Compare the following three scenarios. One is different:

Mario is running through the Mushroom Kingdom when he sees a Goomba heading straight for him. He leaps into the air and brings his full weight down on the Goomba's head, crushing it. Continuing on, Mario meets a Koopa Troopa. Mario jumps again, driving the Koopa into its shell before kicking it. The shell goes hurtling across the ground, smashes into a group of Goombas, and kills them. Continuing on, the shell ricochets off a pipe and bounces back at Mario. He tries to jump but is too slow; his shin grazes the shell. As soon as this happens, Mario freezes and leaps five feet into the air before falling offscreen.

Kratos uses his Blades of Chaos to climb up the back of a Cyclops, punching the metal implements through muscle and bone and splashing blood. After reaching the Cyclops' shoulders, Kratos leaps into the air and comes crashing down on his enemy's neck, plunging the blades through the back of the brute's head. Kratos leaps and stabs again, and the Cyclops crashes to the ground, clutching its ruined eye socket as blood and gore ooze between its fingers. Kratos leaps from the body and is attacked by a Satyr. After receiving a flurry of blows, Kratos falls on his stomach, does a fish-like flop, and dies.

Isaac Clarke takes two shots with his plasma cutter, amputating a Necromorph's arms at what serves as the creature's elbows. Isaac uses Kinesis to pick up one of the severed limbs and fling it at the monster; the arm blasts through its ribcage and out its back, pinning its former owner to the wall. Isaac sees another Necromorph and removes its legs. The crippled beast begins crawling towards Isaac, but he flattens its head into a viscous pudding. While Isaac is stomping on the dead monster's torso to retrieve the money and ammunition inside, he fails to notice a third beast coming up behind him. With a series of furious slashes, the Necromorph severs Isaac's arms, decapitates him, and then cuts his body in half at the waist.

The third example is different and not just for Isaac's apparent inability to jump without the aid of jets.

The Dead Space series is anomalous among video games for the simple facts that the player character and his enemies display equivalent capacities for horrendous violence, and the violence itself is inflicted in equal measure in both directions. This has multiple effects on the experience of playing the game. First, the ubiquity of shocking, realistic violence (which is, as we well know, Kryptonite for moms) introduces an element of dread and revulsion to every part of the game. It doesn't matter if you succeed or fail in Dead Space; whatever happens is going to be fucking gross.

I noticed another effect while playing Dead Space and its sequel. Once I had accepted that these games were going to be unpleasant no matter what I did, I also became more accepting of failure. While failure in a game is very rarely satisfying, what Dead Space accomplishes with its occasionally elaborate kill animations is to infuse failure with an element of (admittedly morbid) curiosity. When I'd gotten Isaac into a situation in which he was hopelessly outnumbered, low on ammo, and trapped, the first thought I had after, "Well, shit. I'm doing this over again" was "How are they going to kill him this time?" And the answer to that question was always interesting.

Resident Evil 4 is also worth mentioning; Leon Kennedy is likely to meet any of several gruesome deaths by chainsaw, lake monster, whippy-head thing, or blind guy. But also notice that, other than the occasional immolation or headsplosion, when Ganados die they usually just fall down and melt into goo.

That is certainly pretty gross, but there is a big difference between that and Leon screaming as the rusty teeth of a chainsaw bite into his clavicle. Resident Evil 4 takes a position opposite Mario and Kratos, heightening tension by promising players that the enemies will always dish it out more brutally then they can. This disparity is part of what makes Resident Evil 4 a survival horror game and Dead Space more of an action game. While vastly outnumbered and often faced with certain death, Isaac is just as violent as his enemies -- not because he's a bad person or enjoys brutal murder but because the necromorphs would do the same to him.

It's easy to write off the Dead Space games as repulsive splatter fiction -- especially since Visceral's ad campaign is based on exactly that. Yet, more impressively, the series presents a game experience in which the threat to the character exists in balance with the threat he poses to his enemies.

That final boss in Dead Space 2, though? Total bullshit.

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