Dead Space opens with you strapped into the seat of a space ship while a few crew members walk around the bridge, John McCain-like, delivering exposition about how you're all going to rescue an outpost that's gone mysteriously incommunicado*. Then the ship crashes into the outpost in question. Oops. You get out and walk into the outpost and which point the game starts. There, in the very first room, someone has left 2500 space bucks (!) sitting on a shelf. Which you pocket, of course. There isn't a player alive who isn't going to take that money.

It strikes me as clumsy that your first act in Electronic Arts' horror game is looting. In front of other people. Who say nothing about it. Before there's any sort of economy in the game. What are you even going to do with this money? Is it a lot? A little? Did it belong to the couple in the picture sitting next to the space bucks? Was it money they were saving to send their children to space college?

Dead Space was obviously built to immerse you in the world, without a layer of stuff between you and the game. But nothing screams, "Hey, you're in a videogame!" like 2500 space bucks of seed money just sitting there waiting for you to press A to take it.

I'm not very far into Dead Space, and I don't mean to make too much of an issue of the 2500 space bucks. But since then, I've hunted for a key card, used bullet time, and salvaged space ammo from the bodies of space monsters. Maybe Dead Space gets less gamey as it goes on. But if you want to see how a videogame can effectively remove the usual layer of stuff between you and the game, you're going to have to wait until next week's Far Cry 2. There's not a game out there that couldn't learn a thing or two from Far Cry 2.

* Man, if I had a nickel for every time that happened...