The last time we spoke to the folks at EA regarding Dead Space, we managed to find out some pretty cool things about the game. Nowadays, creating something original in the horror genre is a great challenge, although EA appears to be on the right track with Dead Space. They are very close to completing the game and have put it on display at the GC this year. The retail version is set to launch on October 20 in North America and October 31 across Europe.

Mmm, I'm hungry and this puppy looks tasty.

Ready for your close-up?

The simple truth is that a great deal of people tends to despise EA and their continued efforts to milk almost any franchise dry. While that may be true, we are glad that with Dead Space, something new and exciting is going to arrive from the industry giant (and it's not The Sims or The Lord of the Rings or Need for Speed). Here's why.

EA have demoed the 7th level in Dead Space, which has the main character, Isaac Clarke, making his way through a mining deck in an effort to send out an SOS beacon. From this moment, a rather nasty scene was shown, as Isaac waited for an elevator to arrive. The elevator brought a seriously injured colleague of his. Isaac decides the risk is too great, because there's no way of knowing if the man was infected by the aliens or not, so he finishes him off. How? Well, by blowing his head clean off. Yep, you can bet your ass it's a messy scene, seeing as gore and violence plays a big role in this horror themed action game.

The areas will be teeming with monsters and our hero is going to struggle to stay alive by using a variety of sci-fi weapons. Most of the weapons can be highly modified to ensure greater damage. Actually, numerous weapons are mostly used for dismembering enemy creatures and as the developers often pointed out, dismemberment is a crucial and strategic gamepaly element in Dead Space. Freezing foes is also a possibility, giving you enough time to finish them of. In practice, this is a rather useful move.

More than that, there's a certain intense aspect to it all, preserving the right ambiance for a decent horror game. Bringing up a menu during gameplay means you'll see the menu appear right beside the main character. At this point, the game won't be pausing, so you won't have a breather if you're surrounded by enemies. It's all real-time. Players are frequently required to find a safe spot, where they can access the menu, modify weapons and so on.

The entire game unfolds without any HUD whatsoever, which further increases the realism. Even the main character's health status is shown via the back of his suit.

Dead Space looks good too. We enjoyed everything from the level design and the creepy setting, to the utterly disgusting creature models. Sounds-wise things appear promising and there were a few moments in the game that were quite scary.

As we've said earlier, Dead Space is set to hit the market for PC, X360 and PS3 platforms in late October and we are definitely looking forward to it. For other information on the game, including story details and such, check out our Dead Space preview and interview with the development team.