Dead Space Finale

 

It seemed that every level had at least one room that was ment as a meat grinder, a place to let you "enjoy" some of the more vicious death animations the game had to offer. On the hardest difficulty, the game was brutally, unforgivably hard. Walking around the Ishimura was a constant exercise in stress unless back tracking through an area just recently cleared to get back to a company store to buy more ammo. I suppose that was the point though. The game play was intense with something lethal potentially waiting around every turn.

 

From a game play perspective I really with the plasma cutter ammunition wasn't so limited. The scarcity of munitions, at least up to the last level, really did add a signifigant level of stress to the game play, but there were several times, especially early, that I ran out of rounds for even the most basic weapon. On hard, melee kills did not happen.

 

Mechanically, other than the painful difficulty in places, my main problem was the pattern based, shoot the glowing thing, boss fights. They were hard until I realized that there was a fixed pattern of movements to go through to get past the fight. Very similar to the end boss in Beyond Good and Evil, except not quite as unforgiving to breaks in the pattern.

 

From a story stand point, I think the game's writters did an excellent job of mixing one part "Alien", one part X-Files and one part Scientology. The tention of the protagonist, separated from his crew mates, exploring a dark, dessolate ship and uncovering the secrets of a cult built on the lies of it's founder and the distrust of a government cover up. It's good good stuff. The game and the one animated comic posted to XBLM make me want to find both the comic and the movie and enjoy more of this world.

 

I can also see a great deal of potential for expaning the game either with or without the existing protagonist. There is definitely a lot more that could be explored in the game world. That said the game itself does stand alone as a satisfyingly complete story. If you don't want to pay full price for 12 hours of game play, at least rent it. Keep in mind that there are quite a few achivements that are waiting for a second play through.