Dead Space™

I'll start with the positives. Taking the body Horror from 1982's The Thing and having the player literally cut off limbs as an effective strategy is legitimately inspired. Sure you can just try to attack normally but once you face a lot of enemies at once you'll find yourself focusing on taking them apart like this and it is deeply satisfying. You go up against a lot of beings that partially look human but clearly there's something wrong. Our bodies are not supposed to do stuff like that and it really pokes at an anxiety deep inside each of us. The physical isolation adds another layer not to mention the general survival horror with resource management and choices that have consequences. I won't pretend that I particularly cared about the plot but I'm told many others did. Walking on walls and the ceiling in zero gravity is compelling. Some of the weapons do feel like they're there to check a box. They're not at all appropriate for the way you have to play. And I wouldn't rule out that they are literally just there because some people would refuse to give this a chance if they weren't in there. Thankfully you're never forced to use them. The fact that your character takes up half the screen does lead to completely unnecessary and easily avoidable by the developers frustration. The gameplay just isn't that fun, really doesn't offer very much that we haven't seen done better. It's boring and obnoxious. The control scheme is incredibly poorly designed. I get that this was apparently a console port. It's one of the worst when it comes to this area. I managed to get through this whole thing once but I can't imagine ever playing it again. The horror is too driven by jump scares and it lacks the contrasting safe areas that for example Silent Hill, Amnesia, Penumbra and Soma master. This does get points for taking the orb on the ship from Event Horizon and putting it in something that made it feel much more gripping. There's some memorable and even creative level design.

I really like this game!! After playing almost all of the resident evil games, I've been needing more survival horror stuff, and this game did a great job at filling that void. I did think the game was pretty scary in the same way that resident evil 4 was scary, not so much slow paced horror, more just relentless waves of enemies as well as good pacing and atmosphere. The combat feels great, with lots of choices for guns and upgrades, and the shooting feels solid. You do have way too much ammo for it to be very scary, I ended the game with more ammo and med kits than I could ever use, as well as a max level suit with 175 HP. Since enemies only drop ammo for guns in your inventory, I just upgraded the default pistol and wide cutter weapon (the red one that's basically a wider pistol) a bunch and I never ran out of ammo for the 2 and the game became pretty easy since both of my weapons had a ton of ammo and upgrades. The game was still definetly scary and tense during some of the longer waves of enemies, I think the guesome kills where an enemy rips off your head or whatever really helps add to the feeling of horror. The graphics are great, they're also very brown like resident evil 4 funnily, this game takes a lot of cues from that game minus the silly villians and cheesey dialogue, which were some of the best parts of that game. The sound design is also great, with loud dramatic music during the fights and no music at other times, as well as some creepy whispering which I thought was a nice touch and looking back makes one of the plot twists make a lot more sense. So overall, this game has a lot of flaws with low difficulty and the serious story being right next to silly gore, but it is a great time and something every survival horror fan should check out.

Recently buying games on GoG is akin to playing russian roulette. I can well understand having issues launching really old classic games, but would expect something like Dead Space to launch at least, but no. Then you have to go through the process of attempting to make sense of the Worlds Worst Forum on Gog where your search could display anything. The same totlaly useless support page asking advising you to alter your cores on your processor, hey try messing with you directory that should be fun, maybe alter your Bios - all to get a game to work - well no thanks. This is happening on an increasing basis on this platform, the quality control is abysmal, so much so I am reluctant to use the platform again as it smack of a place going out of buisness, and down the pan. The is no option for refunds, or if there is it's well hiddne away. So buyer beware.

Devs made the controls feel like a tired sloth so that combat would be harder and they could justify putting in a 'slow down enemies' ability in the game without making it a breeze. Playing on medium difficulty for the first time and I never needed health packs and was overflowing with ammo and ingredients. If there is more than 10 feet between you and enemies it is laughably easy since enemies are exclusively melee. The only hard part is fighting the floaty, unresponsive aiming. And if a crawling enemy manages to get to you and start nibbling your toes your stomp will not connect with them forcing you to backtrack at the same pace as the crawler to awkwardly try to shoot straight down at it. This is because your walking speed matches your grandmother with her walker. Sprinting speed matches a drunk obese man. I know Isaac is not a badass soldier and I don't want him to be but he is less agile than a person in crutches. Ugly, monochromatic color scheme. Vsync is required because the game produces visual noise without it. Menus are clearly copy pasted from the console version and are slow and clunky. Map is messy and hard to manipulate so you just use the guide on the floor because there isn't actually any reason not to blindly follow the waypoint. Not actually scary at all just the same jump scares with obnoxiously loud audio despite the fact it was telegraphed a mile away most of the time. Characters may get better but I didn't like them or care about them. Same with the story.

I was really looking forward to this game, got past the input lag by disabling Vsync, And then I tried to get used to the cockeyed manner that the player moves with. I hated it. Then i tried firing a wep at a monster, It sucked too. The whole game feels like it's movement is shifted off to the side, And you have no real control over it. No ability to jump finally did me in. I absolutely hated everything about the way the players move in this game, wether it's shooting, running, or reading a map, it sucks. The graphics are really nice, Until you see the monsters, And they look like cartoons. Mostly though it's a pretty game. Do i recommend it? Absolutely not, Not unless you can stand playing perspective view games, This is not a fps shooter.