Dead Space

Out of the box, and out of the dark - Deadspace is here.

Deadspace, EA's new survival horror franchise, came into the office yesterday, so we had a big discussion about how best to play it. Dark room, sound maxxed out to amplify every gasp and scream, or take a more measured approach. A wussier approach, as it were.

So we got home to our trusty PC last night and did it right. The only light was the flickering from the screen, the speakers were turned up, and so the game began...

Deadspace opens simply enough - you're on a rescue mission, looking for the out of contact USG Ishimura, a planet cracker drawing mineral wealth from the husk of an entire world. Your much smaller vessel drops out of FTL, and as one of your fellow crew says, "... and they've already popped the cork." Indeed, it takes a few moments before the shattered planetary crust hanging in space parts and you see the missing vessel.

Of course, things just get more complex from there, and after a rough landing you find yourself seperated from your pals but, alarmingly, not at all alone.

Much noise has been made about Deadspace's use of advanced character physics and the need to 'properly' dismember your shambling, jumping and generally nauseating foes. In reality, the sense of needing to really finish off each enemy adds a degree of tension and true horror - these things want to kill you, and merely losing a limb or two will not stop them.

Even in death, as blood and worse fluids spray over the deckplates, the beasties cause a shiver.

Also top notch is the environment - we're only a little way into the game, but the Ishimura feels reassuringly real, and this only serves to make the layer of horror that's descended over the ship far more effective.

Equally effective is the system of in-world menus and readouts. There's no game UI as such; rather, all cues for vital information can be read from 'real world' sources - usually holograms floating in your field of view. This offers excellent immersion, and that really helps up the shock and horror of each encounter even further.

About our only complaint so far is that the graphic options are relatively limited. Anti-aliasing can only be turned off or on, and at max settings the game doesn't look quite as good as it should, even with a 1GB GTX280 on board. Hopefully some messing about in the NVIDIA control panel can over-ride the settings. The controls and camera combo is unique and takes getting used to, but we're not sure if that's such a bad thing yet. Time will tell.

We're tentatively impressed with Deadspace, and we'll have a full review in the next issue of Atomic.