I've had Dead Space in my backlog for a couple weeks now but just haven't found time to play it between all the other big games that have come out. Well, I finally found some free hours to play through it once and I have to say, I was really pleasantly surprised by how good it was. I'm not going to spoil anything, but the atmosphere and environment were both done exceptionally well. This game felt more like Alien than any Alien game ever has. The weapons were varied, and more importantly, an absolute blast to use. You don't ever get bored of chopping the limbs off of things, even after doing it for 12 straight chapters.

The zero gravity sections are phenomenal. You really feel like you're in a three-dimensional space and some of these areas almost have a puzzle element to them where you're jumping off walls and flipping the ceiling and floor around to advance to where you need to go.

The graphics are beautiful and quite detailed. Nearly every room is littered with bodies, viscera, and graffiti. Lights flicker on and off eerily.The ship itself is very convincing, with little touches that really make what happened there hit home.

Sound design is equally strong — voice acting is good, the aliens sound great, and the effects are very well done. There are lots of rooms where there are clearly major mechanical problems happening, and behind the loud moans and cranks of the machinery, you can hear movement and scuttling in the ceilings or walls that make you feel like you're about to be ambushed at any moment. Music, on the other hand, is almost unnoticeable, but that might be to its advantage. A poweful soundtrack would have probably overwhelmed the effects work.

Strangely, though, my absolute favourite thing about this game is the menu system. I strongly suspect a lot of other games are going to filch the UI (or more accurately, the lack of one) from Dead Space to incorporate it into future titles. You do not have a HUD, so all of your vitals and ammo information are visually represented on your suit or weapon. Audio and video clips (either from logs you find, or from other people on the ship contacting you) play on a little screen that hovers in front of you in 3D space. If you turn your camera all the way around so it's facing your character, the image will shift right along with it so it appears as if you're looking at the back side of it. Your inventory is accessed the same way — in real-time from a little screen that floats in front of your character. It sounds like a simple thing, but the way information is presented to you is so much more organic than it is in any game I can remember.

On the negative side, the game has next to no replay value. On completion, you unlock a new rig (which is what they refer to your character's suit as) and the Impossible difficulty option, and there are achievements that can only be picked up during multiple playthroughs, but I still felt absolutely no compulsion to go through it all again.

I will also say that—despite the marketing—this game is not very frightening. There are a number of moments that are certainly designed to startle you, but the bulk of Dead Space is action and not horror. Creatures will leap at you, or groups of enemies will sprint towards you, leaping off walls and ceilings, but your weapons are so effective at dismembering them that the 'survival horror' element is almost absent. The scariest moments tend to be when you're outside the ship in the vacuum of space — your sound becomes muted to the point where you can pretty much only hear your character breathing and your movements are slowed severely, so creatures can and will come up behind you, attacking before you even realize they're there. However, even these moments are not particularly scary. You're momentarily startled, but then you just turn around and slice off the creatures legs, leaving it to attempt to drag itself towards you on its spindly, pathetic arms.

Still, Dead Space is one of my favourite games of the year. I highly recommend a rent, at least, but it's certainly worth $30 if that Black Friday Target ad turns out to be true.