A videogame master class
With its stimulating soundtrack, majestic graphics, claustrophobic environment, formidable enemies and intoxicating gameplay, Dead Space is without question one of the finest and most intense action shooters of 2008.There aren’t many games that we can say have literally made us jump with fright, but Electronic Art’s sci-fi shooter has routinely managed to make us feel on edge throughout its campaign and has spectacularly achieved its aim of filling us from head-to-toe with fear and anxiety as we’ve crept along its dark and dingy corridors in dreaded anticipation of the next grisly surprise.
This is achieved, in part, through the brilliant use of lighting and cleverly crafted audio which consistently and accurately manages to reflect the terror and the fear that you’d undoubtedly feel if you were really at loggerheads with a malevolent and repulsive alien race.
Set entirely from the third person perspective, the somewhat predictable storyline of Dead Space still manages to suck you in as it unravels itself unhurriedly and often spectacularly through its 12 intense chapters.
Dead Space is set in the distant future and follows the story of Isaac Clarke, an engineer on the stricken interstellar mining ship, Ishimura. After the ship crashes, he inadvertently finds himself in a living nightmare as the vessel becomes overrun by a vile alien race called the Necromorphs, who reproduce by reanimating deceased human bodies - butchering them to use their body parts in order to turn themselves into freakish aliens; human-alien hybrids.
Dead Space follows Isaac as he sets off to repair the ship in the hope of getting the remaining surviving crew members to safety. However, things just aren't that simple and the threat of the invading alien race is around every dark corner as Issac finds himself dealing with more than he bargained for.
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