Dead Space

Customer Ratings:
List Price: $19.99
Sale Price: $16.36
Today's Bonus: 18% Off

This is another game I had been planning to order, until I discovered that EA has yet again placed hidden software in the game that is incredibly difficult to uninstall (and has had issues with Vista 64, my OS). I am all for companies protecting their IP, but they should find better ways to do it, such as through Steam or other verification platforms that do not install hidden software that will slow down my computer for the rest of the time I own it.

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When EA keeps giving birth to such beautiful yet stillborn babies (killed by the decision to bundle another infamous SecuROM 7+/LIMITED ACTIVATIONS scheme), one can only ask: WHAT HAVE ITS EXECUTIVES BEEN SMOKING?!

MASS EFFECT can be found in clearance bins only months after its release; SPORE undersold miserably; EA's stock was hit hard because of these failures (way BEFORE the market dive) and yet, no one seems to be awake at the helm.

By insisting on slipping in such problematic and hated DRM scheme in DEAD SPACE (and RED ALERT 3 in a week) EA proves in how little respect it holds its own customers. Of course, calling "pirates and petulant children" the 3,100 Amazon reviewers that rated with 1-star the, similarly plagued, SPORE should have been an early hint.

SecuROM 7+ has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH FIGHTING PIRACY. Proof: both MASS EFFECT and SPORE (as with BIOSHOCK last year) were pirated ...hours within their release and if I can find this by simply Googling it, so can anyone.... I would bet dollars to donuts that EA is well aware of this yet keeps bundling SecuROM 7+ although it severely hurts its sales! Ever wonder why?

SecuROM has always been more about data-mining and reporting back to its occasional mothership than...fighting piracy. That is why even FREE demos contain SecuROM. And that is why completely uninstalling a game plagued with SecuROM will NOT remove SecuROM which will keep playing havoc with your system.

Lately, these security concerns have been accentuated as known Trojans seem to be exploiting SecuROM's backdoor access for their own purposes. In effect, installing a SecuROM-infected game in our computer will be placing your hardware and data at risk long after having uninstalled the game.

The game publishers that utilize SecuROM (such as EA) realize that they are not actually fighting piracy but use it as a pretext to bundle SecuROM with their product WITHOUT THE INFORMED CONSENT of their customers. A snooping-subroutine would require full disclosure whereas an "antipiracy" scheme can enjoy some more leeway.

Their near future plans (according to interviews given by their own executives) call for turning our computers into their proprietary consoles where we will be playing games for which we will be paying by the minute.

This nightmarish Pay-per-Play future apparently depends in them first consolidating their technological hold on as many computers as possible. After all, they see us as their cash-cows and they just started herding us in.

I, for one, REFUSE TO PAY FOR ANOTHER RENT-A-GAME.

Tell you what EA, you can keep your defective games and I will keep my hard-earned money. Let's see who has more to loose...

Buy Dead Space Now

Went to Best Buy to buy a new Wiimote yesterday and saw this game. I bought both.

Came back and install it on my Dell Dimension 9200, which is about as pre-built as you can get right? No vista driver problems for me, right?

WRONG. 2 + 2 = giraffes WRONG.

First I had to tell my antivirus and spyware software about a BILLION times to let secure-rom install.

Second I installed it and rebooted.

Third my dvd drive no longer works.

I am not sure what changed between Bioshock and this game cause I bought Bioshock and had no problem with secure-rom back then. I bought bioshock full price and don't regret a single cent because I ACTUALLY GOT TO PLAY BIOSHOCK. I finished bioshock without even cracking it (although I eventually did for a second play-through, cause who wants to find the dvd everytime right).

REVIEW UPDATED :

Funny thing. I never did install Dead Space again on my system. I just can't risk having SecureRom on it again since I actually do tons of work on it. So here is a review of a cracked version of the game, as opposed to the boxed copy which now sits next to other games I don't play anymore (poor HL2). I think EA should have an option when you insert the disk that lets you chose between installing their DRM version or downloading a cracked one. I am joking but I totally am not.

The game runs nicely on my Dell Dimension 9200, which ran Bioshock and COD4 on high just fine. If you compare it to PC exclusive titles you can tell the textures in this game is low quality. Nevertheless, it has a nice, polished look.

