In my first impressions of Dead Space, I was not thrilled with what seemed to be an overly heavy System Shock 2 influence. Now that I’ve put more time into it (around 6 hours at this point), Dead Space has come into its own and that influence, while still there, is no longer overbearing and bordering the rip-off category. In fact, many of the complaints I had during my first impressions (stasis module feeling out of place, upgrade system feeling out of place, lack of horror elements, nothing really original) aren’t completely valid anymore. While I still agree on all of those points, they have taken the back burner to what has shaped up to be a solid third person shooter.
At this point, the game feels somewhat like Resident Evil 4 meets System Shock 2 meets Metroid Prime. It is a good blend of three games I highly enjoyed – the controls and camera of Resident Evil 4, the setting of System Shock 2 and the combat speed and minimalistic UI of Metroid Prime. While it retains none of the horror of Resident Evil 4 or System Shock 2, I no longer feel like the game is trying to scare me.
The controls felt quite solid after about an hour, and now they feel nice and fluid. It doesn’t try to do a complex control scheme, and by keeping the scope minimal and focusing on getting each aspect right, they left you with a game where I really feel in control of my character. I’ve not had an incident since the first thirty minutes where I felt like I was fighting to get my character or camera into the position I wanted, which lets me just focus on moving around, taking aim, and fighting enemies.
The combat is still a bit on the frustrating side. At times, I feel like I am simply overwhelmed by enemies and my biggest adversary is simply moving the reticule into place to fire at an enemy – but I can only deal significant damage if I target the limbs. In a frenetic battle, I’ll often miss several shots, wasting precious times, and get overwhelmed due to this artificial difficulty booster of forcing me to aim for the limbs. That difficulty is magnified with the pretty useless weapon selection. I have four weapons at the moment – Plasma Cutter, Line Gun, Flamethrower, Pulse Rifle – and only the first two of those are even moderately usable. The flamethrower seems to do incredibly little damage, and the precision of the pulse rifle makes hitting flailing limbs almost impossible. The plasma cutter and line gun have a very wide blade they fire, which makes it easier to hit flailing limbs, and I just switch back and forth depending on how quickly I need to kill a target. I prefer the plasma cutter most of the time, but mainly use line gun against multiple targets, since the particularly wide blade lets me often take down two limbs at a time.
The infected mining station concept does feel a bit stale, but not overtly so – and I’m giving it some credit considering I played inFAMOUS and Prototype just prior to Dead Space, and both are infection stories that released after Dead Space. This infection story is pretty generic – still very reminiscent of System Shock 2, but it is enjoyable enough that I do pick up audio logs whenever I see them. Had they forced me to watch a ton of cutscenes where I lose control of the character, I’m sure I would’ve stopped playing by now. They did a good thing in never taking control of the character from you, in the same way that Half-Life did.
I am enjoying this game, and due to the short length (which I fully appreciate) I may even finish it (a rare event). I’m interested enough in the story to keep going, but not interested enough to watch cutscenes. As long as they let me keep control at all times, they can keep me to the end. I just wish I could get a better weapon, preferably something that can do significant damage with a body shot.