It seems to me that the game’s main problem was it’s trying to pass itself off as being scary. It has a few decent scares, but for the most part the scariness factor is rather corny. This is where the negative hype came from: as far as survival horror goes, it doesn’t deliver well in the horror aspect.

That’s fine: minor interface and plot quibbles aside, the rest of the game is awesome. Aside from a diminished RPG, it’s the kind of System Shock successor I was looking for. I don’t like being scared that much, anyway.

I can actually explain some of these plot holes:

“Why does X keep trying to kill you if it wants you to do what you’re doing?”
Because X is not controlling the Necromorphs that are trying to kill you but rather part of the agent that serves to thwart the Necromorph hive mind.

“Why do doors constantly lock and unlock themselves ‘randomly’ and yet always let you go where you need to go (assuming it isn’t waiting for you to watch someone die, first)?”
It some cases it makes more sense than others – you’ll actually watch people activating something on their wrist that opens the door. Most of the doors are unlocked later because those who had the access to do so unlocked them when they thought it was appropriate. In the least forgivable cases, it was because the developers wanted the players to see a premade scripted cutscene without it – a required GM restriction to progress the story.

“If Z was dead the whole time, how did said corpse get on the shuttle so that it could eat your face in a non-controllable cinematic? Or was that also a hallucination?”
These unasked questions are there deliberately to prompt a sequel.

One good question is how Z, on behalf of X, was able to manifest in such a way it must be defended so it can unlock a door for you. Is Issac actually the one opening the door? It seems to me that perhaps X had some telekinetic power, and was able to do things such as hack computers when needed (explaining certain faces and patterns to appear on screens).

Really, the plot is just insufferably full of gaps– Why does X keep trying to kill you if it wants you to do what you’re doing? Why do doors constantly lock and unlock themselves ‘randomly’ and yet always let you go where you need to go (assuming it isn’t waiting for you to watch someone die, first)? How the f**k do all these chuckleheads manage to stay alive just long enough for you to see them die? How did one basic enemy manage to kill an entire ship full of badasses who should’ve known exactly what they were facing and should’ve been ready to fight? I could ask these kinds of questions all day.

The basic answer amount to: “So we could pad out the action another hour or two.” or “It worked for the game-play”. The story is absolutely there to feed into the action, nothing more, and the action is laid out in the most pragmatic, efficient fashion to maintain a certain level of tension/catharsis.

Ultimately I was infuriated by the plot, and the big ‘hallucinations’ reveal. We knew all along that people were seeing weird sh*t, but it’s not like we had any choice but to heed them since this a 100% sequential, non-branching plot. Once we hit the big reveal, it’s actually more sensible to assume that the main character was hallucinating anything and everything, because that would make more sense than the selective, externally-caused hallucinations that we’re supposed to believe in the ‘emotional’ plot twist. What was up with that ‘escort’ sequence, why were the aliens trying to attack something that wasn’t even there, and how did we get the door open if nobody was helping us? Also, if Z was dead the whole time, how did said corpse get on the shuttle so that it could eat your face in a non-controllable cinematic? Or was that also a hallucination? That anything could’ve been a hallucination is actually a sensible response to many of the plot and map design holes.

Maybe there were no locked doors or lockers, the protagonist was simply unable to conceive of opening them until the Director decided to let them.

But really I’m just overthinking. It’s a tight, methodical action game, and it does this well. There is no stealth, no branching plot, no sanity-check on the plot, it’s just a really spiffy corridor shooter. I even played it with V-sync on because I liked the slow, deliberate movements this forced, it felt right! ;)

In addition, areas when the sound is muffled due to the vacuum of space also negate the obvious suffling and screeching of incoming hostilities.

It could certainly stand to be a slight bit original of course, and I suspect even an inkling of such would have propelled it greatly. Were it to step ever so slightly into the realm of the unpredictable it’d be great, but everything that happens is far too obvious to reap any enjoyment from it. In fact, the only genuine scary moment I can recall was a complete fluke as I did a 180 and found myself smack dab in front of a monster I had no inclination of.

I beat this game on hard for 360 using only the first gun (for achievement) and went back and tried to play on medium to get the other gun achievements, i found medium to be such a droll i couldnt even play thru the first chapter.

For those of you struggling to find some replay value, i would go back and play through on hard or impossible using only the plasma cutter. It was one of my best gaming experiences of 2008

PS: for those of you saying it a copy and paste of RE over a space backround, RE:5 could have learned ALOT from this game, maybe this is a franchise that can pick up the horror genre where RE:5 dropped the ball

I can only even come close to classifying it as horror playing on impossible difficulty through. Apart from inordinate amounts of gore and a few monster-in-closet scares (which let’s face it got old after Resident Evil 2) the game fails to provide an atmosphere (simply because the weapons are powerful and ammo plentiful) on lower difficulties. On impossible I actually found myself hurting for ammo sometimes, and I felt vulnerable as a result (knowing a large wave of enemies is coming and being unsure if you’ll have enough ammo for them all is fantastic). Even so, the survival horror genre hasn’t aged well. The same easy tricks just won’t work and developers need to go the extra mile to create a tense atmosphere.

Sure, Dead Space is unoriginal, taking bits and pieces from all sorts of games, but it presents them all in a compellingly well made package. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all a game needs to be great.

I comfortably settled into resi 4 and 5 doing reasonably well at the combat but I just cant seem to do well in dead space.

It also scared me more than any other game has for some reason im not sure why, I think im one of the few people still suceptable to monster in the closet scares

I think the dudes that made Dead Space should be proud as all hell. It’s one of my favorite sci-fi horror games ever made.