So Electronic Arts had this idea for a game. It's a kind of haunted house in space affair. It's a little bit Event Horizon, It's a little bit System Shock 2, it's a little bit Alien, and it's a little bit The Thing. Let's be honest: a ground breaking evolution in gaming it ain't.

But the space based shit-your-pants-em-up hasn't really been tapped into on current-gen consoles yet, so it still sounds pretty promising. And all the places it is obviously drawing inspiration from are getting me excited, a feeling clearly shared by the publisher.

In fact, Electronic Arts is going overboard in its effort to build hype for Dead Space. Alongside the planned comic book, Dead Space is set to get its own prequel animated movie, developed by Starz Media. It will set the scene for the mining spaceship, USG Ishimura, to pull up the ubiquitous 'artefact' harbouring the soon-to-be-awoken-hideous-alien-presence and for the shit to hit the fan royally.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of hype building, of course. But it's hard not to be cynical where EA is concerned and if it goes too far it often cheapens the experience. Even ardent Halo players must have felt a little ashamed of themselves when they saw Master Chief adorning fizzy drinks and bags of chips.

Adding to that, it's only a very select group of games that manage to get everything perfect on their first outing. Many more prove themselves as adequate but set the stage for a far more exciting sequel. I'd by far rather see what the game has to offer by itself, rather than being bowled over by a barrage of marketing telling me to buy it.

In fact, this makes me think of perhaps the most heavily marketed game of the past Xmas period... Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Yes - we all know how that turned out, don't we?

But on the other hand, the last, and in fact only time I've actually been interested enough to read some pre-release literature was the Mass Effect novel. It wasn't a masterpiece (surprise, surprise) but it span a good yarn and set the scene neatly. Maybe there's still hope for Dead Space yet.

Source
Reuters

Related posts
Halloween launch for EA's Dead Space
EA reveals Dead Space - because there's never enough survival horror out there

Came straight to this page? Visit www.pspsps.tv for all the latest news.