Volkswagen Lover: Dead Space for iPad Review

Dead Space for iPad

If you're going to amputate horrible space aliens, you might as well feel like you're achieving something.

Since the launch of the App Store, there's been a gold rush for developers to get ports of console bestsellers to the marketplace, sometimes with mixed or lackluster results.

In the case of Dead Space for the iPad, they got it right the first time.

Set on the abandoned mining ship Ishimura, Dead Space puts you in the role of Issac Clarke, a lone engineer tasked with containing an alien outbreak at any cost. Following the conventions of the survival-horror genre, you begin poorly equipped for the task ahead of you, relying on mining equipment, upgrades, and tactics to battle a swarm of opponents that appear to have leapt out of the script of the early '80s version of The Thing, complete with tentacles, multiple heads, and mobile offspring. You can rest assured that whatever you run across will happily try to stab, stomp, or devour you.

And then they'll blog about it.

Electronic Arts took their time with Dead Space, and even as a version 1.0.1 product, the end result is just about perfect. Beautiful graphics meet amazing sound (hook in a pair of headphones for the full atmospheric heebie-jeebies), and for the second time ever (following Infinity Blade), the iPad port of a title looks as great and runs as fluidly as any console game on the market.

The British dental system, now available in space...

Dead Space succeeds in standing out from the rest of the survival-horror genre -- its excellent story pulls you in, while the writing actually allows for moments of levity. You don't begin with an amazing arsenal, so what you're able to cobble together out of drills, torches, saw blades, mines, a limited ammo supply, and so on will have to be used well, your only breaks coming in the form of upgrades you can purchase for your weapons and armor. A nifty time-suspension ray can dramatically slow a single enemy, though this is only temporary and you'll still have to use the best tactics available since the other enemies will be trying to take a chunk out of you.

Perhaps the best surprise of Dead Space is this: Despite its console roots, it feels like a natural fit on the iPad. The controls are sensitive, but you'll find yourself pretty much acclimated to them within 45 minutes. Movement and view are handled between your left and right thumbs, respectively, and it's easy to pick up items, tap the ammo counter to reload your weapon, use the pathfinding system to see where you need to go next, or do a quick 180 to fire at an enemy behind you. A quick tilt of the iPad transitions you over to a secondary-fire mode for your weapon -- and a smooth, consistent frame rate makes this all the better.

The bottom line. Between a great story, beautiful graphics, elegant controls, multiple save slots, two difficulty modes, and rock-solid performance under iOS 4.2.1, EA got it completely right. And in the iPad market, that's saying something.