With the exception of Image Comics' Dead Space: Extraction special issue (tying in with the upcoming videogame from EA) and Harris' latest revival of Vampirella (Called, somewhat incorrectly, Vampirella: The Second Coming), Marvel Comics really owns the single issue market this week when it comes to new launches of interest.

From Marvel, there are the latest special issues in the ongoing Dark Reign storyline (Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Exodus or Dark Reign: The List: The Avengers). And then there's the launch of Marvel's latest Orson Scott Card adaptation (Ender's Game: Command School). Or even the surprise launch of a new series starring the sidekick of an alternate Earth Captain America (Nomad: Girl Without A World).

Besides Marvel, there's not really that much else for superhero fans looking for a first issue this week (Okay, there is DC Comics' The Shield, which is gritty Captain America from an idea by J. Michael Straczynski... but still).

(Actually, if you're looking for something superhero-ish and none of the above sound promising, I'd direct your attention to the seventh issue of DC's Superman: World Of New Krypton, which begins its second half with what looks like the slow march to war between Earth and Superman's new adopted home planet, offering as much fun politicking as it does fisticuffs. But that's just me.)

In terms of collections, it's actually fairly evenly split: IDW has Astro Boy Movie Prequel: Underground, allowing you to catch up on your robot Pinocchio before next month's movie.

Meanwhile, DC's Gotham Central Vol. 2: Jokers and Madmen offers up easily the best Joker story in comics in the last decade alongside some other, equally good, stories about Batman's hometown police force.

Rebellion puts out Strontium Dog: Traitor To His Kind, which reboots the 2000AD franchise back into fine shape courtesy of the character's creators. (Short version: He's a time-traveling mutant bounty hunter in the far future. His partner is a Viking. Surely that's all you need to know.)

And Marvel again, may have grabbed the win with Marvel Superhero Team-Up, the disappointingly-renamed (It was originally Marvel Bromance) anthology of male bonding stories from the company's long and rich history. Mickey and Donald would be proud.

As ever, the complete list of comics reaching your local stores this week can be found here before you decide to purchase your picks at your local comic store. Look on the bright side: Such a light week this week just lets you save up for all the goodies still to come next week.

After seeing District 9, we're sad we'll never get to see Halo done by Neill Blomkamp and Peter Jackson, because those are some storytelling and visual-effects chops. The truth is, video game movies don't have to suck — as long as someone better than Uwe Boll is in the director's chair, and you avoid the kind of bizarre decisions that went into giving us Doom.

So here are the ten movies that have a better chance of reaching screens than Halo right now - some of which might even be great.

The game: Dead Space.
Who's in? D.J. Caruso, director of Disturbia and Eagle Eye (and in line to direct Y: The Last Man) was announced as director of this film recently.
What's the Hollywood summary? As Variety puts it, "Set in deep space in the 26th Century, the thriller focuses on an engineer who responds to a distress signal from a mining ship, only to find it infested with monstrous creatures called Necromorphs, human corpses that have been re-animated by an alien virus. The engineer and his team retrofit most of their weapons from tools on the mining ship, and try to stay alive long enough to discover the "hive mind" that is controlling the creatures."
Is it really more likely than Halo? There's a production deal, but nobody's written a script yet, and Caruso still wants to make a Y movie. He's also in pre-production on a movie called Jack The Giant Killer, and working on The Defenders, according to IMDB.

The game: BioShock
Who's in? Gore Verbinsiki, director of the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies. With a screenplay by John Logan (Gladiator, Star Trek: Nemesis).
What's the Hollywood summary? Says Variety, "Story takes place in the underwater city Rapture, where a pilot crash-lands near a secret entrance and becomes involved in a power struggle."
Is it really more likely than Halo? Maybe not. Back in April, Universal put the project on hold due to concerns about its high budget (around $160 million.) But Variety adds: "All parties vow that "Bioshock" will not become another "Halo," the would-be live-action adaptation of the Microsoft game that was canceled when Universal and Fox got cold feet over budget fears." So there you go. They vow. And Verbinski bailed out of Pirates 4 to do this project, so he's motivated.

