It’s long been the dream of game developers to create a game that feels like a playable movie, and in Dead Space, EA has succeeded. Albeit, it’s the sort of movie that involves an awful lot of trudging backwards and forwards doing menial labour whilst thinking about your missing girlfriend. If that sounds a little too close to a mundane piece of Belgian cinema verite, don’t worry, the manual labour is carried in out in order to fix a spaceship and escape from an army of shrieking homicidal mutants.
Essentially, Dead Space is a terrifying first person shooter that merges elements of Aliens and Event Horizon with a clever design that does away with screen furniture in order to help fully immerse you in the game. Instead of health bars and ammo counters, all the game info is displayed within the game graphics, and there are no menus to hide in when things get tricky. Add to that some excellent zero-gravity sections and an incredible soundtrack full of howling anguished aliens and you’ve got an outstanding sci-fi horror game. You can watch our full Dead Space review on The Leisure Lab.
While we’re on the subject howling anguish, The Leisure Lab also has a Snow Patrol album review, and on their latest record, A Hundred Million Suns the mope-rockers are far less melancholy than you’d expect.