The craft behind the Necromorphs makes it very difficult for me to criticise them for being garish. Dead Space excels at making you fear these things, even when they're three limbs down on you. To then do that when they've got one leg, one arm, no arms, that takes real talent. Anybody can draw a monster, but to make that monster move in a way that makes your flesh creep, in that twitchy, unpredictable way the Necromorphs do, is another matter. The problem with this is they're also exceptionally designed, particularly when it comes to animation. It's as if the developers watched John Carpenter's The Thing and thought it was all about the cool animatronics, rather than the tension of not knowing who to trust. When you CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS, as instructed by a bloody scrawl near the game's commencement, fountains of blood spew from the stump, and worm-like parasites writhe in the exposed flesh. There's a part of me that feels guilty about liking the Necromorphs, because they are enormously obnoxious. Because no matter how hard you try, you cannot ignore the Necromorphs. So now before I can write about the space bits of Dead Space, I have to write about the dead bits of Dead Space. The moment Dead Space dropped the NecroMic I panicked, racing blindly through the corridors, fingers stabbing at the wrong keys, swearing with increasing volume as I tried to get the goddamn elevator doors to shut. I'd prepared myself mentally for it as well, playing the scene over in my head as the game downloaded. I wish I could tell you that I was stalwart in the face of danger, hardened by my years playing horror games in the name of games journalism. I arrived at the first jump-scare, the one where Isaac is separated from his crewmates in the docking bay as Necromorphs start falling from the ceiling like coconuts on the galaxy's worst tropical island.
But then I played Dead Space, which I haven't done in about five years. It sucks the air out of Isaac's lungs, and forces us to fight in environments where even simple things like the concept of 'Up' become entirely redundant." Imagine if all gaming tutorials were written on the walls in blood. Throughout its length, Dead Space constantly reminds us the USG Ishimura is a tiny lifeboat spinning in a vast, black vacuum. I was going to write something cool and arch and critical like "the true horror of Dead Space lies not in the snarling, gibbering Necromorphs that attempt to rip and tear the flesh from Isaac Clarke's body, but in how the game imagines the inky void of space as a direct physical threat. My initial plan for this article was to write about the space bits of Dead Space, also known as everyone's favourite bits of Dead Space.
This article was first published in February this year. Editor's note: In light of EA closing Visceral Games, we thought it would be a good time to remember the game and series the studio is known best for: Dead Space.
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