The first Dead Space turned 10 years old last month. It took me a month to get through the first two hours when I first played it. Every time I jumped back in and clumped down one of the USG Ishimura s dark corridors, a monster would pop out of the vents and I d jump up, smash the pause button and find an excuse to do anything else but play it. Many fans loved that sense of dread, but for some players it was simply too stressful.

All our data showed the number one reason people bought Dead Space was that it was scary, says Ian Milham, who was developer Visceral Games art director at the time. And the number one reason people didn t buy Dead Space was that it was scary.

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Occasionally while surfing the interwebs, you’ll stumble upon a Cool Thing from a few years back that you absolutely missed in the moment, but is both fascinating and painfully applicable now. I failed to notice that this post I love is from 2014, so while some of the examples are slightly dated, playing the associated game is still a frustrating experiment in awareness.

So let’s play Male Protagonist Bingo.

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Ah, Dead Space. A few flaws aside, Visceral’s grand tribute to sci-fi horror tropes was a rock solid little game that, nearly a decade later still holds up very well, especially in terms of visuals. Two parts Resident Evil 4, one part System Shock and with a twist of Event Horizon to taste, it’s a stern blend that still has what it takes to mix it up and leave players feeling a little shaken.

As part of their continuing On The House range, EA are giving away the first in the series completely free, so long as you buy it via their own storefront, Origin. Once you’ve tagged the game, it’s yours to keep forever, and it should be available for the next month or so if you’re not feeling too quick on the draw. Still, best to click that button sooner rather than later.

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EA have just announced that they’ll be “ramping down and closing” Visceral, the studio behind the Dead Space trilogy. Visceral have been working on an untitled Star Wars project, described as an “action-adventure”, and Amy Hennig, formerly of Naughty Dog and Crystal Dynamics, moved to the studio in 2014 to work on that project as senior creative director. EA’s statement regarding Visceral’s closure suggests that they’re unhappy with the status of that game and they plan to “pivot the design” to fit “fundamental shifts in the marketplace”. Full statement and thoughts below.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Nostalgia is supposed to be about the things of our early years, but recently I’ve been feeling nostalgic about games released much more recently than my usual rose-tinted diet of Ultima and Daggerfall. I’ve only gone and started missing Dead Space like it was a childhood friend. … [visit site to read more]

Toilets. Great, aren’t they?

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Oh boy, am I conflicted. Fallout 4 s main plotline requires that I do this thing> and as far as things> go, it s a pretty major thing> and a major thing> that you d expect someone with the maternal instinct of my character Halle to crack on with straight away. The trouble is, rather than doing this major thing>, for at least an hour now, she, and when I say she , I mean I , have been poking around Sanctuary, scrapping anything that glows yellow so I can salvage enough materials to build a house big enough for me and my Minutemen companions. I had largely avoided Bethesda s drip-feed of Fallout 4 pre-publicity but when I somehow found out that the game had settlement building, I think I might have involuntarily passed a little wind in joyous anticipation.

That’s because I ve felt a similar rosy inner glow while hanging around other hubs and houses in many other games I ve played. I think it s easy to underestimate the value of having a home base option, especially in open world games where there is a free-roaming element, but it’s a part of why I love certain games.

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Below you will find the 25 best horror games ever released on PC. To ensure the list was as accurate as possible, the compiler was locked in a dark cellar with a copy of every game in existence and a computer capable of running them all. Two weeks later, the following article was found written on the walls in blood (the postscript was recorded on an audiolog). The writer was nowhere to be seen.

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What is the most terrifying thing? I mean aside from spiders. And human nature. And that one episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Yep, that’s right: being forced to admit there is a legitimate> reason to open Origin, to dig it out of your PC’s sullen grave of a start menu and rack your brain to remember your password. But at least now you can pair terror with terror, as Dead Space will be completely free on Origin until May 8th. And that’s free to keep> – not just to play.

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Update: despite earlier declining to comment, EA have since told Eurogamer that the report is “patently false”, while Viceral’s UI lead has tweeted that “The reports of our death were greatly exaggerated.” Perhaps it would have been better to say that when a whole bunch of people asked the first time?>

It’s not pinin’! It’s passed on! This franchise is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! Its metabolic processes are now ‘istory! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible! It’s f-ckin’ snuffed it! This is an ex-franchise!

This post brought to you by a sense of humour from 1969. You know us Brits, always with our Monty Python gags. Perhaps it’s the only way I know how to pay tribute to Dead Space, the EA action series which has reportedly uh, taken a holiday in the wake of lacklustre sales for the recent third game. (more…)