It’s no secret that i’m a huge sucker for survival horror games, games like The Last of Us, Alan Wake II, Resident Evil 4, etc. are all present in the list of my favorite games of all time. So naturally Dead Space was a game I always wanted to check out, especially because of the space aspect. When I learned of this remake a few years ago I knew it would be my chance to finally check it out, and man did it deliver.

In Dead Space, you play as Isaac Clarke, a engineer who along with his crew must investigate the sudden and mysterious communications failure of the mining ship USG Ishimura. Isaac has his own separate motivations for going to the ship, as he wants to find his girlfriend Nicole, whom he hasn’t seen in years. When Isaac and the crew arrive at the ship things begin to go wrong. There is seemingly no one on board the ship, and it clearly looks heavily damaged. As the crew begins to investigate their met face to face with Necromorphs, Dead Space’s zombie equivalent. What makes the Necromorphs unique however is that you can’t just pump all of your bullets into them in order to kill them, you must cut off their limbs instead. The plot is a pretty simple survival horror plot, as Isaac must achieve several tasks to get closer and closer to being able to escape the Ishimura, but the game uses its material so well that it’s ends up evolving past the simplicity as more things are introduced.

Dead Space excels most in its visuals and atmosphere. The narrow hallways of the Ishimura are all highly detailed, all filled with things like scratch marks, blood stains, or simple posters from before the Necromorphs came to be. One of my favorite things about Dead Space is its HUD, or lack of a HUD in all actuality. Dead Space does not have a HUD like most typical games, instead it spreads the elements of a HUD across the environment, things like the health bar and stasis meter are shown on Isaac’s back, your ammo count is shown when you aim, an interactable item will actually show a prompt to press the button to interact with it, etc. The sound design in Dead Space is absolutely phenomenal as well, each action has its own detailed and distinct sound that adds extra depth to each action. One of the most fascinating things i learned about this game is that the developers spent lots of time studying people in Isaac’s age range to see how they respond in moments of fear, and used the data to accurately represent how Isaac’s heart beats in moments of fear during the game such as combat or when he’s at low health.

The weapon variety in Dead Space was astounding to me, each weapon is its own new creation instead of the typical pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, etc. Instead the game gives you weapons like plasma cutters, force blasters, and the ripper, which shoots saw blades. The creativity in these weapon types helps give Dead Space even more of its own unique identity and overall makes combat more interesting.

In short, I’m obviously a sucker for survival horror games, so it’s no shocker that I absolutely adored my time with Dead Space. It’s plot is simple, but uses its material insanely well, the unique weapons provide for an interesting combat system, and the visuals/sound design are just absolutely phenomenal. Without a doubt one of my all time favorite games.

overall it's a phenomenal remake if you're a fan of the original you should play it since i beat this whole thing in 3 days so i was having a pretty hard time putting the game down. however as much as i'd wanna give it a 5/5 i can't because on pc this thing runs pretty horrible, i had to fix my nivida settings and add other things and it would still constantly stutter throughout every chapter, it would end up killing my immersion in the game. other than that i had no other issues with the game, it still has a good story, obviously, now the graphics are an upgrade and look phenomenal and the game mechanics are amazing (thank you god they did zero gravity you can just fly around and not have to pick a specific spot that shit was a nightmare in the original).