The game: Duke Nukem
Who's in? Depth Entertainment, the studio that produced Max Payne. (So if you liked Max Payne, you're all set.)
What's the Hollywood summary? No details are available, but basically a wisecracking guy fights aliens. Says Scott Miller with 3-D Realms: "We're taking an all-new direction this time around. I haven't seen that old material in years, and can't even remember what it was about. So, we're starting from scratch on a story. Our first order of business is to create a Duke Nukem storyverse, which is similar to a story bible, and fleshes out all of the characters, their histories, motives, and gives a very detailed description of the Duke Nukem "universe." Once this is created, we then have the foundation to create a story and a script. This storyverse document will also be useful for future projects."
Is it really more likely than Halo? Max Payne got made, didn't it? Picture Mark Wahlberg in a tank top.

The game: Area 51
Who's in? Comics god Grant Morrison was hired to write the screenplay in 2007 for Paramount Pictures. No director or stars are attached, though.
What's the Hollywood summary? Says Variety, "Set in the U.S. government's most top-secret military facility, storyline revolves around a hazardous materials specialist who is called in to investigate a viral outbreak that could be extra-terrestrial in nature."
Is it really more likely than Halo? Um, well... there's been no movement since Morrison was attached as screenwriter in 2007.

The game: Mass Effect
Who's in? Avi Arad, former head of Marvel movies and producer of the Spider-Man and X-Men movies, signed on last September.
What's the Hollywood summary? The story follows Commander Shepherd and his crew as they save alien species from the systematic eradication that a random species must face every 50,000 years from a pitiless mechanical foe. And a crusty bureaucray stands in their way at every turn.
Is it really more likely than Halo? Arad has a track record of getting movies made, obvously — but there's been no news in almost a year.

The game: inFAMOUS
Who's in? It was announced in late July8 that Sheldon Turner, writer of The Longest Yard remake and Up In The Air, pitched a movie adaptation and Sony picked it up. Former Marvel exec Avi Arad (and Ari Arad) will produce.
What's the Hollywood summary? Says the Hollywood Reporter, "inFAMOUS centers on bike messenger Cole MacGrath, who survives an explosion that destroys entire blocks of Empire City only to find he has new electricity-derived super powers."
Is it really more likely than Halo? Sony seems highly motivated to make it happen, especially since sister company Sony Computer Entertainment published the game, from Sucker Punch Prods.

The game: Asteroids
Who's in? It was just announced that Lorenzo di Bonaventura (G.I. Joe) will be producing, with a screenplay by Matthew Lopez (Race To Witch Mountain.) No director or stars yet. (Insert your own joke about various Hollywood stars who could play convincing chunks of space rock.)
What's the Hollywood summary? Says di Bonaventura, "We've crafted a really strong, deep mythology for the thing. Without divulging too much about it, it's two lead characters – two brothers – who have to go through a seminal experience to figure out their relationship, against this huge backdrop."
Is it really more likely than Halo? Well, G.I. Joe did pretty well. So, yeah.

The game: World Of Warcraft
Who's in? Sam Raimi is signed up to direct, after he's done making Spider-Man 4. Charles Roven (The Dark Knight) is producing.
What's the Hollywood summary? Says the Guardian, Warcraft "is set in a medieval-style fantasy world called Azeroth populated by humans and such Lord of the Rings-style races as orcs, trolls and dwarves, but also the undead and blood elves. Players must choose whether to join the nefarious Horde or the Alliance faction."
Is it really more likely than Halo? It's pretty much a done deal. Raimi is supervising the start of production while he works on Spidey. It may even be decent.

