Hands On: Dead Space at PAX 08

EA had quite a presence at PAX 08 including entire booth devoted to Dead Space, a science fiction RPG being released around Halloween 2008. I got a chance to play a demo of the game while Chuck Beaver, one of the game’s designers, was standing by my side as a guide.

The booth where I was playing the game was completely dark, which is definitely how you want to play a game that reminds you of the tagline to the original Alien movie, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

In Dead Space you play Issac Clarke (an obvious homage to great the science fiction masters Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke), a repairman who is sent on a maintenance mission to a city-sized mining ship. Of course, these repairs are never as simple as a replacing a burned-out circuit board. No, this ship has been infected by some unknown alien organism that has turned the crew into horrific zombies. And these zombies aren’t the human type you’d see in Left 4 Dead but creatures distorted beyond all humanity.

At first I thought that Dead Space was just another zombie shooter game but Clarke does not carry a gun. Instead, he has to make do with his futuristic power tools. For example, he has this one device that can send a spinning circular saw blade at opponents and it is a definite weapon of mass carnage. There is also a plasma torch that can act as a flame-thrower and a device that can levitate objects and shoot them. In fact, one time I caught and shot a human head with this weapon. I think you’d actually have to do this in order to capture the sense of wonder and horror I felt at that moment.

The weaponry wasn’t the only place where Dead Space broke gaming conventions. For example, if you need to check inventory, your character sees the inventory as a hologram in front of it. The player can even pan the camera view so you see this inventory screen from another angle. There is also no health bar, as the readout is seen as a blue meter on Isaac’s back.

Chuck told me that the game is to be played “like being in real space”, and there are several points in the game where it feels authentic, especially in Zero-G mode. From here, the walls or the ceiling become the floor, and it made the game both distorting and interesting at the same time.

I’ve also been told that there are no cut scenes or movies in this game. In other words, there is no dead space in Dead Space. You are playing this game, and you are finding out a storyline that they thankfully did not spoil.

Dead Space will be available for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC at an appropriate release date sometime around Halloween 2008.

Site [Dead Space] Read [Gamertell]