The controls are fine. I tried it with my xbox 360 control but just can't bring myself to play any kind of fps without keyboard/mouse. The game forces the mouse turn rate so your character can't magically turn 180 degrees in half a second. This didn't bother me, and I actually think it's a nice way to add some realism into the controls.

The overall experience is effective and addictive, if not for the reason the developer stated. They said it was mostly about psychological fear, with help from shadows and music. The game is actually mostly about enemies popping out or dropping down from ceilings. They said it's about strategic dismemberment. It's strategic the first 5 times, by then it's more like habitual dismemberment. Shoot limbs for maximum damage doesn't require more IQ than boom headshot.

Nevertheless, the game just flows very well, and lots of little things are put into it to keep you in the game world 99% of the time. It's obvious the developers put a lot of thought into the interface and controls. It's something new to the genre that future games can learn from.

So now having played the game (I plan on replaying it on Easy so I can just wack the enemies to death, and then on Hard to give myself more of a rush) I think it's worth the money. However, a big part of the reason I think that is cause I played a cracked copy put together by the pirates which installed the game and not secure rom. So I'm very conflicted about the whole thing. I definitely don't want any more secure rom nonsense but at the same time I'm happy I bought the game (to support more games like this on my PC). I guess I'll continue to buy games with secure rom if it's good enough like this one or bioshock, but I'll still be playing the vastly superior pirated copy instead. Everybody wins, I guess. At least everybody who is honest enough to buy the game, and then smart enough to download a cracked copy too :/

Read Best Reviews of Dead Space Here

Dead Space is definitely a good game and I don't regret buying it, but the port from Xbox 360/Playstation 3 was clearly a half-a**ed job. The mouse and keyboard are typically a much, much better interface than a game controller for shooters, in my opinion, but this game eliminates much of that because of how badly it was ported. The game treats the mouse as if it's an analog stick on a game console and as a result it's really wonky--the mouse sensitivity is very non-linear and it has a huge "dead zone" where precise, small mouse movements literally do not move the cursor (in other words, the game has dramatic, obnoxious non-adjustable mouse acceleration). In a game where precise aiming is quite important, this is a problem--I can't properly dismember Necromorphs if I can't precisely (and quickly!) aim my weapons.

Fortunately, you can mitigate this somewhat by turning Vsync off (and enabling Triple-Buffering through video card drivers manually to compensate for the horrible screen tearing that results from turning Vsync off) and turning the mouse sensitivity to max. It makes the game perfectly playable, but it never feels quite as good as most PC shooters do, which is rather disappointing. If you don't do this, it feels like you're aiming/looking in mud--it's really obnoxious. Also, EA has stated that they have NO INTENTION WHATSOEVER to patch the game to fix this, so if you're hoping that that could solve the problem, I wouldn't hold your breath (the game is also already two years old as of this review and its sequel is imminent).

The game looks and runs great otherwise. I'm playing it at 1920x1080 ("1080p") on Windows 7 with 3GB of RAM, an Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 (2.66GHz), and an EVGA nVidia Geforce 9600GT.

My first play through took about 16 hours to complete. I greatly prefer if a game has 30+ hours on a single play through, but pure shooters don't often hit that mark and the game makes some attempts to deliver replayability with the perks given for second play throughs. Granted, these would be more useful if the difficulty of the game could be increased on these other play throughs (or at any other time, like many games allow now) to compensate for your better gear, but at least it's something. In any case, the price right now is *really* low (I paid about US$10.50), so even if the game is short, it's not hard to feel like you're getting your money's worth here.

The story is pretty decent (if derivative) but the execution is what makes it more compelling--voice acting, atmospheres, etc. Given that the game has been out for a while, it seems unnecessary to go into depth on this part of the game, as there are a lot of good reviews out there that are basically platform-independent if you're curious about the game in general.

Finally, I opted for the Digital Download version of the game since it was the same price as the disc version and Amazon lets you re-download the game later if you want to. This worked perfectly and I'm quite impressed with the process. Kudos to Amazon for getting this system put together well.

Want Dead Space Discount?

If you like software as a service, go ahead and spend your hard-earned cash on a game with no resale value. Others have already told you how much fun it is to fight with SecuROM for control of your own system.

This is brutal, it's unfair, and I hope other companies don't follow in EA's footsteps.

Hopefully, Left4Dead will deliver a fun gore-fest without killing my computer in the process.