EITHEROriginally released in 2008, Dead Space was EA’s sci-fi riff on 2005’s Resident Evil 4. It took revolutionary design ideas from Shinji Mikami’s horror masterpiece: the over-the-shoulder perspective, tense control combat of mobs and zombies that weren’t really zombies, and blasted them into a remote corner of the cosmos, swapping out the virus-infected villagers for mutated alien necromorphs. The results were darkly exciting, but they couldn’t completely escape the light of Resi 4’s glowing star.
Fifteen years later, with much more distance from Mikami’s game, Dead Space is easier to appreciate on its own merits. This review, from EA’s Motive studio, is a surprisingly understated affair, resisting the temptation to compliment the game with modern flourishes. Instead, it streamlines the experience, altering the design of the doomed spaceship USG Ishimura so that players can traverse it and its many horrors without issue. It’s a remake that embraces the tense pacing and powerful forward drive of the original, and it’s all the better for it.
EA’s Frostbite technology has allowed Motive to inscribe more detail into the beleaguered mining ship, while carefully preserving the industrial aesthetic and oppressive atmosphere of the original. The gruesome stunt of killing enemies by lopping off their limbs is now even more gory, as space engineer Isaac Clarke’s weaponized engineering tools rip chunks of flesh from necromorphs with each explosion. Isaac now speaks, and though he says few important things, his pragmatic remarks make more sense than stubborn silence. A more impactful design change allows Isaac to float freely during the zero-gravity sections of the game, which helps make his brief forays outside of Ishimura stand out.
A rewrite of the script adds some side quests meant to develop characters like Isaac’s elusive girlfriend Nicole and the deranged Dr. Mercer. The climactic plot twist has also been tweaked, though the overall effect of the gut-wrenching final reveal remains the same. Neither of these narrative changes substantially improves things (this game was never intended as an introspective character piece), but neither does it make it worse.
Dead Space remains a breathtaking sci-fi roller coaster: from the moment the first necromorph bursts out of a ceiling vent and chases you into the bowels of Ishimura, the game wraps its claws around your adrenal glands and drain them until dry. It constantly pushes you into increasingly intense battles, demanding that you dismember these jerking horrors with surgical precision. He also excels at keeping you on your toes, often depriving you of sound, gravity, oxygen, sometimes all three, to intensify combat.
And while his human protagonist may be simply drawn, the Ishimura has character to spare. Each chapter focuses on a different function of the ship, combining objectives clearly related to Isaac’s role as an engineer with exciting sci-fi problems, such as repairing the ship’s anti-asteroid defenses while giant space rocks threaten to crush you or dislodge a giant. . Necromorph blocking the communications matrix. Where modern blockbusters are often overwhelmed by bloated worlds or predatory business models, Dead Space cuts right to the chase.
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