14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts have just announced that the release date, on the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles, for their Dead Space title, is October 31. It is a bit unusual to present a release date in such advance, but the date itself is so well suited to the game, that EA probably thought it was a nice touch.
Executive producer Glen Schofield said that "Halloween is the perfect time for EA to deliver the fear and anxiety that will keep survival horror fans up playing all night". A better time than most, especially as it sits at the beginning of the shopping spree for games, that leads up to the Christmas bonanza.
Dead Space is billed by EA as being a survival horror, which is, in Glen Schofield's words, "about experiencing a terrifying, and deeply personal fiction". More than 5 000 years (no, I did not add more than the necessary number of 0's) into the future the player is cast as an engineer, named Isaac Clarke, alone in a shuttle heading for the vast depths of space where the mining ship Ishimura has gone missing. In classic space horror fashion, the ship, when found, is without its crew and apparently you have to find out the "why" and the "when". Weapons will be plentiful and enemies will range from mutated humans to deadly aliens.
Some would say that such an action oriented game is not in survival horror tradition of games like Silent Hill. But the developers said that staying alive is not only down to combat but also solving puzzles and intelligently navigating the environment. Also survival related is the gritty realism of the game. Most places on the Ishimura are in a vacuum, which makes exterior sounds disappear and creates a very dark atmosphere, while some areas will feature a lack of gravity. Further realism oriented enhancements are the lack of cutscenes and the way the story is told mostly through audio logs and some written material.
The game will be available for PS3, Xbox and the PC, although a PC release date has not been announced yet.