#with half of them being on the crew of the Ishimura and the others being part of the crew that responds to the distress call

[pomellon]

Yeah Dead Space hyper fixation is really going brrr and I be think of aus 

[justaddgame]

GOTY 2021: #9 - Dead Space

Dead Space frequently made me feel uncomfortable throughout the length of its campaign. Being aboard the USG Ishimura—where protagonist Issac Clarke and fellow survivors find themselves adrift in space while attempting to uncover the cause of the disaster that descended on its crew—will evoke images of creeping through the Spencer mansion to any diehard Resident Evil fan. Visceral Games—today, sadly shutdown—successfully sprang a survival-horror game on an unsuspecting audience in 2008 after the genre had shown signs of gradually slipping away.

For years, Dead Space existed on my Steam account, and yet it took a long time to get around to. Back then, at the time of its release, I didn’t have access to a console capable of running it. A generous friend gifted an extra copy to me, but sadly, the PC I downloaded it on—bless its heart—couldn’t run it comfortably at the best of times. It would take a hardware refresh, but that refresh wouldn’t come for some time.

That day finally arrived this year, however, when I was lucky enough to finish building a new PC just before it became nearly impossible to find the parts. When the calendar flipped over to October, there was no question: what better time than now?

Dead Space, like other games on my 2021 list, shows its age in some ways. Graphically, it shines in places even now—several sequences stood out thanks to Dead Space hiding its HUD and instead displaying all necessary information elsewhere, such as Issac’s health meter functioning as a visual part of his armor, and a weapon’s ammo count being integrated into its iron sights.

Other elements will remind you it’s a game from 2008—the ragdoll physics, for example, are often more comical today than I’m sure they were intended at the time. One sticking point in particular was the lack of a quick turn. Resident Evil had implemented this into their core games by then, so it came as a surprise when I finally realized its omission. I will admit most of my frustrations early on were from the increased difficulty of escaping death because of Dead Space’s rigid movement. It became a thorn in my side for at least half of the game and was more than once an excuse that tempted me to move on to something else.

But the formula remains solid, and it was too late to turn my back on it now as there was so much to like. I felt it every time I jumped back in, loaded my save, and seeped back into a world I had grown to like—other than it being a nightmare-scenario, of course. Sometimes a game manages to get under your skin, and you adapt to its rules, even if it bruises the ego a bit. Truthfully, it was frustrating enough to mention it here, but for the sake of the narrative, it successfully heightened my fight or flight senses—the need to survive. Those limitations in movement are not unlike the infamous tank controls of Resident Evil’s early days.

Love them or hate them, there’s no easier way to create a sense of dread in survival-horror than holding a player back, and I think Dead Space gets that.