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Asteroid defence
cannons. On-board
tram networks. Oh,
and devout cult
members turned
Necromorphs. The
dank, blood-
drenched halls of the USG Ishimura is
full of surprises, all of which helped to
solidify Dead Space’s planet-cracking
vessel as one of videogame horror’s
most memorable haunted houses.
Chief amongst such hellish treats,
however, was protagonist Isaac
Clarke’s method of dispatching the
ship’s reanimated inhabitants – a
makeshift toolset that served to buck
the survival horror trend of having
players be ill-equipped. Because
in Dead Space, you have the exact
weapon you need right from the off:
the fabled Plasma Cutter.
Who knew that a game, let alone
the first entry in a new series, could
be defined so much by the player’s
primary method of attack? The folks
over at EA Redwood Shores (later
known as Visceral Studios) did, and in
doing so orchestrated the best means
in which players could creatively let
loose against any insistent monster
rampaging towards them. It was
called ‘strategic dismemberment’ and
required players to forget what they’d
been taught and avoid aiming for
the head, instead making use of the
Plasma Cutter’s capacity to shoot in
vertical and horizontal lines of energy
to blast off limbs and appendages.
It helps that each kind of
Necromorph you come across has
been specifically designed around
players having this ability.
Whether popping up from a
grate beneath your feet or
bombing at you through
the air via zero-G, Dead
Space’s misshapen
meat bags all resemble
a Jenga tower just
waiting to be taken apart
piece by piece. A good
example of this is the Lurker
enemy type, which is no stranger
to implanting itself somewhere above
you, only to unleash a trio of whippy
barbed tentacles from their back. Is
it extremely convenient? Yes. Does
it make them incredibly vulnerable?
Of course. But it helped to enhance
ABOVE: The
grotesque
Necromorphs
are pure
nightmare fuel.
FAR LEFT These
Necros will be
far less
intimidating
once you shoot
their stabby
bits off.“It helped to enhance
the idea that you’re an
unlikely hero making the
best of a bad situation”
the idea that you’re an unlikely hero
making the best of a bad situation.
In this way, Dead Space broke
the rules of what it meant to play
an everyman stranded in a survival
horror setting. The game’s executive
producer, Glen Schofield, made it no
secret just how heavily the team was
influenced by Resident Evil 4 during
development, but even Capcom’s
classic failed at making you feel
helpless in order to guarantee scares
and a sense of dread. Dead Space,
on the other hand, managed to retain
that feeling – all while making you feel
empowered thanks to those
great dismemberment tools.Dead good
While it’s true that many
may have witnessed
Dead Space’s brand of
cold, industrial sci-fi
mixed in with gruesome
body horror before in
other bouts of fiction, this
workman-like approach gave the
act of dismembering foes a tactility. It
translates to everything, whether it’s
in how Isaac’s shoulder shoots back
due to recoil whenever he shoots, to
how Necromorphs stumble onto the
ground as a result of where you’ve hitWHAT IS IT?
A space-set survival
horror game, the first
in a trilogy centring on
lowly engineer Isaac
Clarke and his battle
against the mutated
Necromorphs.them. There is nothing like clearing
out a room full of foes, going on to
retrieve the key item you need, then
backtracking through that same
area to look upon the chaos you’ve
wreaked only a few moments earlier.
As the series went on, more
weapons and new enemy types would
be introduced to offer players fresh
ways to merge strategy with slaughter.
Whichever way each tried to reinvent
Dead Space’s classic shoot-and-slice
combat formula, however, at the core
of it remained Isaac Clarke’s trusty
Plasma Cutter. This, combined with the
ability to temporarily freeze enemies
in their tracks via a doohickey known
as the Stasis Module, helped keep
encounters deceptively simple. Only
those brave enough to finish the game
this way, using the Plasma Cutter and
no other weapon, would receive the
‘One Gun’ Achievement.
While the survival horror is
currently undergoing somewhat
of a renaissance, largely due to
Capcom returning the Resident Evil
series back to its roots with the RE2
remake, I can’t help but feel that
looking back will only get you so far.
In 2009, Dead Space was this giant
leap forward for the genre thanks to
a host of mechanical improvements
and reinventions. Setting its doomed
hero amongst the stars instead of
reality allowed Dead Space to spin up
new ideas that made survival horror
feel scary in new ways – the ability
to dismember enemies being the
exemplar. Sadly, with Visceral Games
no longer around, we can only hope
that someone else is up to the task. QMore Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 107