Video Game Review: Dead Space Remake
A remake for the original Dead Space, and one that looks gorgeous, is faithful to the original, fixes annoying aspects, and even adds to the game more than 15 years later.
The original Dead Space and its sequels are a series that I have played through to completion a couple of times now and they never fail to jumpscare me and make me feel uneasy while roaming the halls of the Ishimura. The remake takes the original and brings it to the year 2023 flawlessly, the updated graphics alone should show how far the gaming industry has come in the last decade and a half, the difference between the two games is staggering to look at especially with the new fully voiced Isaac guiding the player and the other crew members of the Kellion.
Now onto the game itself, Dead Space is a horror/survival game in which the main character Isaac Clarke needs to survive hordes of zombies called necromorphs while fixing the various systems of the ship in hopes to eventually escape the madness that was once the flagship planet cracker named the USG Ishimura.
The gameplay of the original has been vastly improved with the necromorphs being much more numerous, dangerous, and sneaky. For example in my first couple hours of the game I got caught off guard about 3 or 4 times by the necromorphs. There are many differences from the original that can only be truly appreciated by playing them back to back since the graphics and the newly introduced fast travel system are great changes that are commonplace in the gaming industry now but might not have been back when the original was the top dog. Another example of improvement would be the movement since the remake takes the best pieces from the first two games and molds them into one, for example the sprint button in the original was wonky and hard to use at the best of times with Isaac being reminiscent of trying to move around an 18 wheeler which makes running away from the fast and agile necromorphs a pain but the remake makes it much better which is important since they have done the same thing to the necromorphs. In zero-g or vacuum environments they have also made Isaac more maneuverable since he has access to the enhanced mobility thrusters that were the staple of the second game and which make Isaac the dominant force in those environments since the necromorphs have to rely on stealth, camouflage, and ambush tactics much like the piece of media that they were likely based off of, the Xenomorph from the Alien series.
There is also an entirely new mechanic that is exclusive to the remake which is a peeling mechanic which has certain weapons like the flamethrower, force gun, and the prototype stasis module peel the skin and muscles off of necromorphs and make them much weaker to precision weapons like the plasma cutter, line gun, and pulse rifle. This mechanic is imperative to getting through the game on medium or higher since it saves you a lot of ammo with some of the elite necromorphs requiring 3-4 hits to the limbs in order to cut them off which isn’t ideal when in some of the later chapters you have multiple of them chasing you down. This mechanic just might be one of the goriest parts of the game since the peeling of the necromorphs tears off all of their skin, muscles, and tendons leaving them with only their bones which walk around as they’re puppeted by the marker’s power. This feature is very gruesome, but if you want to see it in its full glory I recommend the force gun or the prototype stasis since it’s much more noticeable using these weapons if you’re into this kind of thing.
Since Isaac is now a fully voiced character with his quippy dialogue taking center stage along with the returning cast from the first game the remake vastly benefits since Isaac is now able to provide direction to the other characters which in turn gives info to the player in a much more organic way than just having Hammond or Daniels being a know it all, instead having the head ship engineer being the one who knows how to fix the ship. Isaac’s dialogue and that of the other characters is one of the game’s high points mostly because it is a pause from being constantly bombarded by necromorphs which use every tactic in the book to kill you and add you to the horde, the dialogue also reflects the setting very well since it is very organic and flows with the narrative masterfully since you are never confused as to what you’re doing unless the characters are in the same boat as you. And in my opinion that is one of the biggest reasons why this game is a success over the original since it feels much better to have the story shown to you in this way rather than people always telling you what to do like a lap dog. There is another aspect that was added to Isaac’s dialogue that you might notice throughout the game, whenever Isaac is healthy, exhausted, or injured his dialogue changes with him being either audibly exhausted or injured depending on his health this mechanic just makes the game more realistic since it isn’t crazy that Isaac would want a nap after battling a brute.
Now for the stuff that isn’t good or even great which are the glitches, I have only seen a few of them throughout my playthrough but most of them are the game breaking kind with some of the batteries that are imperative to progressing in some areas sometimes not spawning which makes you have to reload a save which if you’re playing on impossible does indeed make that save impossible to complete.
One example of these types of glitches is in the hallway right after going through the morgue where the windows get busted out of the ship and it sucks most of the furniture out, in my game it also sucked out the battery that I needed to progress which made me redo the entire section from right after you destroy the barricade with the hydrazine bomb, these glitches aren’t the end all be all in most cases but they are extremely frustrating, my personal recommendation is that you save every time you come across a save station it might save you a headache. However, some of the glitches in the game are entertaining with necromorphs sometimes getting stuck inside of doors and walls and freaking out because of it, these are the most common when you consistently use the force gun.
There are some other problems with the game like the section when you go to hydroponics that feel like complete filler since in this section you’re tasked with taking out some new enemies called wheezers but this section just feels like filler compared to the fight with the leviathan that comes right after, don’t get me wrong it’s good that the boss isn’t the only thing that this area is used for but it could’ve been executed much better. However, hydroponics is full of good scares, large zero-g areas, and even some comedic moments like shutting down the forest ambience to power the doors which upsets the leviathan in the next room over.
All in all the Dead Space remake is a vast improvement over the original with Isaac being a fully voiced character, being more maneuverable, having more health, and just generally being funny to listen to. Other than Isaac the game benefits from the streamlined upgrade system, peeling mechanic with weapons like the flamethrower and force gun, and the increased level of darkness in the game which make the scares much more impactful. If you ever think of playing this game I recommend you try it on lower difficulties since if you start out on some of the higher ones without being experienced in this franchise than I guarantee that you will die more than you want to, and make good use of the peeling mechanic which I didn’t during my playthrough.