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"  There are two things you have in common with Isaac Clarke, the hero of the new game Dead Space (available for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360). Like him, you are not a space marine, which is a problem, considering the number of mutated, corpse-like horrors sprinting down the corridor at you. And second, you are scared. You might even be terrified.  The weapon you&amp;#039;re using is not a gun, but more of a futuristic cross between a nailgun and a reciprocating saw. One or two shots will carve off a target&amp;#039;s limb, but the hallowed, universal anti-zombie tactic\u2014aim for the brain\u2014is useless against these creatures. Maybe their brain is distributed throughout the body, or perhaps they don&amp;#039;t have brains at all. Severing a leg will slow them, but some will keep scrambling across the floor at you. The challenge is to keep your cool and surgically disassemble your targets, even as the sound of pincers squealing on metal means that more of these things are coming. If invoking terror in the player is the primary goal of any survival horror game\u2014such as the long-running Resident Evil and Silent Hill franchises\u2014then Dead Space is a rousing success. It&amp;#039;s also an impressive contribution to the sci-fi horror genre in general, better than most Hollywood attempts, with a surprisingly decent storyline and art direction that&amp;#039;s as painstaking as it is disturbing. The setting is only part of what makes Dead Spaceso scary. As movies like Event Horizon and Supernova have shown, dumping monsters into a spaceship isn&amp;#039;t an automatic recipe for effective horror.  What makes Dead Space so unsettling is what&amp;#039;s behind the curtain, in the seemingly minor tweaks that developers made to standard horror video-game features, and the new ones that Electronic Arts&amp;#039; Redwood Shores studio introduced for this title. Leaving aside the attempts to mimic big-screen sci-fi horror\u2014through plot, character development, acting, etc.\u2014and sticking to the mechanics of gaming, here is what makes Dead Space the scariest video game yet . . . and how it could have been even scarier. 1. Fear Value  For years now, games have incorporated music that adapts to the situation. But this tends to be a blunt, binary technique: When combat happens, the drums kick in. This is your audio cue to start shooting people. In Dead Space, the connection between scene and sound is more precise. &amp;quot;NPCs [nonplayer characters, such as enemies], depending on their state, generate a certain amount of fear,&amp;quot; says Louis Gascoigne, senior gameplay engineer for Dead Space. &amp;quot;We also use information about what&amp;#039;s visible to the character. If a fire is burning in the corner, that has fear. An NPC coming around the corner has fear, too. All of that fear value adds up, and determines the sounds the player hears.&amp;quot; Instead of a clumsy or punitive in-game fear meter, which might shake the camera or obscure your vision, the sudden shift to more ominous music and increasingly unsettling sound effects\u2014screeches, voices, etc.\u2014attempts to rattle the player. Long after the grotesque novelty of strategic dismemberment wears off, the fear-based audio continues to inspire raw moments of sudden, animal panic in players. 2. Deferred Lighting To pull off the inky, nebulous shadows that are a staple of any horror movie or game, the Dead Space development team made lighting a top priority. Specifically, it used a technique called deferred lighting, which means that all of the lighting in the game is rendered in real time. What does that actually mean? According to Gascoigne, &amp;quot;Deferred lighting removes some of the restrictions in standard lighting models. Traditionally you bake lighting into the environment, or make it part of the texture. Or you have a small number of dynamic light sources.&amp;quot; So a wall that&amp;#039;s illuminated by a nearby lamp might have the warm, incandescent glow written into its texture, which would then flip to another texture if the lamp is shattered. Or the lamp&amp;#039;s bulb might serve as a dynamic light source, delivering the same glow to the character walking by, and casting a shadow on the wall. In Dead Space, because of deferred lighting, there are more dynamic sources throughout the game, and more of them move. This allows for general spookiness, like when you use your character&amp;#039;s telekinetic ability to levitate a candle, and its fluttering light is reflected by every nearby object in the environment. It also provides more obvious scares. You enter a room, and suddenly the bright white ceiling lights snap off. A single spinning red light pulses shadows throughout the room, setting the mood for another ambush. It&amp;#039;s harder to see\u2014and target\u2014the inevitable rush of zombies, but the way the light sweeps across their gleaming flesh adds a touch of realism and makes an otherwise familiar encounter scary all over again. 3. Real-Time User Interface  Many games strive for greater immersion through a stripped-down, clutter-free interface, with fewer or less obtrusive gauges for ammo, health, etc. But too little information, or the need to constantly pause and toggle through menus, can pull you out of the experience more than any onscreen status bar. Dead Space&amp;#039;s user interface (UI) is arguably the most successful blend of readily available info and constant immersion out there. Since you&amp;#039;re always looking over Isaac&amp;#039;s shoulder, you can see the ammo counter prominently displayed on a screen on the back of his weapon. When he takes damage, a glowing bar running down the back of his suit shrinks, and changes color. When he calls up his inventory, the menu is displayed in the game, as a hologram projected in midair in front of him. &amp;quot;We put a lot of work into how to draw the UI in front of the character at all times, but not have it collide or intersect with the environment,&amp;quot; says Steve Timson, lead engineer on Dead Space. As you select each piece of gear, Isaac&amp;#039;s head tracks your cursor, since, presumably, he&amp;#039;s the one cycling through his own holographic interface. But the most immersive touch of all, and the one that adds to the overall sense of dread, is the fact that whether you&amp;#039;re checking the map or switching to a new weapon, the game never pauses. The world around Isaac isn&amp;#039;t waiting for you, and that includes the monster down the hall. &amp;quot;By having all of UI in real-time,&amp;quot; says Gascoigne, &amp;quot;the idea is to not give you a sense of a safety point. To keep you feeling vulnerable at all times.&amp;quot; 4. Enemy Pathing While zombies may not have jumped the shark just yet (they&amp;#039;re shambling closer every day), the ventilation shaft certainly has. Always big enough to fit a crawling human, and oddly free of air filters or other obstructions, these shafts are the connective tissue of countless flimsy plots. And yet, Dead Space manages to freshen up both clich\u00E9s, giving the zombie-like necromorphs context-sensitive, horror-movie-appropriate artificial intelligence (AI), and letting them take ventilation shafts to get at you. &amp;quot;The air vents have a physical meaning in the environment,&amp;quot; says Gascoigne. &amp;quot;They aren&amp;#039;t just places for scripted events. So if I park myself in a corner and wait, a necromorph might decide to pop out of a vent on top of me. Because of the pathing system, you get a lot of scary moments like that.&amp;quot; Necromorphs might be smarter than your average zombie, but since they tend to move quickly, simply turning up their AI, and allowing them more ways to reach you, could easily backfire. &amp;quot;Necromorphs are always trying to find a way to run at you full-bore,&amp;quot; says Gascoigne. &amp;quot;But if they were always running, how could you shoot their limbs off? There&amp;#039;s a lot of logic to make them aggressive, and appear less stupid, but without the player getting cheesed.&amp;quot; Call it cheating (for the player&amp;#039;s benefit) or game balance, but a horde of enemies in Dead Space won&amp;#039;t necessarily charge you as quickly as a gang of human-controlled characters might. Some will break from the pack and sprint, and others will avoid the traffic jam by crawling through vents. You&amp;#039;re never safe, and even the routine fight feels out of control. 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