Dead Space 1 is great as a survival horror, and 2 is great as a more 'action-y horror' (I'd say one of the best).
If you're not a fan of horror games they're not *too* scary. They're solid monster horror and whilst there are a few jump scares the third person view and slight ageing of the graphics should help offset that a bit.
Dead Space 1 totally nailed the vibe, for me. Sight, sound, the dev team did an amazing job. I had avoided any gameplay videos or any kind of spoilers, other than the normal trailer, so I went into the game blind. On the first play-through, not knowing how everything worked, the game was just... daunting.
There's one spot, fairly early, where you have to go into the morgue to get something from the captain's body. Standing at the doorway, you can see the trail you have to take (blocked out by body bags), to the smaller room where you have to go. I literally sat at the computer for several minutes, just looking around the (game) room, because I KNEW something was going to attack me when I went in. The entire atmosphere of the game was just amazing.
And of course, later play-throughs just didn't have that magic. You knew how to take down enemies, knew where the room borders were, where certain things wouldn't step out and follow you. But man, that first game was fantastic.