Bitmob_vb_ Bitmob is now a part of VentureBeat
Separator

Dead Space is the perfect template for a modern survival-horror game

Default_picture
Monday, August 27, 2012
EDITOR'S NOTEfrom Sam Barsanti

I really enjoyed the first two Dead Space games, but I'm fairly concerned about the direction the next one seems to be taking. I like action stuff as much as the next guy, but that's not why I like Dead Space....Actually, I doubt that's why anybody likes Dead Space.

Dead Space

When I sat down to write this article, I intended to write a list of things that would make a perfect survival-horror game. It only took me about half of it to realize that I kept bringing up Dead Space over and over again. Why try to create a template for future survival-horror games when I already have the perfect example right in front of me?

Older games in the genre (mostly those on the original PlayStation) used what are referred to as “tank controls,” meaning that pushing left and right rotates your character on the spot, and only by pushing up can you move forward. This often meant getting stuck on corners or furniture and made it hard to get away quickly.

Dead Space opted to go with a control scheme similar to Resident Evil 4, but it made some smart changes like allowing you to shoot and move at the same time. This makes everything feel much tighter and responsive. Unlike early survival-horror games where I fear the controls more than the enemies, Dead Space makes me feel like my deaths are my own fault.

 

It seems like one of the reasons these games offer such poor controls is because they have such poorly designed enemies. This artificially keeps the tension high, but in a way that is more frustrating than fun. The developers at Visceral Games were smart enough to not only fix the controls, but to also make the enemies more frightening.

Speaking of, the Necromorphs are some of my favorite video game monsters of all time. They are quick as a cat, very hard to kill without proper aim, and extremely deadly if they get to you. Their design is appropriately disgusting as well, with flesh tumors, mouths that open much too wide for comfort, and even long proboscises that bury into their victims. Truly terrifying.

Another very divisive concept in the games of this genre is inventory management. Having to juggle ammo, first-aid sprays, and key items makes players think hard about using resources, but it can get really annoying when you have to backtrack for a single key or a puzzle piece.

Dead Space simplifies this with its lack of any keys or puzzle objects in the inventory. This leaves you free to use your space for important things like ammo and health. It cuts down the item management to the truly important things but still manages to maintain the balancing act of having to drop precious ammo for health or vice versa.  As the game progresses, you get more inventory spaces and it becomes less of a problem, but I still feel this is how future survival-horror games should approach it.

The absolute most important thing in a survival-horror game, without any doubt in my mind, is the atmosphere. This is where Dead Space truly shines. Brilliant lighting effects, clever jump scares (or fake jump scares), and incredibly detailed and massive environments make the Ishimura (the space ship the game takes place on) a surprisingly creepy place to traverse. 

Also worth mentioning is the fantastic sound design. Players have no choice but to listen to the hissing pipes and buzzing engines, the chilling Necromorph growls and screams, the crunch and snap of enemy limbs as you stomp them to death, and the protagonist’s screams and groans as he gets attacked. My favorite is when you are out in a vacuum and you can only hear his breathing and nothing else. Top to bottom, the sound design is impeccably done.

These two things together make up so much of what I like about Dead Space. It brought back memories of walking down that hallway in the police station in Resident Evil 2 and practically crapping myself when the crows break through the windows. I can’t believe that RE2 ever affected me that way when I look at it now, but I feel that Dead Space will always impress me with its atmosphere, no matter how far we go with video games.

It is this enjoyment of the first two Dead Space games that makes me very anxious about the third. EA seems to be pushing for an action focus -- which is certainly something the games already had -- but I hope it doesn’t get in the way of what made those first two games great. 

Even if EA manages to completely ruin Dead Space 3, at least we have the original as the perfect template for what makes a modern survival-horror game. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for one of my favorite genres if others follow its example.

 
Tags: Dead Space 2, Dead Space, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 2, Dead Space 3
Problem? Report this post
BITMOB'S SPONSOR
Adsense-placeholder
Related Stories
 
Comments (8)
Add a new comment
Default_picture
Brandon Guerrie
August 25, 2012

I actually liked the tank controls and different perspectives of the camera. You can hear the enemy creeping towards you, and you knew it was there but you couldn’t see it.

