Dead Space

I got an awesome new game last week. I normally don't like 'survival horror' games because they are either too scary or too gross, but Dead Space is neither of those.

The premise of the game is that you are a welder onboard a repair ship in the future. You are responding to a distress call received from a large mining vessel. When you arrive at the vessel there is blood and chaos everywhere, and naturally you have to fight your way through tons of space-zombie-aliens to survive.

The graphics and sound are incredible, and the mood and atmosphere of the game really set it apart. The attention to detail is what sells it. For example, early in the game you have to walk through a section of the spaceship where the windows have been blown out. As a result, you are temporarily in the vacuum of space, and you hear very little noise while walking through that section. Firing your gun creates only a dull vibration, etc. It is little details like that which make the game exceptional, but also probably drove its production budget sky-high.

Check out the video, but be forewarned, it does contain some frightening space-zombies chomping on people... who probably tasted disgusting because in the future we will all probably eat bean paste and Soylent green.