The game: Gears Of War
Who's in? Len Wiseman (Live Free Or Die Hard) is directing, from a script by Chris Morgan (Wanted), with Bowen and Godfrey of Temple Hill producing for New Line. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson won't star, because "a Doom connection would not be smart for us," says Wiseman. But he's hoping Kate Beckinsale will play Maria, the doomed wife of second-in-command Dominic Santiago.
What's the Hollywood summary? Wiseman told Comic Con that the movie will include Emergence Day, when the enemy Locusts emerged from underground and revealed themselves to the human inhabitants of the distant planet Sera. That would make the movie a prequel to the games, which take place long after Emergence Day. Also, Wiseman says there would be more bad-ass female soldiers.
Is it really more likely than Halo? It's still in the early stages, but Wiseman seems pretty determined to make it a reality.

The game: The Sims
Who's in? John Davis (Norbit, Eragon) is producing for Fox, with a screenplay by Brian Lynch.
What's the Hollywood summary? A couple of kids get their hands on the Sims Enhancement Pack, says Davis, and then mayhem results: "What they realize is that they can scan their world in, because this is the most life-like, real Sims game ever. As they are playing this, they are all of a sudden realising [that] what they are playing on the game is having an effect on the real world. So in effect, through the game, they are able to control their world. It's wish fulfillment, and obviously it turns against them."
Is it really more likely than Halo? It was announced in 2007 and has been stalled since then. But never underestimate Hollywood's sadism.

The unlikely charge came from an email we received yesterday:

Just wanted to point out that the new game Dead Space has some elements that weren't advertised. Like: the plot is about space-scientologists that manage to find an alien and convince themselves that it's the god they made up.

And then you have to FIGHT the aliens because the space scientoligists wouldn't stop screwing around with them, and got it all into a scary mess.

I dislike the church of scientology, Dead Space is a good game, and it's a fun plot I haven't seen anyone mentioning on any gaming or sci fi sites.

As you might expect, this surprised us; we'd seen a lot of the pre-production of the game, as well as the game itself, and we hadn't seen any scientologists in there. So, we asked EA themselves about this take on it, and here's their official response:

Dead Space is a work of science fiction. Any coincidence to real-world people, organizations, or events is unintended.

Short and to the point... And enough to make us wonder exactly what kind of anti-Scientologist programming our original emailer has undergone to see the hand of L. Ron Hubbard where it wasn't in the first place.

The site - which launched on August 25th - releases new content every Monday, via something called "the hub." What is the hub, you ask? More than you might expect:

A vast cosmic deathscape, the hub features 9 severed body parts, with each one representing a content release. How will visitors know which content is live? The week before a content piece goes live, its assigned body part begins to mutate, finally evolving in to a mature necromorph part (necromorphs are re-animated, mutated corpses of fallen crew members). Each Monday (it started August 25th) a new necromorph part will be live and clickable, ready for visitors to dive deep into the content featured on NoKnownSurvivors.

Helping you navigate the hub is CECL-RC, a computer with a somewhat questionable sense of humor if her message to io9 readers is anything to go by.
The storyline currently in progress on the site, "Misplaced Affection," is the kind of love story that everyone who reads this site can relate to: Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, unspeakable intergalactic horror interrupts, and everything ends in tears. And blood. The first two episodes (which include such interactive materials as readable "Replacement Organ Request Forms" that reveal the backstory of dismemberment and a bloodsmeared guide to the spaceship that's about to become a floating tomb for almost everyone onboard) are already available at the site, with the third going live tomorrow and offering a chance to see a date between our hero and his doomed love, as well as learn the future history of Earth.

New content will be released on the site each Monday until October 20th, with a second storyline, "13" starting at the end of the month, for those who would rather see sleeper agents make bad choices than romance gone disgustingly wrong.

[No Known Survivors]

After announcing the game's early release dates on the official blog for Dead Space, community manager Ben Swanson went on to say:

Unfortunately, we’ve recently found out that Dead Space will be banned in Germany, China and Japan. This is hard for us, especially after we got a chance to meet and hang out with so many amazing German fans and getting some great coverage at the Leipzig Games Convention last month. We’d like to thank the German, Chinese and Japanese communities for their amazing support and enthusiasm and say that we are truly sorry that you will not be able to find Dead Space in your local shop next month.

