Dead Space (PlayStation 3)

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Description

The starship USG Ishimura sends out a distress signal to the Concordance Extraction Corporation during a mining operation on the planet Aegis VII. Another ship is sent to investigate the causes of the signal; however, as it attempts to dock with the Ishimura, it crashes into it because of a system malfunction. The crew is attacked by terrifying monsters. Only three people survive, among them an engineer named Isaac Clark. It looks like the ship is barely able to sustain its existence, many of its systems critically damaged. Isaac is the only one who would know how to fix them, and his two companions send him on a mission to find out a way to bring things back to normal, and discover the truth behind the horrible events.

Dead Space is a third-person sci-fi shooter with elements of survival horror. Controlling Isaac, the player explores the ship, fighting reanimated corpses known as Necromorphs. Combat heavily relies on the so-called "strategic dismemberment", which forces the player to cut off limbs or parts of the Necromorphs to defeat them. Wounding a particular part of the Necromorph's body may either allow the player to kill it, make it change attack patterns, or even become more dangerous.

Many of the weapons in the game are improvised mining tools, such as a rotary saw, a plasma cutter, a hydrazine torch used as a flamethrower, and others. All the weapons feature a secondary fire mode; for example, the plasma cutter can be rotate to cut off vertical limbs more efficiently. Isaac can also use special abilities, allowing him to slow down enemies or pick up and throw items from a distance. A few sections in the game have Isaac float in a zero gravity environment. Ammo and tools can be found during exploration or purchased in automatic shops available on the ship. Workbenches can be used to upgrade Isaac's weapons and armor.

Screenshots

Part of the Following Groups

• Dead Space series
• Gameplay feature: Quick Time Events / QTEs
• Games made into books
• Games made into comics
• Games made into movies
• HUDless games
• Physics Engine: Havok
• PlayStation 3 Greatest Hits releases
• Technology: amBX

User Reviews

All of my favourite horror games plagiarized to perfection

MegaMegaMan (2216)

The Press Says

Cheat Code Central	Oct, 2008	4.7 out of 5	94
GameLemon	Mar 26, 2009	9 out of 10	90
GameSpot	Oct 31, 2008	9 out of 10	90
JeuxVideoPC.com	Oct 27, 2008	18 out of 20	90
Games Radar	Oct 14, 2008	9 out of 10	90
Fragland.net	Nov 11, 2008	89 out of 100	89
Worth Playing	Oct 22, 2008	8.3 out of 10	83
OMGN: Online Multiplayer Games Network	Dec 21, 2010	8.3 out of 10	83
UOL Jogos	Oct 24, 2008		80
videogamer.com	Oct 13, 2008	8 out of 10	80

Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
Limited time free offer from Origin	2	GTramp (34913) Apr 01, 2014
Should I go on?	2	BurningStickMan (17739) May 15, 2009
Wii version coming soon.	7	lasttoblame (393) Mar 23, 2009
QUERY: Dead Space demo... ending...	3	St. Martyne (3562) Mar 01, 2009
Add New Game Group	5	Pseudo_Intellectual (44567) Feb 15, 2009

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Dead Space appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Air filtration room bug

Unfortunately, each platform the game was released (PS3, XBox 360, Windows) on, features the same, occasionally reproduced critical bug. In the 6th Chapter, where you are trying to pass the furnaces in the Air Filtration room, the control panels near the locked doors, which you should shoot out, are absent, and there is absolutely no way to proceed in the game. The exact steps to reproduce this bug are still unknown. No fixes exist at the moment of this trivia contribution, but a solution to avoid this bad situation does exist.

Just save your game in the very beginning of each chapter while you are in the tram, and keep it until you finish the chapter. If the bug occurs, just reload your save game and walk through the chapter from the very beginning once more. Just go to the problematic place as fast as possible and examine whether it is the same or not. Do it until the control panels appear, and you'll be able to get along.

Chapters (Spoiler!)

When put together, the first letter of each chapter's name spells out NICOLE IS DEAD.

Development

At first the game was developed for the original Xbox.

Inspiration

Producers admittedly reported to having drawn inspiration from cult-movies like The Thing, Alien and Event Horizon, as well as from successful videogames like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

Prequel

Some of the characters that appear or are mentioned in the game also appear in the animated prequel Downfall, which depicts the outbreak of the Necromorphs on the Ishimura.

References

• Isaac Clarke, the main character of the game, is named after science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
• Unitology, the fictional religion that plays a large part in the series' storyline, appears to be vaguely inspired by the Church of Scientology.

Awards

• GAME British Academy Video Games Awards
  • 2009 - Original Score Award
• GamePro
  • February 209 (Issue #245) - Xbox 360 Game of the Year 2008
• GamePro (Germany)
  • February 26, 2009 - Best Console Action-Adventure in 2008 (Readers' Vote)
• GameSpy
  • 2008 – #8 Xbox 360 Game of the Year
  • 2008 – #9 PS3 Game of the Year
  • 2008 – Best Audio of the Year

Information also contributed by Mark Ennis, PCGamer77, POMAH, Sciere and sgtcook

Related Web Sites

• Dead Space (Official game website.)
• Dead Space Original Xbox Demo (video footage of the early and unreleased Xbox version, hosted on YouTube.)
• PS3trophies.org trophy guide (PS3trophies.org's trophy guide for Dead Space)
• Wikipedia (Dead Space article in the open encyclopedia)
• X360A achievement guide (X360A's achievement guide for Dead Space.)