In Dead Space Everyone Can Hear You Scream

                The only sound is the clank of my character’s boots, as I guide Isaac Clarke down a dimly lit hallway of the USG Ishimura in painfully slow fashion.  My goal is a door at the end of the hallway, but the hallway is a horrifying sight.  I cannot look anywhere around me without finding blood.  Bloody hand prints and smears line all surfaces of the hallway, as though a mutilated corpse was dragged the length of the corridor.  The trail of blood continues past the door at the hallway’s end.  What kind of creature could have caused such agony? I hope it is not on the other side of the door.  As Isaac enters the door with gun raised, I force him to plod forward.  A body drops from the ceiling and the music features frantic striking of string instruments.  I let out a tiny scream in the darkness of my bedroom.  My dog gives me a quizzical look as I survey my bedroom to make sure nothing is in the room or witnessing my pitiful state.  My embarrassment forces me to finish playing for the night.  The game has beaten me again.

If you follow a trail of blood, you're going the right way.

                This is just a brief scene from the 2008 survival horror game called “Dead Space.”  In recent posts I talked about how atmosphere and sound design in a game can make or break the experience, “Dead Space” has stellar sound design to spare.  It might be the most atmospheric game I have ever experienced in my entire life, and it is most definitely one of the scariest games I have played in recent memory.  Every moment of this game is a tension filled journey of perfection.

Approaching the USG Ishimura.

                The game opens up with Isaac and his crew approaching a ship called the USG Ishimura.  The Ishimura is denoted as a “planetcracker” starship (so basically a gigantic mining facility).  In traditional horror fashion, the facility has sent out a distress signal to the Concordance Extraction Corporation during one of their mining operations on planet Aegis VII.  The CEC dispatches the USG Kellion to investigate the disturbance.  As Isaac and his crew approaches, the Ishimura is completely dark on the outside and radio contact is dead.  The guidance system of the Kellion manages to malfunction and the ship crashes into the docking bay of the mining facility.  Helplessly stranded, the crew has no choice but to seek help from whomever is on the Ishimura, but what they find is less than welcoming.

Isaac has the perfect view to watch his team die.

                It doesn’t take long for the body count to begin rising.  Within less than five minutes of being on the ship, Isaac watches as creatures drop in and kill all but two of the crew, as he accesses a security console in a different room.  The screams of his crew telling him to run spur Isaac down a hallway with one of the grotesque monsters chasing him.  After escaping into an elevator, Isaac is isolated on the giant spaceship and forced to fight on in order to discover what the hell happened to the crew of the Ishimura.

Adult finger painting?

                The game uses many clever ways of inducing fear in the player with the most prominent being the setting.  The Ishimura is a dimly lit space station with narrow, metal corridors (perfect for the loud, unsettling clanking sound of boots) and hundreds of ventilation shafts.  “This is Genson.  Everybody listen up!  They’re using the vents!  That’s how they’re getting around the ship! Stay away from the vents,” declares the first audio log I found in the game.  There are vents literally everywhere in these hallways.  I constantly heard scraping and shadows darting past the vents causing me to tread lightly and constantly check my back.  The setting is also amplified by the sound design.

I'm not sure if I can emphasize the amount of bloody death more.

That first audio log I found ended with the horrified death of the speaker as something attacked them all.  The audio logs gives you hints throughout the games but also give you bone chilling bits of voices dying during the recordings.  Add in the unnerving soundtrack that features constant grinding of string instruments and you have one of the most atmospheric sound designs that gaming has to offer.  “Dead Space” revels in building the tension with music and culminating in a monster popping out of a ventilation shaft to scare the living daylights out of you.  This method works every time.

This is the rattling sound in your vents!

I haven’t actually beaten “Dead Space” yet.  Every time I start playing the game, it seems to unsettle me too much.  The game reminds me greatly of “Aliens,” and as I child I made the poor decision of watching that movie.  Xenomorphs popping out of ventilation shafts right and left as Ripley runs for her life, the whole game just screams this kind of experience at me and that hits a little too close to home for me.  “Aliens” is the only movie that gave me nightmares growing up, and I would not be surprised if “Dead Space” also managed to do that.  This game does not feature just one moment of pants peeing; “Dead Space” features an incessant assault of undergarment wetting moments.  It is one of the best horror games in recent memory.  If you fancy peeing your pants late at night, give “Dead Space” a try.  You won’t be disappointed.

The video below is from the first part of "Dead Space."  Check it out and leave me a comment below letting me know if you think I'm a pansy.  Drop me a line on Twitter (@nevstorm5) if you like what you see on my site.  Drop me a line if you hate me; I'm not picky.  I just get lonely in the dark void of the internet.