Saturday, March 2, 2013

The Art of Dead Space Review Ribbed For Your Pleasure

The Art of Dead Space

With the latest release from the series comes an all encompassing art book featuring the fiendishly disturbing undead of Dead Space. The Art of Dead Space should have been an extra for the collector's edition of Dead Space 3, but alas not even the dev kit edition had it. With this moderately priced collection of art and inside knowledge of the game from the people who made it you'll learn the ins-and outs of the sci-fi horror series of an everyday engineer dissecting monsters with improvised power tools.

The fresk ink smell and the stylish cover tell you to get ready to see some wonderful visuals. The book goes over every little detail from the series. How the universe was designed and conjured up. You get some glances at early designs. You also get some lengthy info on each piece of art be it plasma cutter to just doors in the game. It's more than just tidbits, it more like a cultural guide book to the Dead Space universe.

Ribbing is a common theme throughout the game series, on our main man Issac or  in the
 rest of the Dead Space 3 Universe. It gives a certain quality to his suit and the rest of the universe that defines it as Dead Space, something you'll see more defined in the book. Though what is never defined is Peng, the unknown advertisement shown throughout the series, not even this book contains the answer.

What it does contain is some very striking images of the Necromorphs, pages and explanation of why there so ugly, the process turning them into monsters more of a breaking apart the body than infecting it.  Here's a good line from the book on them "... we tried to make the bad guys as if someone had taken a human body and bent and broken it in the wrong way..." They are just pages of sheer gross out and disgust from the deformities of these things that used to be human. They sicken me, but in a way I can't look away and love to suddenly put in front of friends while they're eating.


You have plenty of weapons to kill the Necromorphs with as their lovingly shown with their own pages. It isn't all guns, but page after page of wonderful environment shots in space or in the depth of a nightmarish ship, or an unforgiving ice world. The book is so far in depth that there's even two pages devoted to the doors you have to sometimes unlock. Then there's the idea o the culture and businesses with in it that populate not only the mall seen in game 2, but you see throughout the series.

The quality of the pages matched with a well built universe will have any game designer who hasn't made it yet let out a shill cry, not from the Necromorphs messed up faces, but by how well-built the series is.

If you're into Dead Space or just love design this is much better than any other archival cheap in game images or any pictures you might find online, look how they engineered this universe in depth.

Favorite section-Teachings of Unitology 6 Piece Set, marketing for a religion in a video game, now that's showing far the series and art goes to create the world you play.

The book was  provided by the publisher for review