In the latest episode of the Brainy Gamer podcast, Michael and his guests Leigh and Mitch have a fascinating discussion contrasting two recent horror releases: Dead Space and Silent Hill: Homecoming. The consensus is that, while Dead Space is technically impressive and features innovative use of the third person perspective, it lacks the subtle psychological elements of a traditional survival horror title. I’d hate to reduce the impact of their arguments by summarizing them, so you’ll have to listen for yourself if you’re not convinced.
The most significant contrast between the two games is their approach to frightening the player. The Silent Hill series is lauded for its use of environment and pacing to instill a sense of perpetual dread in the player. Dead Space, however, relies on more direct scare tactics: enemies jumping out of vents, seemingly still bodies leaping at you, lights suddenly going out, etc. Furthermore, the main character is heavily armoured and outfitted with an arsenal of impressive sci fi weaponry. In horror terms, the game is more Aliens than Jacob’s Ladder (or even Alien.)
While the vast majority of frightening moments in Dead Space follow this direct formula, there are a few exceptions that I feel are noteworthy. These moments managed to scare me effectively and subtly. I’d like to highlight a selection of them here (with minimal plot spoilers).
As mentioned earlier, the game is very technically impressive. This includes the lighting and shadow effects, which are spot-on. At one point in the game, I was once walking into a narrow corridor that was being brightly lit from behind. Entering the doorway, I suddenly noticed that the shadow on the ground in front of me had outline of one of the ship’s ghoulish inhabitants. I quickly spun around to confront it… but there was nothing there. It may have been my imagination, but I could swear that the game scripted an out-of-place enemy shadow in that one spot for exactly that reason. In any case, I was impressed that the game had me literally jumping at shadows.
One setup that was repeated frequently in the game is that enemies move out of sight just as you turn a corner. In one such instance, however, the creature I caught a disconcerting glimpse of was a regular human passenger. He looked at me, walked away and disappeared down a hallway a la G-Man. Counter-intuitively, this freaked me out more than any of the horrible monsters I had seen previously. Who was this man? Why did he evade me? This fear was compounded by the fact that I had picked up an audio diary earlier that claimed that there was a serial killer on board.
The “strategic dismemberment” of enemies is another technically impressive aspect of the game. It was also surprisingly effective at enhancing the fear. In one of the developer diaries for the game, it was mentioned that the dismemberment strategy was based on the fact that it’s difficult to make fine movements under pressure. For instance, the victims in horror movies always struggle with their car keys. The stress induced by the careful aiming is only made possible by the excellent controls, an aspect that is contrary to most survival horror games. Personally, I also think it’s a more interesting combat restriction than ammo limitations.
Finally, I was impressed by the parts of the game that involved entering a vacuum. The noisy machinery found inside of the USG Ishimura was suddenly silenced once I stepped into space. In this environment, enemies took on a whole new light. Not only could they could sneak up on me without making a sound, but I was also rapidly running out of air. Furthermore, there were several points in the game that involved dodging gigantic machinery in the vacuum. Having a ten story machine move silently was surprisingly unnatural and disconcerting, and really played with your sense of scale.
I’m no veteran when it comes to survival horror, but I hope this convinces you that there were a few creative scares among the more generic ones. For more discussion, I highly recommend Daniel Purvis’ impressions of Dead Space and Iroquois Pliskin’s treatise on the psychology of horror.
November 2nd, 2008 at 7:09 pm
All of a sudden I’m rather interested in seeing this game eventually. Maybe one to go on the Christmas list.
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I’m so glad to see someone championing this game a little. When did we become too good for cheap scares? And I totally agree that it’s more interesting when a game is able to actually give you resources and control and STILL make you feel vulnerable and afraid. I liked being pitted against The Hunter, especially. Probably my favorite part of the game.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:21 pm
@Ben: It’s a solid purchase, I hope you enjoy it. I was fortunate enough to have finished it by the time all the big F games came out.
@JohnM: I think the game has already been championed significantly, considering it’s a brand new IP. I think the main criticisms are coming from people with a lot of experience with the survival horror genre. They’ve seen the cheap scare tactics so many times that they’re completely desensitized to them.
@SnakeLinkSonic: I would hope that any accusations of Dead Space ripping off other media would be countered by the number of original ideas it included (ex: the holographic menus and lack of HUD.) I hope that by playing the “tour guide” to some of my favourite game moments I might convince people to give the game a shot.
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I was going to use this a template for my latest blog, but I thought it would be more interesting (and respectful towards the game itself) to let the industry “digest” it first. So far, it’s been moderately successful. I was worried it would get trampled on by the new releases, but it’s holding it’s own. I am a little disappointed to see how people are specifically citing how Dead Space rips off so many things. Everything rips off something, I don’t see why one game should be shodded for it. There’s a certain tone to “originality” that has to be acknowledged for all titles and people seem to forget that when it counts the most.
