Dead Space is still fantastic
Date: 2022-12-05
I am not much of a modern gamer, but I still like to watch videos about today's games, what they have to offer. I only saw a trailer about Callisto Protocol not long ago, offering a change in the survival horror genre. Let's face it, this genre is super stale. You either play in a haunted house try to go agianst ghosts in first person, or you are playing the endless clones of third person Alone in Dark/Resident Evil clones. Some of them of course turn out to be really good, but others are very forgottable. Nobody will remember Callisto Protocol a year from now.
But this post is about Dead Space. The more I watched Callisto, the more I wanted to play Dead Space again. It's pretty easy to do on Linux, I use the GOG version and adamhm's script for install and setup. Luckily the game save files are in the "~/.local/share/deadspace" folder, so I could continue the game where I left of months ago. Honestly I didn't know how to play at first (bringing up the map, or showing where the next objective is, etc), but as soon as I faced the first monsters I was alright. I am at mission 6.
A few things stucked with me though. This game came out in 2008. If you don't press any key at the beginning, then a trailer starts to play, with a haunting rendition of "Twinkle, twinkle little star…"
Listen and look. This is horror. While the game throws you in to the deep end very fast, this trailer sings to you, totally matching the visual to the lyrics in the first third, and showing the terror on the Ishimura…
The menu is so simple, it's laughable. You won't have trouble finding options and how to tweak stuff. Back in the day it was a hell of a looking game, and I would say that thanks to the atmosphere and clear design of the space station, it still holds up. Maybe not in the way of Bioshock (from 2007), but still a nice looking game. Since I have a much better machine than back in that time, I can play it in 1920x1080 and everything turned up to max.
When I first saw and then later played the game, I always thought that this is just a third person Doom 3. I don't know what the hell was wrong with me. This is more than that.
From the first moment of seeing that giant space station, the Ishimura, then doing a landing and discovering that something really horrible went wrong.
I think what I realized playing it again, is that no matter how a game looks dated, sound and music, and playing with silence, will always age well, especially in horror games. Creating tension in the right places is the absolute must in this genre.
Dead Space is a kind of horror that can easily live outside of our gaming experience. People can experience nightmares, cause the game is so good in atmosphere and the monsters. Oh the monsters are so creepy, twisted. And we have nowhere to run, and have to face the horror ourselves. Or we can just sit in the corner, bloody bodyparts around, trying to forget the nightmare around us, singing "Twinkle, twinkle little star…" and accepting our faith of madness.
Sidebar: there is a women in Alien: Isolation (another space station, another nightmare scenario), who is sitting on a bench, looking out in a window. She knows her faith, and instead of trying to hide or maybe banding together with other survivors, she is just sitting there, waiting for the inevitable…
Dead Space managed to achieve its horror not by dumping on monsters at every corner, but by sparingly adding them here and there. Sometimes when we totally not expecting too. There is an early puzzle where you totally expect them to come out to try to murder you. But no. They patiently wait, and when you done with the puzzle, you turn around and boom, they are there!
Enemy variety is also a crucial aspect of survivor horror (except in case of A:I), and it shows that the developers went absolute bonkers in the room, to invent monsters that can make us finding the Escape key fast enough and just scream, "No, no, hell no!". I am usually not a fan of body horror, but the monsters and Isaac's different deaths are just amazing looking and very inventive.
Headphone is a must, although I can imagine with a good sound system it can shake up players as well. Alone, in the dark is definitely the must for atmosphere. I play with keyboard and mouse, cause that's what I know. For that you need a patch (just follow the instructions), to fix mouse issues. I may try to play it with controller, but my aim is very much shit with it, so it would be hard mode for me on easy difficulty too.
And after all these years, I still haven't completed the game. One day I face my fears and will continue my journey as Isaac on the USG Ishimura.
(I saw many hours from Dead Space 2, and it has the same amazing atmosphere - not to mention a fantastic beginning - as the first game)
Addition: I just also realized something. There is not much cutscene in this game, or QTEs, or cutscene kills where the game takes away the player's agency, and you have to just watch that your character kills a monster. Every kill is yours, decision you make. What a fantastic, revolutionary idea, I hope they keep gaming this way for the next decade or two…
