It’s only two and a half years old, yet EA’s Dead Space survival horror franchise has already made the transition to Wii, DLC, DVD, Books and now iPad.
By Leo Stiles
I had already written this one off in my head when I first sat down to play it; after all, how the hell were they going to reproduce one of the finest console games on the iPad without serious compromises?
Now that I’ve played through every action packed minute of it, I realise that that EA are starting to get the hang of things on the platform and have delivered in Dead Space one of the must-have mobile games of 2011.
The game is no rehash of previous entries in the series and the carnage plays out against an original story that fills in some of the gaps in the series continuity. The iPad game puts you in the familiar engineer suit of an entirely new character called Vandal.
Silly name aside, the central character this time is less a heroic engineer and more of a religious saboteur and the first mission the game charges you with crippling vital systems in the Sprawl; the same massive space station that Isaac Clarke fights his way through in Dead Space 2.
Dead Space‘s visuals are of at least near-Gamecube quality
Naturally it’s not long before the whole station is overrun with bloodthirsty Necromorphs and Vandal has just one objective: get out alive. From the moment you fire it up, the game convinces you that that this is triple-A stuff with quite a faithful recreation of the Dead Space look and a soundtrack that is every bit as good as its console bound cousins. Environments do look a bit spartan with not much in the way of incidental props but they are also solid and detailed and the animation of both Vandal and the Necromorphs sophisticated enough to impress.
Controls are of the familiar gesture control that you will have used in countless other games but EA have cleverly allowed you to touch anywhere on the screen to access them and this irons out any of the uncomfortable holding positions that can ruin most attempts at complex controls on the iPad. The controls can also be tweaked for sensitivity; adding further accessibility to the gameplay.
Faithful recreation
Dead Space for iPad runs a little bit slower than the other versions and this is the only real compromise the game makes for the sake of the conversion. Enemies are a bit slower and your health bar is a bit more forgiving; something that ensures that deaths are the result in your error rather than a result of poor controls or pace.
That said, the game is still a tense affair as the enemies come thick and fast from every corner and it continues the Dead Space tradition of springing enemies on top of you in seemingly safe locations.
Fights as you might expect are frantic and brutal as you quickly learn that dismembering the Necromorphs is a far quicker way of dealing with them than just shooting them indiscriminately .The signature weapons make the transition intact too, complete with their secondary modes which can be access with a quick shake of the iPad while stasis freeze power is vital to surviving encounters with larger clusters of enemies.
I really have to hand it to EA; they haven’t sullied their flagship survival horror series yet and the iPad version is no different. The game is exciting, visually superb, offers players a unique story and most importantly it plays just like you hope is does.
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