Anyway I opted for Homecoming in that aforementioned blog (most recent one), using a similar style that Leigh has been using for the past month. Horror games are one of my favorites, and Dead Space has had me intrigued to try it out because I want to see how a solid science fiction setup holds up now (my reigning champion there is System Shock 2).
~sLs~
November 10th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Basically, I have a sort of weird discrepancy going on in my head as I play Dead Space. On the one hand, the game is scary as hell. I find myself tiptoeing around the ship, dreading a confrontation with a single slasher. Every time I reach a new door, I probably take nearly 3 minutes to scope out the room, kinesis any objects and items and shoot at any suspicious shadows (only for bigger rooms, obviously I’m not doing this for hallways). I remember in the first or second plant room in chapter 6, I spent nearly 40 seconds trying to kinesis this one explosive barrel on the second floor before resolving that I was never going to succeed.
On the other hand, the game is incredibly easy (well I am on normal so maybe hard will be tougher) and I find myself accumulating a huge pile of medpacks, ammo and such which I will probably never use. Instead of sympathizing with the ishimura crew when I listen to the logs, I wonder how it was that they were ever overrun by such a pathetic zombie invasion. Why didn’t the crew just pool their money to buy some plasma cutters? You see tons and tons of dead crew members but you NEVER see a slasher corpse with all its limbs removed, at least as far as I know (did the ishi crew seriously fail to kill even ONE necromorph? UTTER FAILURE F- ON YOUR REPORT CARD SPACE PEOPLE). Compared to Resident Evil 4, where the first village fight is tough to complete without the shotgun (which prompts chainsaw dudes to attack you), the plasma cutter is incredibly effective, definitely a viable endgame weapon. I understand what you’re saying about the dismemberment stuff in theory (in terms of horror protagonists being shaky and imprecise), in practice the game makes it plenty easy to shoot limbs off thanks to the huge spread of even the basic gun’s AOE. Moreover, you know the approach you need to take to kill every enemy in the game because EVERY enemy involves the same “cut off some set of limbs to kill it” (with the exception of the brute where the best way to kill it is force it to spit acid pods and kinesis them back).
Even though Resident Evil 4 is pretty campy when it comes down to it, and (besides the RE4 regenerators, because they pant like they want to rape meh as they chase me), it’s a much tougher game, especially on pro.
Dead Space feels more like a survival horror game in that I am constantly ready to piss my pants when some necromorph kills me brutally, but because I’m never actually pitted against anything challenging, I end up with my bladder full after playing through 3 chapters straight. Resident Evil 4 didn’t really have me running scared, but it did induce a lot of cursing when my life was cut short by a well-thrown axe or machete.
About 9/10 of my deaths are caused by my stupidity in dealing with environmental effects; I often detonate explosive tubes in my face, I got burned to death in the flame tunnels thinking the second one was active (and being afraid to go in), and the asteroid field probably added about 5 minutes of gameplay. The centrifuge in chapter 2 or 3 killed me like 6 times before I figured out I had to go the other way (and then it didn’t kill me again). Gravity floors have only killed me twice :)
One terrifying part was when all the vents shattered at once, somewhere in part 6. I was on a catwalk when suddenly all the vents break open. I immediately expect the arrival of dozens of slashers but instead…nothing. Nothing at all.
Boss fights have been a big let down so far, the regenerator was just a faster slasher that kept coming back (not to mention it looked goofy) and the lurker was…visually very cool, but I was able to beat it without getting hit on my first try.
That being said, someday I want to go into the the first regenerator fight with a HUGE pile of ammo and spend hours severing its limbs (it makes new ones). I hope to fill the room with them and create a barrier that the regenerator can’t move through.
I dislike the map system, I like their idea of keeping (nearly) everything real-time and in-game but you aren’t able to shift the maps center (it’s always locked on you). Metroid Prime has a much better 3d map system, they should have used something more similar to that even if it meant putting the map in the pause menu.
November 10th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Whoa, apologies for the gigantic comment, didn’t realize it was so long when I wrote it.
November 13th, 2008 at 4:58 am
@Matt: Sorry for the delay in my reply. Long comments are always welcome here :)
The plasma cutter definitely felt overpowered, I had to force myself at times to use other weapons for variety. I also agree that the environment was by far the most dangerous enemy in Dead Space, but mostly because it was one of the few adversaries with 1-hit kill moves.
Since I forgot to mention it in the post, I’ll add that I also really liked the sequence where you had to escape from the regenerating monster by solving the “bookshelf moving puzzle” backwards. The regenerators in Resident Evil 4 were definitely more disconcerting though.
April 20th, 2009 at 2:32 am
[…] could be argued, is the case with Dead Space. After all, the game does do a number of interesting, sometimes subtle things in order to immerse players. Unfortunately, these inventive mechanics are nowhere near so […]