Review:
Dead Space – In space, you'll wish there was a dry cleaners...

I can distance myself from media pretty easily. I know that films are just films, and that there is nothing on the disc or screen that can possibly hurt me. The same with games... Usually.

When I was ordering Dante's Inferno (review to come for that I feel), I picked a pre-order deal that gives me a code for an Isaac Clarke skin. Being as I would be running around as Isaac, I thought it would be rude not to play the game in which he stars, Dead Space.

So I ran off to my local video games emporium, placed my money on the counter, and skipped off home. An hour later I lay in the fetal position, wide eyed and jumping at every little sound. This was easily the scariest game I had ever played.

I didn't know an awful lot going into this game, other then it was set in space, and it had alien zombie monsters in it. Sounds like a pretty standard affair. I was worried that this would be another survival horror that I just wouldn't get on with, and would watch collecting dust for a few years.

Because of this mind set, I figured I probably wouldn't find much ammo, so I tried running past early enemies. Big mistake. Unlike the lumbering hordes of Resident Evil and the like, these aliens don't mess around when it comes to wanting to feast on your flesh. They run, jump and fire projectiles at you, usually from all angles at once if you don't thin out the ranks as you go.

Now I'm used to fairly big environments. Even in games that feel pretty claustrophobic, you generally find some pretty spacious area's. This game is set on a mining ship, the Ishimura, So don't expect wide open vistas and lush greenery. No, this game takes place in narrow corridor after narrow corridor.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad thing. A mining ship would, I imagine, be built to haul huge amounts of minerals from one side of the galaxy to the other, so every square inch that could be used as storage, would be.

Those helpful people that built the Ishimura, sorry, the USG Ishimura, felt it necessary to line every one of its many, many corridors with access panels for engineers like yourself to repair ship systems. Unfortunately, all of these under floor / over head spaces are filled with yet more monsters. Yay. And oddly enough, you are never allowed to enter said crawl spaces designed for engineers... Like Isaac.