Dead Space is a game with a lot of promise and occasional flashes of brilliance held back by the cliches of the survival horror genre and some very frustrating gameplay decisions.
The formula is tried and true: contact has been lost with the USG Ishimura, a huge, Red Dwarf-style mining ship which is currently engaged in a planet-cracking mission wherein it blasts a huge chunk of a mineral-rich planet's crust into orbit and then feasts on the tasty, tasty ore inside. Apparently having never seen any sci-fi or horror movies before, the mining company sends a tiny repair ship with a crew of five to assist the Ishimura with its "communications malfunction" (yeah, right). One wonders why a ship with a crew of thousands, a ship so large it requires its own internal tram system to get around, needs help from a scow the size of a large Winnebago that can cruise into one of its docking bays without even tickling. Seriously, if the Ishimura were a woman, she would totally be saying "Are you in yet?" If I were designing a miles-long city in space, the first thing I would do is make sure it had several Winnebagos' worth of spare parts, and a repair crew of at least five people.