Dead Space Review

Scary games just aren’t my thing. I can’t handle Silent Hill, and my ideal Resident Evil time is between 12-4 PM with the lights on and a podcast going in the background. So going into Dead Space took a little bit of courage on my part to get the app started. Now that I’m back from

In Dead Space, you play as Vandal, a fresh recruit to the series’ Church of Unitology. The Church sends Vandal on his very first mission – to take out some low-level security systems on the Sprawl station. It all seems fine and dandy ‘til the Necromorphs show up, and Vandal must fight his way through the station to get out alive.

Dead Space tries it’s hardest to bring the console experience to the iPhone/iPod Touch. For all intents and purposes, Dead Space is almost exactly like its console brethren. There are Necromorph limbs to be sliced, weird mutant baby things to stomp, zero gravity areas…to be honest, I was surprised just how similar the experience is. Unlike other console-to-handheld titles, there are no miningames to be found – just a true blue shooter.

Controls are a tad bit touchy, but it’s not as bad as you think. To move Vandal, you use your left thumb and treat his back like a D-Pad, while using your right thumb to look around. One tap, and you go into shooting mode, and can be taken out of with a swipe. There are buttons for weapon swapping and reloading, and various icons in the environment signaling an object you can pick up telekinetically. Quick-time events and contextual prompts are also present, and easy to accomplish.

But like I said, it’s not perfect. While it wasn’t too much of a problem, I constantly found my thumbs getting in the way of the action. Not to mention the times I strafed into the arms of a Necromorph or when I would accidentally fire, wasting valuable ammo.

And if there was one problem with Dead Space on iOS, it would have to be the lack of ammo. It’s not the scariest game in the world, and I feel like the lack of ammo was put in as a cheap parlor trick to make it seem more terrifying. The scarcity doesn’t add to the experience – it just gets annoying.

But don’t let the control/ammo issues scare you off. Dead Space is a worthy addition to anyone’s App Library. The game looks fantastic, and the sound experience is superb – great voice acting combined with good ambient background sound means you better play this with headphones. Sure, the controls aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty damn good, and they’re not going to make you shut the game off in frustration. I got a little less than 4 hours out of Dead Space on my first playthrough, and I’ll be sure to add to that number in the future.

Author: Dan McKenney