Why I Love Dead Space

WHY I LOVE DEAD SPACE

I love everything Dead Space. I love the comic books, I love the movie, I even love the averagely written but wonderfully plotted book. Most of all, and really, c’mon, you knew this was coming; I love the two video games the series has produced.

Dead Space, the video game, is remarkable in every way. It tells an engaging story using the video game medium in a way that I find revolutionary and it creates a universe that is fairly fleshed out and incredibly interesting. We get to deal with all of the great horror tropes: slashers, zombies, psychology and freaky religion.

The slashers and zombies are mashed into one excellent creature: the necromorph. Created from the dead, these bastards transform into living weapons. Instead of arms, the base necromorph have limbs that transform into bone scythes. Instead of a headshot taking care of business, you have tear the limbs off of them; increasing the gore and brutality level than what a mere decapitation can deliver. It also takes a few shots to get rid of: taking off its head just means that the creature will charge at you blindly, take off an arm it has another, take off a leg and it will crawl at you. Fantastic. And that’s just the base type of Necromorph, there are a handful more, including little monster babies! Who doesn’t love a little monster baby?

In each Dead Space tale you’re guaranteed to see someone go insane, in many instance, you’ll get to see several people go insane. In some very special parts of the games, you get to be the one going insane. Most noticeably, in an early part of Dead Space you find yourself walking around the space ship that the game spends most of its in time. As you walk you start to hear a thud repeating itself over and over again like one of those annoying tocking clocks. Then you find the source of the noise, it’s a person bashing their head into the wall. You don’t get a chance to save the person; they end up dying in a splatter of brain and blood. It’s creepy every time. There’s also a noticeable point in Dead Space: Extraction when you play as an insane person hallucinating. That was one of the few moments I’ve really gone from tense to terrified since I watched the Alien trilogy as a child.

I’m not going to talk about the religion. Not because I’m lazy, but because I think it might deserve its own space. I think there’s a lot I want to say when it comes to religion as it relates to insanity, paranoia and fear in fiction.

Sounds like fun!