The news filtered slowly across the gaming 'Net on Friday, with much speculation as to why the game had been banned. We like Michael McWhertor's take over at sister site Kotaku:

And by "banned" we can assume that, at least in Germany's case, Dead Space was refused classification by the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle, as many graphically violent games have been before it.

In Japan's case, we're not quite sure if Dead Space was "banned" or given a dreaded sales-killing Z-rating by the CERO ratings board, making it essentially a money losing venture to release it in that country.

And China? No idea.

The general consensus seems to be that by making strategic dismemberment an essential part of the gameplay, the makers of Dead Space were unable to create a less gory version of the game that would appease the USK in Germany, which often requests violent content to be toned down in order to secure a rating. As for Japan, a poster on respected video game forum Quarter to Three noted:

The Japan ban definitely has something to do with the ability to dismember fingers. It's a huge faux paus in their culture to show dismemberment of fingers. Something to do with the yakuza.

Back when the Xbox came out, we were working on a launch title. It involved cartoon characters with four fingers. Japanese localization forced us to remodel every single character in the game with five fingers (four fingers plus thumb) or we couldn't release the game in their region.

Hmm, considering some of the in-game signage in Dead Space, we could see how that might be a factor...
Similarly, as no one can seem to figure out why China might've banned or restricted sales of Dead Space, we're thinking that by using techniques taken from Chinese propaganda posters to create in-game promotional posters, officials felt the game was leveling some kind of subtle critique at Chinese culture.
Or maybe China, like one of our commenters, feels that by having mining in space, Dead Space will be too similar to cheesy movie Event Horizon to be truly enjoyable. Either way, the rest of us can look forward to getting our sci-fi survival horror on in mid-October.

Kotaku: Dead Space Gets Internationally Banned

As a recovering video game addict turned fearless io9 correspondent, I couldn't have been more excited about participating in Dead Space's Community Event at Redwood Shores on Wednesday—after all, I got ninety minutes of exclusive gameplay along with liberal doses of food, info, and funny PR reps acting like they liked me. (Throw in an audiobook of Gillian Anderson reading Barry N. Malzberg's "A Galaxy Called Rome" and you've got my idea of a perfect afternoon.) But I also felt a responsibility—as a recovering video game addict, as a fearless io9 correspondent—to be honest to io9 readers, and just not swallow the long, cool glasses of necromorph-tinted Kool-Aid. I've been burned often enough by IPs both licensed—Enter The Matrix, anyone?—and original—Black & White, anyone else?—to be an acquiescent junketgoer, happy to turn my eyes from the problems on the monitor in front of me to the swag bag beside me.

And so here is the first confounding paradox of Dead Space: although the presentations of the production team utterly convinced me they had created a truly original science fiction survival horror story, at no point did anything in my three thirty minute playtime sessions of Dead Space reinforce that conviction. Dead Space pulls atmosphere and ideas from all four Alien films, Paul Verhoeven's gruesome science-fiction flicks, John Carpenter movies both awesome and awful, and semi-stinkers like Event Horizon and Screamers, but the team seems to think the industrial bays of Dead Space are completely different from those of Aliens or Terminator because the color scheme is brown and gray instead of blue or green.Inspiration also comes from an impressive array of games: Half-Life 1 and 2; the Doom series (man, especially the Doom series); System Shock and Bioshock; the Resident Evil games with an emphasis on RE4, and a dash of Silent Hill, a smattering of Eternal Darkness. Peter Jackson's King Kong removed the HUD before Dead Space did, Psi-Ops gave us fun with telekinesis four years before the stuff seen here, and the Prince of Persia was slowing time long before Isaac refilled his first can of Stasis. (Even Isaac's design, which I love, reminds me of The Destroyer, an old Thor enemy and one-time herald of Galactus.) Perhaps only at Electronic Arts—a company that sports licenses, long-established IPs, and rigorous bureaucratic orthodoxy have made into the eighth largest software company in the world—can Dead Space be called original without a certain amount of Simpsonesque finger-twiddling, eye-darting, and lip-pursing. In fact, my willingness to take the team at their word and consider Dead Space cutting edge worked against my success when I finally played: it took me twenty minutes to realize that those lovely lit x-boxy looking cases scattered everywhere were, of course, breakable crates with helpful stuff inside.

