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Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to get hands on with Dead Space while visiting Electronic Arts' Demo Room today at E3. However, I did get a chance to see a lot of the game play, including some really fun (and gory) death scenes.

In Dead Space, mankind mines entire planets for their precious natural resources. Unfortunately for the crew of the ship that you are on, one planet had something dark and evil inside of it. Now there is what is called a "necromorph" ecology doing its best to take over the ship with only you to stop it.

Dead Space is a third person survival horror game in a science fiction environment. Each of those elements adds something to the game to make it unique. We've already gone a bit over the science fiction environment, but the third person part brings up another unique design implementation of the game — there is no HUD on the screen. Instead, everything you do — including inventory — is represented by glowing displays from your suit of armor, from the health display down your back to the ammo counters on your guns.

Being survival horror, that also means that you're going to be constantly struggling to have enough ammunition to fight the creatures you come across. Anything can be a weapon if you have a telekinesis gun (and you do) — you can even use parts of the enemies you cut off to fight them. Your other weapons all have special abilities, too, such as the plasma cutter which has a linear area of effect that can be rotated to help sever tentacles.

Also, being horror, it is a very bloody and gruesome game — this is NOT a game for kids. Get too close to one bad guy — the one that drops sentry pods that will shoot at you and explode if you touch them — and it will automatically bite your head off at the neck, leaving you to stagger around. A tentacle reaching out of a wall to grab you might look like a cut scene, but it's not, and you need to fight it off as quickly as possible. If you fail, it might retreat for just long enough to let you get back to your feet before it dispatches you.

The horror is also reflected in the ship itself. It is being taken over by the necromorph ecology, down to the pulsing walls of flesh over the steel of the hull. There are a number of creatures that you will have to fight, many of which go through multiple stages during the fight. A zero-gee battle against the "Leviathan" will have you severing tentacles, throwing its own projectiles back at it, and finally doing both at once as you struggle not to be ground into a paste.

Fortunately, as you pick up power nodes, you can upgrade the various parts of your equipment. Don't expect to be able to upgrade everything, however. You can expect to upgrade maybe 1/3rd of your gear by the end of the game.

Dead Space comes out October 21st, just in time for Halloween. Before then, check out the comic book and the animated feature that they have been putting out at www.deadspacegame.com.