Dead Space Review - Janky, Fun, Spooky?

Me with a definitely 100% legal version of the game which doesn't have the PC port artefact: Oh hey, that sucks

Dead space is one of my favorite video game franchises I've ever played. I was far too young when I played the first game originally but immediately fell in love with how it was unlike anything else I had experienced at the time.

This man played Dead Space, as an adult, for the first time in 2020, and complains about how it's not scary.... sigh I miss being a kid...

I played this game right after it came out, and I Did find it scary, but then again I was easily scared by a lot of stuff then. Still, some of your critiques are quite on point in retrospect, as making the game slightly more subtle definitely would have added to the horror aspect. Oh, and the awful port and the mouse lag definitely has always dragged the overall experience down. That said, in my opinion the plot, reasons for exploring whatever sections of the ship, even returning to places explored before make sense motivation-wise and flow quite well, and while Isaacs story might have been told more effectively, I think its still a decent journey, and the story as a whole has always felt quite intriguing to me. Also, I think you might have missed an aspect about enemies appearing (maybe you just didnt experience it), which is if you havent spotted them, and theyre behind you, they will try to sneak upon you. However, the jumpscare tactic, even despite being employed effectively in my opinion, does cheapen the atmosphere. There is a remake on the way and hopefully it has some changes in this regard, and I would love for the enemy encounters to be made more random, so that it gives the experience more of an element of surprise, which would totally help elevate overall anxiety. Also, I would be totally down if they did decide to retell the story in a more consistent and mature manner, and hopefully they attempt that too.

I recently found this channel, and your iron lung video (which is great btw,) and I completely agree that the steam port for dead space is a steaming pile. But I completely disagree with your opinion on the game as a whole. The atmosphere in dead space is two strong contrasts. When nothing is going on, it is dead, silent and/or eerie, but as soon as enemies attack all shit breaks loose and everything becomes loud af. That is the point and why every enemy is flailing and screaming at you. The fact that you can't hide, you HAVE to fight these monsters, can instill panic very effectively. Isaac is a silent protagonist, yes. That might not work all of the time for the storytelling, but it enhances the immersion in the game IMO. The feeling that it is not Isaac, but YOU who is trying to fix stuff at the Ishimura. And you are all alone most of the time, aside from occasional chatter with Kendra and Hammond. The whole Nicole thing made at least me question Isaacs sanity. There she is all of a sudden, after some teasing. It made me think "how could she have survived the onslaught aboard the ship? And why does she say weird stuff like make us whole?" There is a lot of details that hint on what is going on, or just to creep you out, because everyone is going insane because of the marker, like the crying woman in the medical area, and the occasional "twinkle twinkle little star" singing. There is no point of it being there, but come on, that's creepy! The whole "is this real?" concept is there all the time. I still respect your opinion, and I'm curious to see your other videos, but I feel like you didn't do the game justice. I wanted to give you an opinion from someone who legit always found the game scary, to this day. TL;DR I respect your opinion, but disagree.

man really doubled down chose the hill to die on and then said fear ''where your basically a super soldier'' is more frightening because ''the threat is less tangible'' ah yes i cannot hear you through my bullet time and tacticool gameplay

I got that game on my still working Xbox 360 and it works perfectly fine. I'm just too scared to actually played it. I've pushed my self 3 times into playing it but i didn't get that far those 3 times.

Lmao nice video man & your editing is great !! 🔥

Holy fuck the scale of underrated is indescribable, I saw 19 likes and lost my shit

It is crazy how our perceptions deffer from each other. But maybe you have played a lot of horror games before this, and Dead Space was my first horror game ever. I played it on console, I wasn’t spoilt with 60 fps, I played the console version, which is fine (in my opinion).

tldr: i had a lot to say about this review. watch in order of the video. i just wanna say -- as a pc player with an xbox controller using the wireless adapter, i had zero issues with the game, physics engine or otherwise. to be fair, though, i don't remember if i had vsync on or off, but . . . 30fps is the experience you'd have playing the console that controller belongs to, anyway. edit: the "completely jarring" part of the game is INTENTIONAL ! that's how most horror works . . . every horror film, nearly ever, you have low and spooky subtle ambiance and then AAA!! VIOLINS AND SCREAMING AND DANGER!!!!! Horror games, same thing. Jump-scare, they call those. edit 2: the reason you'd be scared of the monsters you know how to kill is the sheer number of them. how the game swarms you with enemies all at once - or tries to, at least - to the point that you're shooting at more enemies than your (assumedly not upgraded) 8-round plasma cutter can afford to hit before the 3 second reload. IIRC, EA told redwood to make the game more forgiving on players, and that's why "hard" is RE2's "normal". edit 3: YES, it IS because all the other horror films had a big jump-scare ending!! IT WAS 2008. that was popular! this is PRE FNAF ,,,,, and the entire reason fnaf was popular was because of jumpscares (which came after near-silent ambience. jarring, right?)

Which version of the game were you running? When I ran it on Steam I had none of these issues...but then again the last time I played the game was back when I had a Windows 8 machine, so some of these problems probably weren't present.

dead space and the sequels were some of my favourite games I've played. Loved the story, I played it on hard or hardest as well, can't remember which now, which maybe helped, but I remember my housemates commenting they could hear me screaming in the middle of the night every time i got spooked. sorry guys.

Interesting, I wonder if the PC version is MUCH easier than console? That would totally run the experience. I remember playing it on Hard on Xbox, and it was BRUTAL. You would die in 1-2 hits from any enemy, and ammo/health were incredibly rare. It made all those cheesy jump scares terrifying, because you only had a split second before you were mangled, and if you over-reacted and fired too indiscriminately, you'd find yourself out of ammo -- not a situation you wanted to be in! The game was so stressful, I'd end up having to pee every 15 mins 😅 Absolutely loved it, it really stood out at the time. I ended up dressing at Isaac for Halloween that year!

I came to this video after watching your review on Dead space 3. And have to say, I like both your videos! The quality is great! But while I do agree with your points in DS 3 video, I can't do the same in this one. I do believe, that Dead space is one of the few games, that give you a great sense of how well and handcrafted it was made. Though I get, that the game uses some simple and obvious means to make you feel anxious and thrilled, I think as a whole it works perfectly. It creates a unique atmosphere through it's SFX and soundtracks, through gorgeous artwork and cool concepts and ideas (necromorphs, industrial tools as weapons, UI built in equipment, survivng in space by constantly repairing an enormous sized spaceship etc). So I think it's just a matter of your own perspective on how horror games have to be made, that defines your final judgment and that Dead space is probably my favorite horror game of all time.

Pretty much lines up with my views of the game. I still quite like it.

Replaying the original one and two games right now love your vid

I completely disagree, the constant brooding tension of "where tf is it?" is what makes it scary for me. That's how all good horror works, fear of the unknown is always worse than seeing the monster (Alien vs Aliens for example)

Yeah I kind of agree with the game's horror being a weird mix between RE4 and System Shock (which is why I prefer 2 which pretty much leaned into being RE4 in space) but the Fear comparison is a bit weird considering that game also operates on the same philosophy of contradicting horror and action lol. Still love both games but I think the criticism regarding the horror and the action contradicting each other applies to both. Idk maybe Fear's alma really helps the horror since she isn't an enemy you can kill. Idk still feel like horror and action can't really work together equally unless you lean heavily into either one.

Just finished playing this on my channel and im thinking about moving on to Dead Space 2