But here's Dead Space's second confounding paradox: none of that matters. I spent maybe thirty seconds arching an eyebrow when a game described as groundbreaking has Isaac sent to go get gadget x to open blocked airlock y (that was on the embargoed level, by the way, so don't tell anyone I told you). The rest of the time? I was alternately clutching the Xbox 360 controller to my chest like it was my beloved Boo Bear warding off the bogeyman, and waving it about like it was a boomstick about to take out some Deadites.Contrary to the worry of some of our io9 commenters, constant focus testing did not turn Dead Space into Halo in zero gravity, but it did keep the game playable, enjoyable and frustrating for the right reason—like, I got too rattled and used up more ammo than I should have—and not the wrong ones—like, I am being chased by monsters but Isaac refuses to haul his ass out of the room at faster than a measured walk. When Isaac has no choice but move in close and try to club a skittering mutant to death with his empty weapon, grunting and panting, the space crates don't matter, the fetch objectives don't matter, the fact your main character has the same first name as the bartender on the Love Boat doesn't matter. Dead Space isn't immersive because there's no HUD or next to no cutscenes: it's immersive because the controls have been tested and massaged so nicely that the difference between what you want to do and what the character onscreen is doing disappears. I know plenty of survival horror fans who believe that the closer to powerless the main character is, the more nightmarish and terrifying the game can be. But Dead Space, like Romero's Living Dead movies, taps into the nightmare that you could survive if you could be on your guard every single second and never, ever make a mistake...but you won't, because you can't.

Some people have argued that video games can't be art because the video game player never surrenders to the creator of a video game the way the a reader or moviegoer or gallery visitor must surrender to the writer or the filmmakers or the artist. And I've seen some people argue that Dead Space won't be satisfying because the game makers sacrificed the potential to be original at the altar of constant focus testing. But a sestina can be satisfying despite the rigorousness of its structure (vetted by troubadors, the focus testers of their day), and anyone reading Lolita or watching Memento has to keep their brains as busy as the fingers of any videogamer. But ultimately the can't-be-arters and won't-be-originalers ignore the active, repetitive experience with which most of us initially experience art—as children, yelling "again!" when the parent reaches the end of our favorite story, and it's a rare child that doesn't at least sometime get its wish. Despite all the thought and effort put into making its meticulously crafted skin feel sensuously new, there's not an original bone in Dead Space's body and thank god for that. It's like playing that movie you've seen a dozen times on cable that sucks you in every time it comes on. Some childish part of me—the gleefully nihilistic child—has been yelling "again!" since it first played Dead Space on Wednesday. I expect it to continue doing so until the game's release on October 27.

Not every person in the video game industry is going to compare the work they do to Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, but lighting designer David Blizard did exactly that at the opening of his presentation at the community event at Electronic Arts Redwood Shores on Wednesday. "Construction of the Sagrada Familia began in 1882 and its current scheduled completion development is 2026," Blizard explained. "Similarly, there’s never a scheduled completion date for how things look in video games, as the tech is always constantly evolving."

According to Blizard, Dead Space uses a deferred lighting mesh, completely different from anything that’s been done in traditional video games: "[Deferred lighting] has had very limited use in the marketplace until now." (There was a brief back-and-forth between Blizard and producer Rich Briggs on this point—Briggs thought Dead Space, when it hits the market, will be the only game to use a deferred lighting system, Blizard believed GTA4 had used dynamic lighting although he didn’t know if it was used throughout, or relegated to special sections.)
"With static lighting, we have set light sources. We may only have four light sources available to us, and we usually can’t set those sources in any way to take advantage of shadows or darkness," Blizard said. "Or we can create the look of light in an environment by 'baking' it into the textures. But a shadow that’s baked into the environment won’t move."

