Dead Space iOS Review

The iPhone has never really been a destination of choice for many gamers of who were looking for a good scare from their games. If we were craving horror, most likely we'd have to resort to our home anchored consoles for satisfaction. Thankfully, the Dead Space iteration for idevices delivers in its promise for true horror gameplay in good old fashion Dead Space style.

You are codename: Vandal, yet another engineer who happened to be on another mining operation gone bad. Tricked by members who belong to "The Church," you accidentally unleash a horde of Necromorphs upon your ship.

Thankfully, all of your franchise favorite weapons are along for the ride, such as the plasma cutter and saw gun. Anyone who stands in your way will meet an untimely end as their body is dismembered in gory fashion.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game as gruesome as this on the iOS store to date, but when you’re playing a game like Dead Space, the sheer amount of blood was no surprise.

For fans of the franchise who have already played Dead Space 2, or for those who plan on playing the game in the future, Dead Space for the iDevices tells an unoriginal story that ties directly into the beginning of Dead Space 2 without spoiling any of the events that preceded the game in the first console installment.

And with the addition of some smooth gameplay controls and a few nifty HUD design ideas, such as the return of the health meter on Vandal’s back, little annoyances get in the way of you and your game.

The game’s virtual controls are by far one of the best performing mechanics for any shooter on the iOS store that make fighting back at your enemies or navigating the many corridors of the mining ship a breeze.

Movement is controlled by moving your finger around on the left side of the screen while the right side handles both shooting and aiming. The one complaint I have is the reload mechanic, which is done by tapping on your weapon while in aim mode. On many occasions, I had accidentally fired off a round or two of my weapon while trying to reload.

The auto-reload option surely helped, but when the action got too hectic, which happens a lot, I found the game taking too much time to reload, forcing me to resort back to manually doing the process myself.

As much fun as the game was however, the pacing of the game was a bit of a letdown. Sure, the story was great, for an iOS game, but before you are even halfway done with the game, a repetitive like nature begins to settle in.

By then, you pretty much already have all the weapons the game has to offer and since the game leans more towards the action side to keep the ball moving since it is a mobile game, Vandal’s numerous heroic fights against waves of Necromorphs get old.

Zero gravity does return in the mobile entry, but the encounters with the neat feature are too few and far between.

There is no doubting how good Dead Space looks though for the iOS, as it is yet another visual marvel for Apple’s handheld devices. When viewed on the lucrative retina display of the iPhone or most recent iPad, environments are crisp and characters models are stunning; making the game effectively one of the most gorgeous looking games to date across the idevices.

Closing Comments

Dead Space for the iOS is a stunning entry for Electronic Arts that further pushes the boundary for what I thought possible for gaming experiences on the go with just my phone or tablet. Though the story may be short –roughly 3 hours long—the game offers a few extra enjoyable game modes to play with once you have completed the game. And the pricy options in the cash shop will keep you hooked on unlocking them.

Score: 9/10

Replay Value: High