Okay, so I'm not too big into realism. Getting shot once and dying is a pretty frustrating experience (so I'm told) and recreating that when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself doesn't seem to mesh very well. But! Fortunately for me and my $40, OF:DR doesn't make me want to kill myself in frustration.

OF:DR is a "hard" game. Bullets will fall realistically as they travel over long distances, enemies are likely to see you before you see them, and just making the mistake of not taking cover when you should can get you (or your teammates) killed; and that's the difficulty on normal mode. Hardcore takes it up a notch with a non-existent HUD and forcing you to use your map to figure out where your supposed to go. On top of that, the damage system is somehow more unforgiving and being told an enemy is in a certain direction means nothing because you have no visible compass. Despite all of this, the game never feels unfair.

Well, that's relative. Some will say that walking along peacefully, only to have the back of your skull blown out with no warning is unfair. And it is... to a degree. But chances are that you shouldn't have been frolicking about all willy-nilly and to the NPC that shot you, it likely looked like you were begging for it.

Yet it's these high stakes and sudden death scenarios that makes OF:DR so compelling.

The campaign provides a wide range of ways in which to taunt death, from blowing up enemy generators, destroying radar towers, to what is arguably the first non God-awful escort mission I have ever had the chance to play.It is short though (probably around 6-7 hours if you play with friends, like me), but definitely enjoyable, which makes the brevity agreeable. Furthering this is the bonus five or six missions that unlock later on, giving you another few hours of gameplay (all of which is available through co-op).

Replayability shows its wonderful, shiny face here too, with each mission allowing multiple approaches - even if the outcome is most always the same. This is in part due to the massive island, Skira (sounds like a monster movie), on which you play. The map and draw distance is impressive, upping ESIV: Oblivion in scale and quantity of foliage. Seriously, there is so much grass. So much. It's intense. Lying prone on the ground will often make you angry as the grass can and will get in your way, just like real life.


[So much grass!]

Speaking of lying down, the game does a great job of making you feel like people are trying to kill you and/or that you are being killed (if slowly, at times). Dirt splashes the screen when wild bullets smack into the ground next to your face, bullets sound appropriately lethal as they smash into the tree you're hiding behind, and the rattling and shaking when artillery hits near you is fittingly jarring. Suffice to say, the game can feel intense at times, delivering for once on giving you a legitimate feeling of the tension found on the battlefield.

However, the game has some obvious, glaring faults. Of the few technical problems I've run into, the most upsetting is that there are times when bullets simply won't do any damage. After seeing my blood crop up on my screen twice in a row with no consequence, even I was disappointed I wasn't dead. Similarly, the game alerts you to a proper hit with a small animation using your cross hair. White means wounded, red means they're dead. After seeing the same white animation literally eight times after firing on a man on the ground, I gave up in frustration. So did the rest of my team, who was also repeatedly puncturing the poor guy.

Gameplay faults reside in what are just poor choices: you can't move your head while you drive, it takes about a second for it to register driver movements, the command wheel is awkward and clunky on PC (likely to get you killed, more than anything), and for a game about realism I am incredibly annoyed that they follow the Half Life mentality of "your lower body not being at all visible = no problem."


[These things drive like poop]

The only other issue of note is the lack of (as of this writing) dedicated servers for the multiplayer, leaving most matches (particularly international servers) very, very laggy. Typical ping starts at 180 and seems to only multiply by 2 from there. Even so, game types (only two: Annihilation [Team Deathmatch] and Infiltration [Assault / Search and Destroy] ) are well done enough to be fun and the gameplay makes it feel different than most deathmatches you've engaged in before. Rumor has it that more modes will be available later on. This would be more forgivable if there were more than four maps, two per gametype, out of the box.

Quite frankly, what the f***? This dearth of content is unacceptable for a game that many have waited years for, and it just seems really cheap overall. The maps that are provided (and the geometry of the game in general) are well done however, if admittedly uninspired. That is to say that the one game that has legitimate reason to use the gritty brown-brown-gray color palette is the first I'm kind of disappointed is using it. That's because it doesn't represent real life very well, which is more than just dark, squint inducing colors.