But I do agree with everything else you’ve written. The survival horror genre is scarce, and for the record, I haven’t been impressed with the Silent Hill series since the fourth installment. Dead Space has brought back memories and has done it right.

Default_picture
Justin Davis
August 25, 2012

I really liked tank controls back then too but recent playing of Resident Evil 1 and 2 made me realize just how clumsy it can be.  Especially in the early days before they added the quick-180.

Dcswirlonly_bigger
Daniel Sims
August 27, 2012

To be honest, while Dead Space is mechancially almost perfect, for some reason in my experience it still fails as a horror game. I never found either of the games to be scary, and that's what counts.

When I played the first game I was constantly impressed at the mechanical base Visceral had. The game did a lot of things I'd wanted to see games attempt for a while in a stride towards more complete immersion: all narrative takes place in-game, the HUD is completely in-game, etc. Outside of that though, the atmosphere just had no effect on me at all, and I played it beginning ot end in the dark on a home theater system.

Looking back, the main problem I think was that the game was just way too easy. One big problem is how Visceral tries to artificially control the ammo economy. Because of my play style my inventory was always stocked with way too much ammo for one particular gun, at which point the "survival" element was gone. Later I played the first game again on hard mode and decided to handicap myself by avoiding combat as much as possible. The game still felt too easy a lot of the time and I still ran into the problem of always having TOO MUCH ammo.

I decided to start Dead Space 2 on "Survivalist" - the game's "hard" mode, right off the bat, and while it was much more difficult at times, it came off as frustrating the 15th time I had to retry a section. What felt odd to me was that the ammo economy still felt artificial, but for the opposite reason. I always found myself having to make the most of every bullet which is good for a "survival" horror game, but for some reaosn I always ended up finding just one more clip as I ran out of ammo. It felt like the game was intentionally doing this which felt no better than DS1's overabundance of ammo. DS2 also seemed to focus way more on combat, even though it did do a slightly better job than the first game in the atmosphere department.

But that's just my opinion of the games. I haven't even gotten to how I believe this article basically tries to compare two different kinds of game. Dead Space isn't a survival horror game - it's an action horror game. The following image should give you a good description of what that means: http://i.imgur.com/vOYKR.jpg

The previous Resident Evil games weren't action games at all, they were adventure games. Yes you had guns and some enemies, but combat was never the main objective - it was surviving, and the puzzles were a part of that. For that reason, I don't think it's too fair to compare those games to Dead Space since they have very different aims.

Dead Space - like its predecessor Resident Evil 4, tries to create the feeling of surviving against a horde of enemies. More traditional survival horror games try to create the feeling of survival against a hostile environment and scarce resources. In my experience the closest thing to that kind of traditional horror in a space setting is probably System Shock 2 - the direct predecessor to BioShock and some say Dead Space (there are rumors that DS was originally supposed to be System Shock 3).

While I think Dead Space does a most admirable job of emulating RE4 in an interesting setting, I still think RE4 is the more intense game despite its mechanics being technically outdated. The main reason is because its level design and set pieces feel more polished. Its ammo economy feels more natural, and overall it manages to feel very tense without feeling cheap. It's really the minutia that separate the two games in my mind.

From what I've seen of Dead Space 3, it's look like basically a third person shooter with some horror elements.

For something completely different, have you played Amnesia the Dark Descent?

Default_picture
Justin Davis
August 27, 2012

For me, a horror game isn't supposed to be scary; it needs to have that tense atmosphere.  Jump scares and scary music don't actually frighten me but they can be fun.  I think Dead Space certainly fits the genre in this way.

I can understand your concerns about the ammo.  It definitely isn't as scarce as early games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill.  Games today are designed to be as user-friendly as possible so I'm not sure if we'll ever see it at those levels again.

I hate defining video game genres.  There is so much blending of genres at this point that it is impossible to categorize them nowadays.  I still see Dead Space as the evolution of survival horror, changing to be more modern.

