I have a strange relationship with Dead Space. I missed the original when it came out, because at the time I was in high school, I had no money, and my parents had no money. When I finally managed to get an Xbox 360, it red-ringed on me too many times and as a result, I came to this generation late, only really starting in 2012 when I got my PS3. I went back to the original Dead Space originally in 2015, played a little and stopped. I went back in 2016, played a little and stopped. I went back one more time in 2017, played a little more and ultimately stopped.

Why? I'm not exactly sure. I can tell you then and I can tell you especially now, having beaten this remake from start to finish that for reasons I may need a therapist to truly understand, I don't love this game.

I like the atmosphere. I like the limb mechanic. I like stasis. I love survival horror. What's missing? I guess for me, it's hard not to look at the Resident Evil franchise, specifically Capcom's modern output, but really Resident Evil 4 (2005) and on. They play similarly, third-person, over the shoulder, action emphasis with horror, slow-ish movement, creature enemies. Yet I find Resident Evil way more compelling. I'm not comparing the two and definitely stating that one is better than the other; it's all subjective, anyway. But I think analyzing what I like more about Resident Evil educates myself on what I don't like as much about Dead Space.

For starters, I've heard that the Ishimura is this great setting and a character unto itself, and I....disagree? What I did like was some of the environmental storytelling, specifically with the in-game cult (that's also really the only part of the story I found interesting). There was also additional story littered throughout the game but delivered in different ways, like text or audio or video logs, but I couldn't be bothered to care about any of it. And I tried. I even did some side mission content but didn't care about any of that either. With Resident Evil, the characters feel a bit more established, especially the protagonists. I don't feel attached to Isaac at all in this. Resident Evil has diary pages and the like that help flesh out some story, but a lot of it is presented to you in more straight forward fashion. Here, this game felt like its story was throwing as many setbacks as humanly possible (to a nearly laughable degree) to your character and flooding you with enemies to elongate your time with the game. And that's not a completely bad thing because a lot of the gameplay is fun. But it gets tiring.

My criticisms aside, I don't want to give the game lower than a 3.5 because I did have fun with it, and I recognize that it's a good game, but I also recognize that it's just not one that I really connect with. And that's probably just a me thing.