Incoming from Comic Con: Hands-On with Dead Space

I got some hands-on time with Dead Space for the 360. It was interesting because the booth was set up in a way that your turn with the demo only ended when you died. For most people it was five minutes. I managed to last fifteen. This wasn't my first time to delve in the pits of Resident Evil 4/Bioshock hell. This was my kind of game for so many reasons.

The demo didn't pull back any punches. It was visceral in a way that was only forgiving enough to let you go on just a little bit longer. Most enemies I fought would drop supplies, but they always dropped too little.

The controls were extremely intuitive. Aiming worked like Resident Evil 4, where the left trigger would aim and the right trigger would fire. The "A" button would reload. What Dead Space has that Resident Evil 4 didn't is secondary fire for all of your weapons. The right bumper would serve a different function. Its not like most shooters or Bioshock where it is just a different kind of ammo. The secondary fire uses the weapon for a completely different utility. The best example of what I mean is with the Flamethrower. Isaac (the character you play as in the game) would place the gas tank of the flamethrower down and unscrew the top of it, releasing a large explosion that left you unharmed and the enemies around you nuked. It was a fantastic tool for dealing with large numbers of small enemies.

Changing weapons worked by pressing direction on the D-Pad (ala Bioshock), but the demo had only four weapons instead of eight. You have your basic wire-cutter gun, the flamethrower, a powerful charge beam gun, and a wave beam gun. I didn't get around to trying the secondary fire with most of the weapons.

Then there are your special abilities, stasis and telekinesis. When you aim and press B, you pick up an object and pull it towards you. If you keep the left trigger held down to remain aiming and press the right trigger to fire, you send the object flying at whatever you have it aimed at. I was very cozy with this ability because of my experience with Bioshock. The best thing about it was that you could use it indefinitely, which was fantastic because of how little ammo you get while playing. Then there's Stasis, which you do get a limited amount of. If you've read much about Dead Space, you know there is very little in the way of interface. On your spine is a readout for you life meter. The circle next to it is how much Stasis you have left. Stasis freezes and enemy in place for a very long time, more than long enough to kill them. It is a crowd control ability that is utterly fantastic for the hoards of enemies you're bound to run into through the course of the game. You would use stasis by aiming and pressing B.

If you weren't aiming, X would use a med-pac and I think B was melee. Right bumper would stomp, which is useful against small or downed enemies.

The tendril enemy shown in most footage for this game was the most common enemy I encountered. They were tough. The best approach was to first shoot off their spikey tendrils and then their head. If you shoot their head off first, they wail wildly. The wailing wasn't bad unless they were right next to you. It was still advantageous blowing their head off because it still did blind them.

There was also an enemy that was a human head with little hand, feet, and tendrils on its back. They kick of reminded me of a dog. A horrible, twisted, human-esque dog. These guys you could just unload on without really having to think about where to aim on them. If you destroyed their tendrils, they would just regenerate a few seconds later. They also had the ability to shoot these bone dagger-like objects at you from their tendrils.

These other types of enemies were a bat-like creature that would possess corpses, a non-combative mutant that produced a poison cloud that could cause you to suffocate, and an impregnated abomination that would spawn tons of little creatures when he died.

By the end of the demo, I completely ran out of ammo. I tried to use melee and ended up getting Isaac cut in half (the game is full of vicious deaths). I should have resorted to using telekinesis, and I might've thought more clearly if I wasn't so aware that I had been in the booth for enough time that three different people sat down, played, and died playing the other console with this demo in the time that it took me to reach the point I was at. I felt like I was hogging it but it was so much fun. This is one of those games that I'm going to end up beating in one weekend. I'm excited to play it.

There was a small glitch where the "A" button hologram that appeared on my back when tiny bats attacked me wouldn't go away. It was just flashing for most of the demo. This small glitch wasn't a big deal. I bet if you could just save and exit then the glitch would disappear when you would reload your game.

I've got very high hopes for Dead Space.

-Nick. L