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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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]

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.

… [visit site to read more]

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…)

Dead Space is famously an Alien-inspired game about lonely survival on a spaceship/station inhabited by otherworldly horrors. No more! Now it’s a buddy action move about welding helmeted Isaac grudgingly teaming up with bloodthirsty merc and victim of nominative predeterminism John Carver. They hate each other, but I’ve a funny feeling they might come to respect and even like each other before the tale is done.

As well as the co-op focus, Dead Space 3 is rather more planet-bound and a whole lot more icy than the previous, claustrophobic and somewhat brown entries in the series. As you can see below. Yes, I thought I’d surprise you all by posting a trailer during E3 week. I don’t play by the rules, me. (more…)

A week back Jim was kind enough to tell us Wot He Thought of Dead Space 2. Compelled by a lack of anything else to do this weekend, John played it too. And when two minds of the RPS hive share content, they must examine. Thus, we Verdict. Below is Jim and John’s discussion of the space stomping sequel, in which Jim defends while John complains.>

(more…)

A patch will soon be arriving for Dead Space 2 to make it more accessible to disabled players. It’s perhaps not something most of us think about, but for a number of players it’s essential that they be able to freely map controls if they’re going to be able to play. And Dead Space 2 currently doesn’t allow you to set moving forward to the mouse. This meant that gareth170 on the Overclockers forum couldn’t play the game. And of course he’s not the only one – his post, linked with an ongoing campaign by quadriplegic comic Chuck Bittner, and has seen a huge response of support for the matter, and ultimately the announcement from Visceral that they’ll be patching the game accordingly.

(more…)

Visceral’s space-action horror sequel Dead Space 2 has been out on PC for a few days now, so I thought it might be time to put a tentative toe into the vacuum, step out, and tell you wot I think.> (more…)

Time for me to be the badger of bad news. EA has confirmed to The Escapist that the Severed DLC for Dead Space 2, which adds 2 standalone chapters to the game that tell the story of whatever happened to Dead Space: Extraction stars Gabe Weller and Lexine Murdock, won’t be seeing a PC release. You can chalk that up with the Dead Space: Ignition standalone comic book/minigame release we never saw, which unlocks a new Hacker suit, a new weapon and some new audio logs in Dead Space 2. Thanks to reader Dominic “Domino” Tarason for the tipoff, who also informs us that the vsync mouselag that troubled some folk in the PC version of Dead Space 1 is still alive and kicking in Dead Space 2. That is all.