"With dynamic lighting," said Blizard, "we’re not limited to how many lights we can put in the world, we're only limited by rendering speed. We can have point lights, cone lights, directional lights, and the lighting and shadow situations that come with them. But in order to have a game run smoothly at 30 or 60 frames per second, we have to keep the resources of the GPU [graphics processing unit] tightly allocated... Very roughly, each frame of an animated movie requires about six hours of rendering time. By contrast, the processing resources allocated for the lighting for a video game graphics running at 30 frames per second is typically 33 milliseconds."

Explaining the importance of this math, Blizard said that one pass over one frame may only allow 7.5 milliseconds of processing power dedicated to the deferred lighting buffer, 4 milliseconds for the shadow buffer, and two milliseconds of cycle time for the 'post' effects (such as "bloom"—the way bright things might glow under light—and anti-aliasing). To put that in perspective, the GPU calculates the proper application of the shadows and the post effects in approximately two beats of a housefly's wings.

Blizard also broke our brains by boiling the principle of ambient occlusion down to an easily graspable sentence: essentially, objects that are closer together get darker. With that principle in mind, he showed how the dynamic lighting mesh could generate ambient occlusion throughout the Dead Space environment, and how he and the lighting crew could do passes of each stage to check the ambient occlusion was correct for massed objects. For the player, this means Dead Space is not just a game that contrasts just light and darkness, but—appropriately enough for a survival horror game—layers of darkness, so the application of light upon the environment is more convincing to the eye.

Interestingly, Dead Space's dynamic lighting not only aids the player’s enjoyment of the game, it greatly aided the actual creation. In an interview after the presentation, Blizard spoke briefly about the advantages of dynamic lighting on the building of the game. "From a sense of the production pipeline, we knew we couldn’t use static lighting again. Static lighting requires all the models to be done before the lighting can be rigged. If one new object is added, everything has to be rigged all over again and it’s a very time-consuming process. In this model, even if the level is very blocky, we can still begin lighting it. Creating a video game is like setting sail on a ship while you’re still building it and while you still may not be entirely sure where you’re going. In a situation like that, yeah, let’s try to build tools that don’t completely flail about if things aren’t done in a particular order. By keeping as much as we could dynamic, we were just able to crank every day on the lighting—in tandem with the people building art and the people putting new items in the game."
Although one might infer frustration from the presentation's opening comparison of using video game technology to the Sisyphean task of constructing Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, it's actually the opposite for Blizard. Blizard came from movies (he was the lighting supervisor for Minority Report) to games because of the challenges: "Games to me were just a more interesting medium than films in a lot of ways, because there are still many horizons to be crossed in games." While the dynamic lighting system utilized for Dead Space allowed it to cross just such an (event) horizon, the expanding field of technology for both creators and players of video games ensure that Blizard and crew will be again setting sail before too long.

A survival horror game set in outer space, Dead Space puts the player in the shoes (well, clunky metal gravity boots, actually) of engineer Isaac Clarke, tasked with exploring the USG Ishimura, an enormous mining ship that has lost communications with Earth after coming into contact with an alien artifact. This being a science fiction video game, Isaac encounters horrific alien hybrids bent on tearing apart everything they see and, since it's also a survival horror video game, a watchful eye on resources and exit routes is mandatory (and, in real life, bladder strength is a must) if the player wants to make it to the next level.

Springing from Executive Producer Glen Schofield's love for the horror and science-fiction genres, Dead Space spent more than two years in development with a small "rogue" team of designers and creators. During the course of the afternoon at the Community Event, members of that team talked about Dead Space and the choices they made in creating it. Art director Ian Milham walked us through the design of the physical environment in Dead Space and its basis in gothic architecture. Ben Wanat showed the evolution of his concept designs for the monstrous creatures, and lighting lead David Blizard gave an info-dense talk about the differences between Dead Space's dynamic lighting system and traditional lighting approaches in games that had some listeners clutching their head in confusion and others scribbling notes in a state of near-religious ecstasy. Each presentation took another aspect of Dead Space and showed the steps undertaken to deepen that aspect as fully as possible.