I have played Amnesia and enjoyed it immensely.  I wouldn't mind lumping that in the survival horror genre too, even though it is more of an adventure game with a spooky atmosphere. 

I felt that Amnesia's terror was a little too easy to "game", as once you know the rules the monsters follow, it becomes a much simpler game.  I have high hopes for the sequel.

Dcswirlonly_bigger
Daniel Sims
August 28, 2012

You described Amnesia as an adventure game with spooky atmosphere - that's basically what classic survival horror games were. Lots of the genres biggest fans admitted this.

The old Resident Evil and Silent Hill games were basically the same formula - adventure game mechanics put on top of horror tropes. RE4 and Dead Space just replaced the advetnure game mechanics with 3rd person shooter mechanics. Thats' why I call them "action horror" instead of survival horror. Those games are menat to evoke feelings of intense confrontation instead of psychological vulnerability.

Default_picture
Donald Hernandez
October 31, 2012

I agree with much of that list but I have to say that Metro 2033 and Condemned 1&2 don't belong on the action horror side. Condemned especially, since majority of that game leaves the player with scarce ammunition and weaponry forcing the player to use makeshift weapons rather than go Rambo with a boat load of guns n' ammo. Combat is oftentimes the only option but every fight is a tense struggle for survival. The game is dripping with tense and scary atmosphere and many of its greatest scares are psycholigical and primal. A'la the mannequins or the grizzly. You don't feel as badass as Leon in RE4, you feel as vulnerable as James in SH2. 

Metro 2033 isn't really action oriented nor does it or the novel its based on really focus heavily on the horror. Like the Romero zombie films the monsters and ghoulies take a backseat to a story centered around human nature and moral ambiguity. Metro more closely resembles a pure first person adventure game with mild horror elements than it does a full blown survival/action horror game. 

Default_picture
Nicholas Nepveu
August 29, 2012

@ Daniel Simms, you should try cranking the difficulty up and you will find Dead Space is MUCH more tense.  I think they are great examples of horror games, despite the fact on normal difficulty they do play like a shooter.  I reiterate though, you crank the difficulty up and they get much more tense.  Ammo is more scarce and enemies do a lot more damage.  

More importantly, the games create a very strong sense of place and despite the fact they take place in space, their environments feel more "at home" than most on earth games do.  Finally, Lurkers are creepy as shit.  Those little buggers make my skin crawl.  

Dcswirlonly_bigger
Daniel Sims
August 29, 2012

Like I said earlier, I played through Dead Space on hard and even then it didn't begin to become intense until I deliberately handicapped myself and decided to fight against the game's own rules. Perhaps I should have another go on the highest difficulty before Dead Space 3 comes out.

As for the atmosphere and sense of place, for some reason it just didn't hit me in either of the Dead Space games. I can objectively see what they did with the environments but I never really "felt" it. Maybe because you don't actually spend a lot of time exploring those environments, you mostly just run through them and shoot monsters.

Contrast this with System Shock 2 - a game that came out in 1999 (and is by some accounts Dead Space's direct predecessor). That's another game where you're trapped on a space ship, but you actually have to fully explore each deck, mastering each environment like a Metroid game, and fully investigating each room, cabinet, chest, etc.

This is going way off-subject, but I'm gonna describe one of the best moments I had with that game. There's a part relatively early on in SS2 where a computer you find is broken and you have to find a circuit board for it. Somewhere in the computer room you find an audio message mentioning the exact number circuit board you need and where you'll find it. When you get to that location there are several shelves full of circuit boards, and you can look at each one and check its number until you find the right one. Nothing highlights the correct one or directly points the player to it. You actually have to look through the whole room like a library - probably whle being chased by enemies because you ran out of ammo 10 minute ago. That was the point where the Vaun Braun in SS2 felt like a real, lived-in place to me. This was a game that came out 13 years ago and has graphics on-par with an N64 game - and probalby stll has more immersive environmetns than BioShock, Dead Space, etc.

You must log in to post a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.