New survival horror games worth mentioning are few and far between in recent years, with the leading series’ of Resident Evil and Silent Hill taking up most of the genre’s fan base, but with Dead Space arrives a new standard by which survival horror games will be judged.

Dead Space is an awkward game to discuss openly without constantly spoiling things for those who are yet to buy it, but it is also too good a title to let pass our scrutiny so read on, at your own risk if you are one who hates spoilers – what I will say for those of you that fit that bill right now is if you like survival horror games, Dead Space is a must buy.

Everything that you will expect to see from Dead Space as a survival horror title is here in abundance, from playing as a character who is largely isolated throughout the game, to the weird mutated creatures that are intent on eating you alive at any given opportunity, but there are a number of touches which may seem small which when combined add so much to the game experience you will find yourself engrossed within that you can not help but see Dead Space as a new genre leading title.

The title sequence alone sets the scene for what is to come incredibly well. It’s a chilling scene to sit through and will instantly throw you deep into the game, and once you are in there will be no turning back as the sense of intrigue it instils within you is too strong to fight – you will simply feel you must go on, whatever may be coming your way.

The game begins when the Concordance Extraction Corporation, the establishment you find yourself working for as an engineer named Clarke, loses radio contact with it’s mining ship known as the USG Ishimura. You as Clarke recently received an encoded message from Nicole Brennan, a medic working on the USG Ishimura, which gives you an added incentive to pay the ship a visit when called upon to go and fix the radio connection between the ships. However, from the moment you step foot on the USG Ishimura, it is clear to see that something has gone dreadfully wrong and that this is not going to be a routine repair mission by any means.

Before you know where you are, you become separated from the rest of your engineering team by Necromorphs, hideous mutated monsters which were once the crew USG Ishimura. You must fight off these creatures at the outset using only a few transformed mining tools including a buzz saw and a plasma welding gun. When using these instruments to fend off the Necromorphs, you soon realise that inflicting horrific head trauma to these guys alone is not enough to kill them, and it is infact taking off their limbs that will eventually prove their downfall, and dismembering limbs from the Necromorphs is no easy task with the pace they attack at.

Depending on the class of Necromorph you are faced with, you will need to use a different strategy to take them down with different classes having different strengths and weaknesses, and with most having the ability to adapt when certain limbs are removed to attack in new ways – forcing you to remain alert at all times. The Necromorphs are also intelligent which makes them all the more terrifying, as they often attack in packs and can even use the ships air-vent system to find a way to get behind you without you realising until it’s too late. When a number of dead bodies lay around the floor they will even use this to their advantage, by laying down and pretending to be dead before pouncing up to attack you when you least expect it.

At no point in Dead Space will you feel safe, which when surrounded by crazy monsters and the occasional ‘survivor’ who has clearly gone completely out of their mind anyway, will begin to make you question your own sanity – you may even find yourself jumping out of your skin if you little sister walks in the front door just incase she is a Necromorph, or perhaps something even more sinister. Yes, there are more sinister creatures in Dead Space which I will not spoil at this stage, but they include mutated un-dead babies and some that you will not even see but they still do more than enough to scare the crap out of you.

Dead Space does have more to it than fighting through the enemies that cross your path. You are of course there to repair the ship, but your mission changes to finding a way off. You will feel alone throughout the game, but will be contacted frequently by colleagues who will help guide you to certain points of the ship which you need to reach to perform some kind of maintenance tasks as you attempt to correct the ship’s course but you will constantly need to be aware of what is around you.

You can not even escape your horrific environment when bringing up the in-game menu, as it projects in front of you as a hologram in real-time, leaving you open to attack while you do your fiddling. In fact these is a complete lack of displays as you play through the game, as the basic things such as health and ammunition levels are actually built into your body armor. Your health level is displayed by neon-glowing bars on your back, whilst checking your ammo is just a case of lifting your weapon to the ready position and reading the small display screen which appears on it.

There is so much horror to be experienced in Dead Space, far too much to explain in any detail without spoling it for you completely so we will reign it in for now. But Dead Space is an amazing game that you will play for hours – the only thing that will make you put it down is the fear of what might be just around the corner if you carry on playing.

The sickening gory visuals and nerve-wrecking soundtrack add so much to the game. The controls are easy enough to pickup, but mastering every skill you need to negotiate your way through the different classes of enemy that you will be faced with is more difficult, but incredibly satisfying when you manage to do it. Dead Space is quite simply a must buy game, even if you are someone who is usually put off by sci-fi settings – as Dead Space certainly does not feel sci-fi in any way, shape or form, it is a pure horror game like nothing before it.