But as enlightening as many of the presentations on the game's technical issues were, the talks given about the design choices in creating the game became the ones most directly relevant to my understanding of the game. Creative Producer Brett Robbins spoke on the big decisions made early on regarding player immersion, and how the eschewing of a HUD led to specific design elements (Isaac's lighted spine, which represents his health, and the ammo counter holographically displayed when a weapon is open). Another immersion choice which had been the source of some minor online controversy recently — not to pause the game when the player opens the inventory and map screens — led to other design adjustments in the size and shape of those screens.

In a related presentation, producer Rich Briggs talked about scripted events and explained how the player immersion meant a lack of cutscenes in the game and dictated the approaches to the flow of events. "Some players are going to see some scripted events," Briggs explained, "and some are going to miss them. So there are some events that will never be seen by a single player playing a single game, and that's cool. But when you have a game with no cutscenes, you have to have very, very tight level design for times when the player has to see something."

Briggs also talked about focus testing, the most extensive ever done for any EA game. "We were focus testing the game every single week, almost from the very beginning. Sometimes the sessions would just be half an hour — we would give the players a ton of credits and tell them 'go to the [in-game] store, and just buy stuff,' just to see if the store worked the way it should. Other times, we had people playing for six hours just to see what happened, where they lost focus. And a lot of feedback came from that which influenced how the game developed."

For example, the design team for Dead Space insisted that Isaac not be able to run, the measured pace of a character being a staple of survival horror. "But by the third time we got feedback saying, 'Yeah, Isaac moves really fucking slow,' we couldn't keep our heads buried in the sand any longer," Briggs admitted. "And so we changed that, but it had ripple effects throughout the entire game. Suddenly the monsters' AI was no longer effective. They seemed stupid because they couldn't react quickly enough to a character running around them. We had to lengthen the hallways because the level wouldn't stream quickly enough when the player was running. Everything had to be adjusted. And I was really proud because the team swallowed that pill, and the game was stronger for it."

This willingness to adapt the game to maximize the play experience echoed something Robbins said about his resistance to a quick access heal button: "I was really resistant, but the day after we put it in, I was playing a level and stuck in a tight spot, and I used the health button and I loved it. It was the first of many times we swore we wouldn't do something, and then we did it, and I loved the result."

In addition to the presentations, attendees spent 90 minutes playing levels in Dead Space and the general consensus was that we too loved the result. While I took a perhaps too-skeptical eye to the ongoing claims of originality on the parts of the game's producers and marketing people (the gradations of difference executive producer Glen Schofield used to separate Dead Space from Doom 3, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 and System Shock seemed razor-thin to me), I couldn't quibble with the buttery-smooth gameplay—the fear of fleeing powerful attackers and the fun of strategically dismembering advancing beasties were easily available in equal doses. (In the interests of full survival horror disclosure, it should be noted I'll pick Resident Evil 4 over Resident Evil every time. But Dead Space does a very strong job of highlighting the player's vulnerability in an unsettling, frequently hostile, environment—the staple of classic survival horror.)

Dead Space is currently scheduled for release on October 27, 2008. If the ending Schofield briefly discussed in his roundtable is as powerful as he says ("We spent a lot of time, a lot of energy, on the ending, and we didn't even show a lot of our own guys the ending until recently") and if the strong playability I saw is consistent through the game (with a healthy amount of playing time for the price tag), the development team's long, vulnerable exploration through the unsettling environment of original IP game development should be more than amply rewarded.

According to Ars Technica, after seeing this trailer at E3, the press was notified that the ESRB refused to approve the trailer, so it couldn't be released in the U.S. Why this means anything at all with a form of media intended to be released online is anyone's guess, but it sure won't hurt the marketing buzz. Dead Space is the tale of a mining operation that cracks open an alien planet looking for materials . . . and finds something they didn't bargain for.

Two Dead Space Trailers: one the ESRB doesn't want you to see. [Ars Technica]

Dead Space is set in the future. The hero must explore a "planetcracker" mining ship known as the Ishimura, which has lost contact with the rest of society. Of course these miners have unknowingly stumbled upon an ancient alien race that wants to kill everything in sight, and it's up to the user to fight back. [Game Arena]

Here's another view of the mining station on the planet.

