Introduction:
For those of you who didn’t have enough horror over the Halloween weekend, I recommend checking out a great game which just turned seven years old, Dead Space. I decided that Your Mid-week Mission series, which is now two months old, is long overdue for something besides a 2-D, pixel art, indie PC game (as much as I obviously enjoy those). So I’m getting about as far from that as possible with this article about a AAA action horror third-person shooter.
In particular, this article will explore what makes Dead Space succeed as a horror game, which is a genre with a disproportionate number of failures. I intend to encourage any fans of the horror or third-person shooter genres to play the first part of the Dead Space trilogy as soon as possible, so let’s get to why.
AAA Horror that Works:
![[Game: Elden Ring, FromSoftware, 2022] Tarnishing: A Thorough Critique Detailing the Few Mechanical Flaws of FromSoft’s Elden Ring](https://i0.wp.com/thegemsbok.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Elden-Ring-screenshot-with-draconic-tree-sentinel.png?fit=722%2C406&ssl=1&resize=200%2C200)
![[Game: Death's Door, Acid Nerve, 2021] Death's Back Door: The Pros and Cons of Acid Nerve’s Crow-centric Reaper Simulator Death’s Door](https://i0.wp.com/thegemsbok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Deaths-Door-screenshot-with-bomb-spell-in-mushroom-dungeon.png?fit=722%2C406&ssl=1&resize=200%2C200)
![[Work: The Stranger, Albert Camus, 1942] Smiling While Despised: The Ending of Albert Camus' The Stranger and the Beginning of Authenticity](https://i0.wp.com/thegemsbok.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/The-Stranger-book-cover.png?fit=262%2C400&ssl=1&resize=200%2C200)
![[Work: The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker, 1973] The Denial of Life: A Critique of Pessimism, Pathologization, and Structuralism in Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death](https://i0.wp.com/thegemsbok.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Ernest-Becker-Sketch-by-M.R.P.-Presentable-1.jpg?fit=254%2C415&ssl=1&resize=200%2C200)