Points of Comparison, Screaming all the Way

Oh, the horror! Xbox 360 owners have been blessed, and perhaps damned, with a double-bill creature feature this autumn. I refer of course to EA's Dead Space, released in October and the newly available zombie opus from Valve, Left 4 Dead. I've finally been able to come up for air from my daliance with Fable 2, Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2 to swing the spotlight onto our season of horror and disect Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. What it is about these games that makes us gamers tick? And why, given the crowded holiday season avalanche of games, should a horror-minded gamer give either of these titles a serious try?

Emotionally, I think both games strive for the same goal and they both succeed tremendously in their own approach. They are here to incite terror, to thrill, to suspend and to make you dread the thought of stepping around that next dark, unexplored corner. From a design and game play perspective, the styles taken by EA Redwood and Valve/Turtle Rock could not be more jarringly disparate.

Let's dismiss the obvious differences right off the bat. Dead Space is set in the future aboard an alien-infested starship. Left 4 Dead deposits the player in Generic America, in the near if unidentified future, battling a zombie menace whose origins are intentionally shrouded in ambiguity.

Dead Space, when you get right down to it, is EA's attempt at capturing that slice of the survival horror pie so long loarded over by Capcom and its storied Resident Evil franchise. Although it is a new IP, the game is also not shy about borrowing play mechanics, stylistic cues and story elements from both movies and games we've seen in the last decade and beyond. As a creative endeavour, Dead Space is probably as derivative as it gets. It takes the player on a rollercoaster ride through a haunted spaceship. But for me to reduce the experience into such simple terms is by no means a way of criticsm. More to the point: Dead Space is one hell of a haunted rollercoaster ride. Just don't expect a brave hurtle into the unexplored realms of game design theory.

There's no denying its derivative roots and the design-by-committee feel of the overall game play. You play as Isaac Clarke, a space mining engineer sent out with a small security detachment in response to loss of contact with a behemoth "planet cracking" mining ship called the Ishimura. Naturally, what started out as a routine tech support house call quickly devolves into a nightmare, as you discover the inhabitants of the Ishimura are largely dead and in their place are mysterious, parasitic creatures known as Necromorphs.

With this basic set up established, the game propels you forward on a desparate fight for survival as you fend off monsters and attempt to repair the Ishimura, which has since fallen into a miserable state of repair. The deteriorating ship proves to be convenient mission-generation tool. Your surviving cohorts have separated from your position but maintain radio contact, perfect for sending you on various errands into the ship's underbelly to repair this or that. It's woefully transparent and gamey, but it is really all the skeletal storytelling you need to send me into the terrifying darkness, plasma cutter in hand.

The best way I can express my liking of the game is to sum it up in one word: polish. If it doesn't sound disgusting for me to say, Dead Space oozes polish out of every pore and orifice it possesses. It's almost as if the developers fully embraced their derivative approach as a challenge to themsevles. Yes, we may be shamelessly borrowing odds and ends from so many other games that came before, but we're also going to show you, using these same ingredients, what the perfect recipe looks like. The graphics, though limited in artistic scope and colour palette, are striking and fit the mood perfectly. All the animations line up, the effects are wonderful and the various monsters are suitable grotesque.

The sound design plays an equally important role, layering provocative ambient sound effects with a stereotypical horror movie soundtrack to alarming effect. The crispness of the audio serves as a playing aid, warning you to potential dangers and scripted sequences as well as keeping you well on the edge of your seat as you open the next airlock, fearfully anticipating the unknown horrors beyond.

As well as Dead Space nails down these aesthetic necessities, I don't think they quite compare to what's been achieved with the play control and UI design. In my experience, survival horror games tend to work on the premise that you never feel completely in control of the situation, beginning with the very avatar that is under your command. The protagonists in these games are often just regular folk thrown into extraordinary circumstances. As such, controls lean towards the sluggish side, with slower movement, cumbersome fighting mechanics and even a limited field of view. Never have I felt like I was controlling Master Chief while playing an older Resident Evil game or Alone in the Dark.

In a sense, Isaac Clarke is not much different from his survival horror predecessors. He is simply a regular man in a desparate situation. The difference is, Isaac has some incredible tools at his disposal in the form of modified (and actual) weaponry and a powerful space mining suit not unlike the environment suit worn by Half-Life's Gordon Freeman. Playing Dead Space, I never felt like a useless, fragile whelp. Isaac can perform two amusing, if weak melee attacks. The camer controls are extremely tight and responsive, which makes aiming a breeze. And the weapons... oh the weapons, they sure do pack a punch. Yet despite these defenses, the game succeeds by still offering me a challenge and making me feel threateend for most of the journey. My enemies are vicious and legion. Ammunition for my varios armaments are also sparse, forcing me to place my shots carefully. This can be difficult when you have a trio of screaming mutants bearing down on you from different directions. Isaac's space suit has a handy stasis ability that freezes objects in place, allowing you more time to land those killing blows, but this power is also an expendable resource and sensitive to overuse.

And last, but certainly not least, I would be remiss if I didn't heap some praise onto the ingenious ways EA Redwood has handled the user interface in Dead Space. It really is a perfect storm in this case. There is no HUD in the game. Essential player information such as health, oxygen and statis energy levels are displayed on the back okf Isaac's space suit. Since you spend the entire game above and slightly behind his shoulder, this data is always in plain sight. Ammunition read-outs are simply displayed on the weapon you are currently wielding. The real crowining achievement with the UI, however, is the way menu-driven displays are handled. Nearly every type of map, menu or inventory display is presented as a holographic projection either from Isaac's suit or from a computer terminal (inexplicably, there are store kiosks stocked with weapons and medical supplies in every section of the Ishimura). This may not sound like such an amazing feat now. In action, this HUD-less presentation is slick, attractive, practical and just even a little bit sexy. Granted, not every game will be able to cop the same kind of tricks to achieve a HUD-free interface, but we now have a standard against which to base similar, future efforts.

Now I have gone on far too long about Dead Space and left no room for the new belle of the ball, Left 4 Dead. Join me in the next post as I breakdown all of that game's special qualities and provide a post-mortem on the impact of two stellar horror games in the span of a single month.