Noxious - Not Quite Dead Space

Full Sail University, apparently another student-fuelled game haven waiting to be pillaged, have overseen a small group's idea to produced a rather nicely designed Dead Space-inspired freebie. Noxious has a somewhat familiar plot of a scientist being trapped in a facility that, for some reason or other, contains deadly test subjects that have naturally escaped and are on the loose. I can forgive a well-travelled plot line if the game can make up for it in other ways.

The game doesn't hide it's Dead Space affection and the devs have stated quite plainly that it is DS inspired but don't hold that against it. Noxious is a very professionally designed game with a proper menu, decent music, help popup, skippable cutscenes and other trimmings you expect from a triple A title. The voice acting is shite as can be expected and the character model is a little wonky with no standing rotational animations and a woozy camera but it gets so many other things right that you just give it a pass. The controls are tweaked well, respond accordingly and that core gameplay is not easily achieved - this is where many games fail and Noxious does it right. I will be keeping an eye on Full Sail and look forward to what new treasures await.