I apologize, I really shouldn’t be reviewing (or knowing me, complaining about) a game, especially one like Dead Space, because it isn’t the sort of thing that many people are too excited about or eagerly awaiting a review for. But I haven’t seen many movies lately, and I have been playing a lot of Xbox and PC games, so I thought I’d take a moment and direct you to a game I liked.

Unfortunately, Dead Space isn’t the Holy Grail of survival horror, but you can certainly say that it does the job. Surprisingly well, in fact. I was trembling on the edge of my seat a few moments, and had that panicked “I’m about to die” feeling before turning every corner.

Here’s the plot, in a few sentences: you’re some scientist named Isaac Clark (very funny, EA), who is among a trio of other scientists answering a distress call from another ship. Within seconds their own ship is brought down and destroyed, and they end up stranded on the ship with no means of outside communication. But as if that weren’t enough of a drag, the whole ship is in a bloody mess and the entire crew have been zombified. But these zombies don’t go down with a simple head shot, you have to hack off their limbs in order to defeat them, or as the game delightfully puts it, “strategically dismember” your opponents. That’s the game’s true selling point, and they exploit it as much as they can.

While this method of combat is fun and unique and the atmosphere is chilling, it doesn’t make the most of it. If you were to get this game, the pattern for combat is going for the legs first then picking off the arms. While it’s a morbidly satisfying form of game play, it’s very repetitive, and could be improved with more creature variety, or more limbs to slice. You can use a wide variety of weapons, like the Ripper, with is essentially a remote-controlled saw blade that spins around in mid air.

Speaking of weapons, that’s another thing I want to talk about, sorry, complain about. Throughout the game, you’re given four slots for weapons, each for different purposes. You purchase these at the shops, and can also find Power Nodes scattered around the map and use them at stations to upgrade the weapon’s capacity, reload time, damage, the like. Let’s compare this to another survival horror game, Bioshock. In Bioshock, you find your weapons randomly placed throughout the map (you don’t have to buy them). You purchase ammo for these weapons at vending machines, and upgrade them at random stations as well (for free). Now, here’s my problem with Dead Space: why do I have to buy weapons? Not only does this not make sense when you’re on a broken ship and can still buy weapons from an invisible weapon storage facility in the sky, but it wouldn’t make an ounce of sense before the ship was even attacked. So why do I have to spend my money on trivial things like suit upgrades? In the name of cheap, shoddy challenge, that’s why.

Onto another topic: the zero-gravity puzzles. Another nifty aspect of Dead Space are the unique bits where the gravity shuts off and you are free to float around the room to repair broken parts of the ship. You jump from wall to wall, ceiling to floor, gracefully gliding amongst the remains of what were once human beings (that’s a big turn off). Another useful tool is the Stasis Module you get at the beginning. You need this to slow down faulty equipment, whether it’s a door rapidly opening and shutting or your enemies rushing towards you ready to tear you limb-from-limb. All these make for terrific puzzles and combat sequences, most notably a boss fight fought entirely in zero-gravity where you need to dodge its attacks by flying around the room.

But with the good comes the bad, and this is something that has happened to me a lot more than you’d think. You see, the game doesn’t provide that much back story as to the original state of the ship and the people on it, so it scatters text and video logs around the map that were left behind by the crew, and you can read these to get a bit more understanding of the ship before the distress call was sent out. These are usually lying on the ground, disguised as useful things like ammo or med-kits, things that are scarce and things that you will be running frantically from seven pursuing enemies to get. So when you pick one up hoping to God it’s a Large Med Pack or ammo for the Line Gun, it’s instead a text log that you need to quickly shut off by fumbling around with the controls for a brief moment. I know this is sort of a nitpick, but this leads to big problems, like dying. Oh, you will die. A lot. I did a lot of dying during my run of Dead Space, although it’s partly my fault for feeling macho enough to set it on the Hard difficulty.

Oh, Dead Space can be annoying at times, but you’re going to have a blast anyway. It’s such a great environment, but there are dumb issues like having the quarantine shut you in a room with an army of enemies, or sitting through the over-the-top death sequences and irritating cut scenes over and over, but then there’s the ending. That stupid thing. Not to mention the final boss fight, which isn’t nearly as epic as I hoped, but the end of the ending. It’s cliche, unoriginal, and the “twist” not only is completely predictable, but it leaves so many loose ends that I am shocked they even bothered to include it. It’s like they took a bet to see who could come up with the silliest twist, and Dead Space won.

When you complete the game, you get the option to play it on the “Insane” difficulty, some further readings, and the option to replay the game with all your upgraded equipment. This mode is hilariously easy and absurd, and seeing enemies fall apart like a stack of cards when I rip them apart with my Ripper never gets old. I’ve never tried the “Insane” difficulty, at least not yet, and maybe I will some time in the future. But for now, I’m satisfied with Dead Space. It’s got the edge-of-your-seat panic that all horror games should have and more. There are Xbox, PS3, and PC versions.