The next Dead Space review comes from 1Up. The game scored good again - B+. Nothing to worry about. It's a 12 hours action trip. More action than horror, as I guessed:
It's clear that Dead Space wants to be scary. It has the right trappings, from the lost-on-a-spaceship concept to the limited health and ammo pickups, the audio and video logs you find (which feature allies screaming at you), and the blood-splattered environments and occasional disgusting enemies. But it seems like -- in a few too many cases -- the designers chose to hold you by the hand and make something look cool instead of making it look scary. When you're upgrading your suit (which itself makes you look more like a game's boss than an everyman), using Stasis to freeze enemies, picking up explosive canisters with the equivalent of a gravity gun, and purchasing weapons that dissect enemies in different ways, you don't exactly feel vulnerable. Mix in more than enough checkpoints and the ability to draw a line in front of you telling you where to go (with the touch of a button) and it's easy to settle in and let the training wheels take care of you.
Assuming you weren't misled into expecting something along the lines of Silent Hill, however, I don't think you'll be disappointed. Dead Space tries to have things both ways by being scary and offering plenty of gunplay, but it's well crafted throughout. I remember debates about whether Resident Evil 4 was as scary as previous Resident Evil games, and the consensus was that no, it wasn't -- but it was better designed, so who cares?
I'm fine with that. Silent Hill is an other category. The category you don't wanna play alone at night, haha!
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