The original Dead Space from 2008 has been a personal favorite of mine for many years. The setting, pacing, and structure felt very fresh and well planned especially for those times. I was a little cautious of the newly released remake, mainly due to EA's current reputation, and was not initially planning on playing through this story again. But I saw the positive buzz and decided to go for it and am pleased to say that it is a great showing and a good improvement on all the baseline factors that made the original game great.
The gameplay is very tight if keeping to standard 3rd person horror shooter conventions. The combat is tense and focused in short adrenaline rush fueled bursts of hectic gameplay. This is all fueled by the best in class atmosphere and sound design. The massive, monster overrun ship you are exploring is literally breaking at the seams, creaking, busting pipes, falling debris, etc. all add to the tension that the game is trying to build. As you get to later sections of the game you begin to hear screams and whispers constantly as the main character starts to fall under the effects of the marker, the alien artifact that was brought on board and caused all this carnage.
The story of dead Space is your typical sci-fi horror dreck. As previously mentioned this seemingly dangerous marker was brought on to the ship because the captain and many of the commanding officers are members of the church of unitology, a religion that believes these markers will help them transcend to the next plane of existence, or something like that. The game does a great job through text and audio logs explaining why this church and religion is dangerous and is mostly based around tricking their flock into donating money and possessions while hoarding power. For all effective purposes they are Scientology.
I do hope that this leads to some new games and experiences within the dead space universe. While there are now a few more examples of this genre done right, Prey (2017) being the main example, this is still an area that can see some exciting and great new developments in the years to come.
The gameplay is very tight if keeping to standard 3rd person horror shooter conventions. The combat is tense and focused in short adrenaline rush fueled bursts of hectic gameplay. This is all fueled by the best in class atmosphere and sound design. The massive, monster overrun ship you are exploring is literally breaking at the seams, creaking, busting pipes, falling debris, etc. all add to the tension that the game is trying to build. As you get to later sections of the game you begin to hear screams and whispers constantly as the main character starts to fall under the effects of the marker, the alien artifact that was brought on board and caused all this carnage.
The story of dead Space is your typical sci-fi horror dreck. As previously mentioned this seemingly dangerous marker was brought on to the ship because the captain and many of the commanding officers are members of the church of unitology, a religion that believes these markers will help them transcend to the next plane of existence, or something like that. The game does a great job through text and audio logs explaining why this church and religion is dangerous and is mostly based around tricking their flock into donating money and possessions while hoarding power. For all effective purposes they are Scientology.
I do hope that this leads to some new games and experiences within the dead space universe. While there are now a few more examples of this genre done right, Prey (2017) being the main example, this is still an area that can see some exciting and great new developments in the years to come.