Dead Space iOS

I haven't been the hugest supporter of mobile games, though I have enjoyed my share of them ("Angry Birds", I heart thee).  Add that to being someone who frequently falls down the rabbit hole of franchise churnouts and we lead back to "Dead Space" (or "Dead Space iOS" to prevent confusion with the Xbox 360/PS3 game).  Having two kids leaves me very little time to focus on any given hobby so, sometimes, picking up my phone and plowing through a few minutes of handheld fun is all I can hope for, but can an iPhone game deliver the same scares as its console cousin?

Part of the "Kiss Me, I'm a Mutated Corpse" line.

Well, maybe not scares but it can definitely capture the action and fun weapon grind of the original.  "Dead Space iOS" deals with a saboteur on the Sprawl space station, duped into releasing hordes of necromorphs upon the general population and the attempt to fight them back, and so on, and so forth.  As far as story goes, you're either a "Dead Space" player interested in the Church of Unitology or someone interested in an action/adventure game to play on your phone.  Either way, this is probably worth your time.

While the controls take some time to get used to, given some time any player will be able to figure out the two-finger mechanics, though Dead Space iOS takes more dexterity than the average phone game.  Stick with it and, by the end, you'll be running circles around monsters.  I noticed a weird tendency of my character to do a sort of diagonal run which made navigation during intense battles a bit wonky but never so much that I became frustrated.

If you're here, you're tripping balls.

And that constant push for upgrades is the most enjoyable part of the game.  Much like the original, you'll delight in finding cash or power nodes to fill out the specs of your various tools of dismemberment, fighting a little farther to fill in the maze of incremental improvements until you're ready to decimate every oncomer.  Which leaves many of the battles by the end of the game feeling overly repetitive and far from challenging; as fights become increasingly rote, the shortcomings of the platform and the scope of the game become more and more apparent.  Still, some cool third act story twists and the ease of the final fights make finishing Dead Space iOS a worthwhile way to spend an evening.  It's a fun addition to the Dead Space franchise but only players seeking a slightly more robust game for their phones would consider it Really Good.  For a bonus, play it on the iPad in magnified mode to actually see what you're doing!