In years passed, fanboys and critics alike have come to expect little more than sequels and derivative ideas from industry giant Electronic Arts. Whether it be the de rigeur Madden every August or forgettable titles like Black, EA hasn’t done much traditionally to earn our trust with new intellectual properties.

Surprisingly though, the publisher has changed their attitude dramatically over the past year or so and produced some outstanding new properties — last year’s Skate and Rock Band being standouts — and this E3, the tone remained the same. The same people that brought us Battlefield: Bad Company most recently are now bringing the “first-person platformer” to life in the form of Mirror’s Edge. Additionally, we got to spend some time walking/limping/crawling around the mutation filled halls of EA Redwood’s new survival/horror game Dead Space.

Mixing tried and true mechanics of the genre (limited ammunition, huge monsters) with innovative types of gameplay (zero-gravity puzzles, anyone?), the build we got our hands on was a hell of a lot of fun to play. Creeping along the corridors of the once-living hydroponic gardens, we found ourselves face to face with monsters ranging from the small/grotesque to the large/growling, while the pacing felt deliberate with nearly every encounter; additionally, each mid-size creature we came upon reacted far more angrily to what Jino from EA Redwood calls “strategic dismemberment” than anything else.

Employing our main character Isaac’s mining tools (more on those, and him, in a moment), we carefully selected individual tentacles in which to remove from the undulating mess of a plant on the wall before it’s eventual demise. Though Jino told us we could simply pump enemies full of ammunition to take them out, the strategic dismemberment route would be far more beneficial in the long run.

Back to Isaac, we find ourselves (storywise) a few hundred years into humanity’s future. The resources of Earth have been tapped and humans have begun venturing into outerspace for mining, among other things. One particular mining ship lost contact though and Isaac is sent to find out what happened… problem is, everyone’s dead and all that’s left are horrifying mutations that want to decapitate him. Luckily Isaac has a few handy (and fatal) mining tools in his belt and the ability to telekinetically life, throw, and catch objects (an ability that actual plays into the mining story, as future technology has enabled humans to add safety features for miners like telekinesis).

Sounds like a horror movie you might’ve heard of, no? Dead Space struck us as more of a gruesome horror flick than a game right from the start of our demo. Which we mean in a good way, as the game combines atmospheric effects/lighting, ambient noises and a HUD-less screen (including menus and maps) for player immersion. And while we didn’t quite make it past the plant in the wall monster nearing the end of our demo, we had a blast playing through and got excited for it’s October 30th release on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. The times, they are a changin’.

For more screens and info, check out our previous posts on Dead Space.

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