But, all told, the game is fun. Difficulty obviously may discourage some players, but the game has made certain concessions so that fun can be the primary objective: a medic can remove all your wounds with the world's most amazing syringe, (on normal difficulty) enemies appear on your compass so you know their general direction, and you can stop yourself from bleeding out no matter where you're shot... somehow.

So, basically, it's good. OF:DR provides a fresh experience for those who want a brief realistic interlude before they jump back into the bullet sponge world of Call of Duty and it gives those who just want to really get a feel for a (fairly) accurate representation of real world combat. It has it's problems, but most of them aren't something that can't be patched later. In the mean time, none of them are deal breakers, just confusing as to how they managed to make it into what is an otherwise polished and solid game.

FOR THOSE IN NEED OF A GENERIC RATING SCALE: 7.9

[size=9]Having beaten Dead Space over the course of five months I can't say that I went at any speed that was particularly fast. But! I enjoyed the hell out of it. Not one moment in the game ever seemed dull or out of place and despite the constant criticism for mundane tasks, I actually liked doing something in a video-game that actually made sense.

See that computer console covered in a wonderfully disgusting organic growth? Well, that lovingly rendered yuck has managed to break something inside. Go fix it. You're an engineer. THAT TOTALLY MAKES SENSE.
It's refreshing to lose the blue colored key card and just act like things are normal and fit within the context of reality as opposed to the surreal security systems of game development.

And that's what makes Dead Space such an amazing game, to me at the least. Everything is so thoroughly grounded in context and the world it's created that it actually breathes and doesn't lose itself to cliche' conclusions about what you're supposed to do. Wandering the darkened halls of the U.S.G. Ishimura has legitimate creepiness because it feels like what you would do if you were there. You would look for that piece of whatever you needed. You would be alone and you wouldn't have amazing guns or training. You would just use what you knew and hope for the best.

The scares found in the game manage to mean something because main character Isaac feels real and so does the tension. Obviously, there is something to be said about the viability of a sentient virus that manages to create a massive hive mind within a planet due to some reverse-engineered artifact but the rest of the game is so well realized that it doesn't feel as hokey as it sound on paper.

EA Redwood (now Visceral Games) was so thorough in their creation process that the solid, in depth backstories and audio logs littered throughout the world feel professional in their "fakeness." A science article found late in the game could be passed off in real life to anyone who didn't listen closely, without question.

Of course, the final touch are the games graphics, which are also designed to immerse you in a world that has further streamlined our current technology. Menus and the HUD itself are holograms coming from either panels in the world or your own characters suit, taking Apple's touch-screen mentality even further and coming off as totally possible in the process. Even more important to moving the immersion process along is the dismemberment factor present in the game, which is to say the entire point of the combat.

Pretty much every encounter involves some sort of bloody "how much of you can I take off in one go" fiesta, which is actually more fun then it sounds since the varied enemy types and overall fucked up nature of things make each fight interesting and alluringly intense. Each shot is neatly followed by a particle effect of some sort, be it a spark or explosion or the ever popular [color=darkred]blood spray[/color]. More often then not (with good aim) a limb will spin off into the air and land spurting on one unclean surface or another. If you're in zero-g, it'll careen through the air, probably spinning, jetting out that mortal spray into open space. Yet again, the consistency of action and consequence with technology and monsters that actually make sense (again, except perhaps for that massive, titanic Hive Mind . . .) give this game horror with a purpose.

It has it's Doom 3 monster closet scares, but it also has creepiness that just gets under your skin. What I'm saying is, at $30 brand new or the stupid, stupid price of $27 for used at your local GameStop, it is more than worth the purchase. Add in unlockable content for beating the thing and you have a game that perfectly blends new and old school conventions while making a name for itself in it's own right.

Highly recommended.

The no nonsense brutality also helps.
Can't dislike a game that makes the players death a spectacle in itself.[/size]