot of DOOM 3, what with all the flickering lights, spooky hallways, and monsters popping up from behind. But really, more than anything, the game felt like a carnival ride. Yes, an old fashioned dark ride. Some of the scares were so old timey I almost laughed at them- a puff of steam, a hanging body falling from the ceiling, walking into the room and the lights go out. I kept waiting for a skeleton to drop out of a closet and giggle. I really didn't think the game was all that scary, and that was sort of disappointing to me. Sorry, but a lady singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is more silly than spooky, no matter the context.

It's also fairly repetitive. The mission structure is well done, where your character (an engineer) goes around to different areas of the ship via a tram system and fixes broken-down systems. The level design is actually quite brilliant, when you're done with the mission you circle back to the tram and on to the next area. But after four or five "go do this" setups, it gets kind of old. But worse, the environment never changes, and after seeing spooky, bloody writing on the walls for the thousandth time or floating in zero-G through dismembered body parts, the shock wears off. It was a lot scarier to me to slowly realize that some of the characters were...maybe not alive anymore. There's a couple of shooter sequences that break up the monotony, but by and large the game feels like a one-trick pony.

And I think that's the problem I have with the game- it's one dimensional. There was a potential here to do something really creepy and scary like the first RE or SILENT HILL. But it's not, and it's more of an ultraviolent action game. A very good ultraviolent action game, but a missed opportunity to do something more. It's a shame the designers didn't realize that scary monsters aren't so scary if you've got awesome guns that tear them to pieces in the blink of an eye. And the endgame, although it moves the action to a new locale with some very impressive graphic work, ends with a pretty uninspired boss fight.

I liked DEAD SPACE, but I can't shake the feeling that I _want_ to like it more than I actually do. It's one of those games where there's parts where you're  just like "holy shit, this is fucking incredible" and then there's parts where you're wondering how long the game is going to be. For the record, it is a fairly short game- I finished in under 10 hours on hard, and I felt like I had seen the whole thing. It's definitely a situation where its brevity wasn't a demerit- again, the lack of dimension or variety starts to wear and once the intensity wears off it kind of leaves you with an empty feeling. If the game had been any longer and I would have been thinking about just watching the ending on YouTube.

Playing DEAD SPACE after BIOSHOCK though, was probably a mistake. I think I would have been more impressed by the game if I weren't in Rapture just last week. I'm still thinking about some of the ideas in BIOSHOCK, but DEAD SPACE just doesn't have the haunting, lingering sense of time, place, and depth. It's still a good game, I don't want to come across as being too hard on it. There's great action, a cool upgrade system, and some truly incredible sequences (a part with a captive asteroid blew my mind) and if you like extremely graphic gore, then there's a lot to recommend it. Gamestop sells it for $17.99 used, and I think it's a great buy at that price. $60, I dunno.

Next up on Fixed LCD- CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN COMBAT