Dead Space: Concluded

Dead Space had quite a hard time of it. A new IP released in the Christmas scrum of 2008, it lost out somewhat in the race for review column inches, along with Mirrors Edge.

EA Redwood/Visceral Games have done a fantastic job of picking and choosing which parts to replicate from their huge list of influences, and adding just enough to the mix to make Dead Space feel like a new adventure. There's a highly polished feel running through all areas from the excellent visuals and audio to the UI and front end ... however, there's a 'but' coming along ...

Below the high sheen lies a slightly rotten core. I encountered numerous bugs, from crashes to character and environment glitches, but nothing would prepare me for the bug that ended my participation in the Dead Space universe.

One chapter has Isaac Clarke collecting a number of navcards in order to access the shuttle to escape off the Ishimura. The total amount of cards was never documented (as far as I was aware), but no big deal right? It took around an hour to find the navcards, there was no fanfare or notification when each navcard was collected so I was never fully aware how many I had and how many I needed. The number of cards wasn't even listed on the inventory screen. 90 minutes in, I Clarke approached the shuttle, went to insert the navcards only to be blocke: NO ENTRY. Right, what? I tried backtracking, but was hampered by 1) the in-game naigation marker always taking me back to the shuttle, 2) save overwrites and 3) numerous blockers stopping me. I found only one mention of this on the internet here, so I guess I found a pretty rare bug. Great.

I sold the game at work the next day for £20, needless to say I never mentioned this glitch to the buyer!

Visually the game is stunning, if a little brown, but the enemies are a little disappointing. As so much work has clearly gone into the environments I found the characters a bit of a let-down, they appear to have come straight out of The Thing, 70's visuals and all.

The audio is particularly deserving of a mention, in fact I think Dead Space won numerous awards for it. On a Dolby Digital system I’ve never heard anything quite like it.

Overall, Dead Space is worth a play, but make sure you collect those damn navcards.