The opening gives you a pretty good feel for Dead Space straight away. I can see a few snobs turning their nose up at this, but I think EA should be congratulated on doing a brilliant job.

It’s still got enough depth to keep the more ardent gamer happy, but it never does so at the expense of the more casual crowd. Basically, Dead Space bends over backwards to give you a genuinely scary, suspense-packed and thoroughly enjoyable experience – and that’s for everyone, not just the hardcore few who can be bothered to put up with the huge difficulty spikes or frustration that are too often part and parcel of the survival horror game.

You can safely put this down to three things: atmosphere, slick game mechanics and the sort of polish that you wish all games would do their best to emulate. In fact, it’s easily the best in the genre since Resident Evil 4. Yet despite the fact that you can see so many elements stolen or borrowed, this is a fantastic survival horror game.

Without Doom 3, Resident Evil 4, System Shock and Half-Life 2, it’s hard to imagine a world with Dead Space in it. Without ”Alien”, ”The Thing” and ”Event Horizon” it would probably never have existed. A heady cocktail of sci-fi and horror games and movies, there’s barely a truly new idea to be found in it. Some games make you think that originality is over-rated. ”’Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC – PS3 version reviewed.”’

Oxm dead space review