It’s dark, steamy, scary and filled with wildly careening lights. There are strange noises, blood smears on the wall, and whenever you do find someone – there’s no way you can call them a “survivor.” Abominations, corpses festooned with fangs, claws, and elongated limbs lurch then leap toward you. You fear that this IS the crew that survived. You’re alone but video and audio recorders tell you the story of what happened. God get mentions now and then. You hit pause, yep, you’re playing DOOM 3.

Deep Space IS Doom 3… only much, much better. I expected something more like Resident Evil IV, and I got that with the aiming system and the slower walking/shooting pace. The action is satisfying, the scares in this game are genuine (even if they’re mostly reduced to Doom 3 style “Boo! Here I am!”) and there’s an admirable creepiness.  I’m still only about 30% in and am hoping for a few less obvious twists to come but for now we have a servicable and completely predictable plot with very familiar action combat and survival horror gameplay.  Great stuff. Oh, and yes much has been made of the hit location system. These horrors are easier to beat, for some reason, by taking off their limbs. This is very bloody and adds a skill factor since the beasties are fast and tend to surround you. It’s a good gimmick but not worth buying the game for. The atmosphere however? Well worth it. Just try and pretend these brilliant designers didn’t spend this much time on something this good – but also this derivative.  I’m holding out for some surprises, but I’ll be content if this ends up being just a better and more polished Doom 3.  I like monster closets.

Oh and in this one? The flashlight is part of the gun!  Now that’s progress.

KEEP THE KIDS AWAY

These monsters are nightmares and they shriek and moan horribly. They also upped the gore – limbs bleed profusely, corpses are everywhere, red is a big part of the color palette and the monsters look like victims of the rack, after they’ve gotten up and taken their skin off.  Nasty scary stuff here.

Tags: Game Reviews