And here's what you'll find when you start exploring. Uh oh, blood.

Serious uh oh — some kind of morphing yucko monster. As you can see in the video, there are some great robo-spider looking monsters too.

Plus, there is a comic book based on the game illustrated by the fucking awesome Ben Templesmith.

Look out for Dead Space this Halloween. And you can see a lot more cool artwork and video on the Dead Space site.

Dead Space [Official Site]

EA has formed a partnership with Starz Media to bring two different flavors of animated prequel to potential fans before the game is released at the end of this year. Spinning out of the current Image Comics prequel series, the animated movie will premiere in relative all-ages form on the Starz Channel in late September before being released as a re-edited, "harder", DVD through Anchor Bay Entertainment in October for those who like their cartoon heroes to swear and bleed.

The movie will be the first in a series of EA games to be adapted, according to Starz' David Greenberg:

We felt this one was the best one to launch with... We're really looking for this to be an event. We feel we'll attract the hardcore gamer, but we'll also get sci-fi and animation fans as well.

EA, Starz team for 'Space' [Hollywood Reporter]

One of the major launches for this week is Image Comics' adaptation of the upcoming EA video game Dead Space. With art by 30 Days of Night's Ben Templesmith and writing by friend-of-Alan-Moore Antony Johnston, the six-issue series gives you the backstory of just how the game's mysterious alien race (which possesses and transforms human beings into lumbering killer monsters) got loose in the first place. Murky art and murkier morality will undoubtedly come into play in this one.

For those who prefer their morally-compromised heroes to be much shinier, perhaps you'd be interested in Marvel's Iron Man: Demon In A Bottle, a new hardcover collection of the classic, overwrought 1980s storyline where industrialist-turned-armored avenger Tony Stark comes to terms with his alcoholism and realizes that 12-step programs are harder when you have boot jets. If there's a better way to prep for the upcoming Robert Downey Jr. movie, then it's not coming out this week.

Speaking of morally compromised heroes, DC's Wonder Woman lost some of her satin-tights sheen after she executed a baddie a few years ago. But she burst back onto the comics scene after a few months' absence in 2006, with a delay-plagued storyline from TV writer Allen Heinberg (The OC, Gray's Anatomy) that tried to redefine the character and remind you of why you liked her in the first place. The final result is collected in tomorrow's Wonder Woman: Who is Wonder Woman? hardcover, and — you'll be happy to know — it does include her changing identities by spinning around. Also, Darwyn Cooke returns to his most popular creation with a special one-off Justice League: The New Frontier issue, to promote last week's DVD release.

Marvel's big release of the week isn't actually the Iron Man book; instead, some guy called Stephen King is putting his stamp of approval on The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home, a new mini-series based on his series of novels. It's also a follow-up to last year's hyper-successful The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born mini-series. This one's by the same creative team (writers Robin Furth and Peter David with artists Jae Lee and Richard Isanove), and undoubtedly about to sell as many copies to eager King fans.

Marvel's also launching a new series starring your favorite time-traveling cyborg, Cable (written by novelist Dwayne Swiercynski). And a new Wolverine mini-series called Logan is getting attention due to the involvement of Brian K. Vaughan (Y The Last Man.) If all that new stuff bothers you, though, you could just pick up Secret Invasion Saga and get the background on that whole alien invasion thing they have going on over there.

As usual, you can read through the official list of books shipping to comic stores on Wednesday here and find out where your local comic store is here. Just watch out for spacemen trying to eat your brains.

You play through the game as weaponless systems engineer Isaac Clarke aboard the USG Ishimura, and not only to you have to survive the onslaught of demon hordes out in space, but you also have to seal up their doorway so they can't get back out. All in a day's work. It seems like spacefaring folks don't ever have things go that well. Just ask anyone in the Doom universe. However, we sure wouldn't mind having a Planetcracker to fly around.