Dead Space Preview
Posted in: Today's ChiliHave a spare set of undies handy
There is hype and then there is a full-length feature film created and sold as a stand-alone product for the sole purpose of promoting the game it is based on. Yes, you read correctly and that’s not all in this game’s hype arsenal, it also packs an excellent (and bandwidth heavy) set of website experiences second to none and I have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. All I can hope for now is that the game lives up to all of this.
The story
My first introduction to Dead Space, the soon-to-be released horror shooter from EA, was a voiced-over comic strip created to tell the game’s back-story. Utilizing the skills of veteran graphic novelist Anthony Johnston, the comic is made up of a series of roughly drawn stills and there are currently five episodes. The story begins on a far-flung colony in a backwater solar system owned by the Concordance Extraction Corporation, a massive mining company that goes around establishing huge colonies on vacant planets then “cracking” those planets and extracting all of the mineral wealth to be had there before moving on. Without giving too much away, the comic series follows several characters which, by all accounts, aren’t actually going to be featuring in the game (‘cos they all die in the sh*t-storm that is the 5th episode, oops did I say that?). The trouble starts when a huge monolith is found on the planet and it immediately seen as a “marker” by some religious folk who subscribe to the faith called “unitology”- this religion is far more popular than it appears and, well, lets just say that people in high places see the marker as something special too.
The Game
The actual game will take place almost exclusively in board the Ishimura, a massive corporation ship that arrived in orbit around the planet to pick-up the marker. You play Isaac Clarke, an engineer sent to investigate why contact was suddenly lost with the ship once the marker had been loaded. You can guess what he finds…and its not friendly. The crew has been killed and mutated into devilish and vile zombie-like creatures with the express intent on extinguishing all things living. Another horror-zombie game I hear you say? Not quite.
For one thing, if the full length feature animation, the website experiences and the comic are anything to go by, the story-line is highly involved. Certainly this is not a first for a zombie-shooter (the Silent Hill series comes to mind here) but Silent Hill only got a movie after all of the games came out- not before.
The weapons and tactics used to kill these mutated denizens are also unique as the developers chose to focus on incorporating strategic dismemberment into the very fabric of the game. In short, instead of aiming for the biggest chunk of the zombie-creature and firing at it with your biggest gun, you have to tear the nasties limb from limb to kill them. On top of this, each type of zombie has to be killed differently as, if you tear off the wrong limb, it may still overwhelm you.
The weapons themselves are purported to be varied and fully-customizable. From industrial machinery to standard-issue security weaponry, nearly all of the weapons can be modded for more punching power, range or just for the hell of it.
I have pre-booked my copy! Watch this space for a review soon.
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