Dead Space is quite a good game but it is also bit of a frustrating one. Rather than being mediocre or bad, it's one of those games that was a couple of notable fumbles away from being amazing.
I'm not going to talk in detail about everything in this review as the gameplay is the focal point of discussion for me, but I will briefly acknowledge some of its other strengths. The Ishimura is a setting that I enjoyed. It's foreboding and often claustrophobic, playing into its strengths as this industrial mass up in the vacuum of space while still finding time for more interesting and visually striking locations here and there. There are some respectable jumpscares present like the ambush you receive while trying to chase down a Necromorph. The narrative, while taking some time to really capture my attention, has some engaging plot beats and lore with religious fanaticism being the standout story component.
Moving on, gunplay is actually pretty good here. The weapons mostly feel impactful and satisfying without trivialising the enemies they're relevant for. A focus on severing limbs encourages you to aim carefully and hold your distance, with most close range options being stuns and knockback. A lower field of view helps make encounters feel chaotic and forces you to stay alert, even if it can be a bit disorienting at times.
You're also given a wide array of tools for combat, many of which can be extremely fun and sometimes amusing. The ability to freeze enemies and pelt them with objects helps add variety and gives you multiple options in a pinch. The force gun ended up being one of my favourites as it's the most effective lethal option when enemies are getting in your face, and sending them flat on their ass with kinetic energy is pretty funny. I wish I tried out the ripper and more of the alternate fires during my playthrough because I'm sure I missed out.
It's great that the combat is this fun for a horror game, but one of the major problems I have is with the gameplay outside of combat, or I suppose the lack of it. There's a lot of dead space (sorry) between encounters, where nothing you're doing is exciting and you don't have to put much thought into any of it. It's often enough that your actions will boil down to pressing E to open some doors or collect some items, maybe using stasis to not get torn apart by a spinning fan, then moving on to the next chapter.
A complete lack of real puzzles makes a good portion of Dead Space feel more dull to play than I'm comfortable with, and it made me feel even more appreciation for their involvement in the Resident Evil games I've played. Don't get me wrong, not every survival horror experience needs to be like Resident Evil, and not every aspect of Resident Evil should be replicated in other games, but it's missing a lot of flavour by failing to include them or any other exciting interactions with its kinesis and stasis tools.
The other big issue I had was with the boss design as all 3 of the major bosses are kind of buns. The first is a meat wall with glowing yellow weakspots that you dump ammo into, sometimes throwing out attacks that you can ignore by calmly stepping to the side and emitting stock dinosaur roars. The 2nd is a mandatory turret section where you once again shoot at the weakspots of a giant mass. This time, on top of not facing any real danger, you also have to wrestle against the chaotic movement of tentacles and the travel time of the bullets to hit your targets. The final boss is, you guessed it, another giant monster that hardly moves. The fight is mostly avoiding attacks by walking side to side, and shooting at yellow weakspots.
Having every boss be this fairly similar charade against a relatively harmless, glorified set of moving targets is just so obnoxiously lame. I refuse to believe that they couldn't think of some way to make them more engaging. As a rough example, what if you could use your kinesis throughout the first boss fight to pick up the dismembered tentacles and use it to deflect projectiles and/or ram them into its core? It's nothing special but it is something. Honestly I think smaller bosses would've been way more interesting. If you want to count the regenerating enemy's final encounter as a boss then that would be the only solid one, as it actually leaves you to think for a moment and utilise some of your prior knowledge to form the solution.
So in the end, while I did enjoy playing this and think it's well made in many areas, I just cannot completely ignore my dissatisfaction with parts of it not being handled well enough to form a complete feeling experience. I will play the sequels and remake with time, and I'm hoping that any of them can give me the Dead Space experience that deserves to sit at the round table with some of my other favourites, even if that's by honing in on its strengths enough that I can ignore its flaws.
