A remake after 15-years
The Callisto Protocol was released about a month ago and it was supposed to be a spiritual successor to Dead Space -games. But now, Dead Space Remake was released I couldn’t be more exited about that. I’m a huge Dead Space fan and those games were something I played a lot back in PS3-era. So, is this Remake any good? Can it be as good as the original?
The horror show begins
As the name tells, Dead Space takes place in space. A team of five answers a stress call coming from space station Ishimura. When they arrive, they crash land to the Ishimura duea to a malfunction. Now their ship broken, they go investigate the station, quickly realizing it has been taken over by Necromorphs; a horrible monsters made from the dead Ishimura workers. The team separates and tries to find the way out of the place.
That’s the main plot of Dead Space and it starts pretty strong with first of the crew member dying in the hands of a Necromorph. The game doesn’t slowly walk player to the horrors of the station, but rather quickly dumping everything on. The story was good, it has enough highs and lows to keep me interested the whole playthrough. It even had few very good plot twists in the end. What made Dead Space Remake more interesting was the main character Isaac, who now speaks in the Remake. In the original game Isaac was silent protagonist. I think it made sense that he talks, because the conversations and other interactions was so much more tense and gave Isaac a nice character.
GAMEPLAY, CONTROLS, ENEMIES, GRAPHICS AND SOUND
Gameplay-wise Dead Space is almost the same as the original, with some additions. As the gameplay consist of going from place to place and do tasks and killing enemies along the way, there’s also side missions added to fledge out the story even more. I didn’t do all the side missions, but a few of them and they opened up the story nicely. All the places in the game are not fully opened, you get upgrades to up your levels and then certain areas opens up to you, also some boxes and lockers are closed behind certain access level. There were lots of locked doors that needed some special key to be opened, I didn’t find those in my first playthrough.
The weapons in the game are the same, but I mostly used just three out of seven. The suit and weapon upgrade is nice and compact and nothing sort of confusing, like in some other games. I mostly just upgraded my suit and the three weapons I only used. Dead Space didn’t have any “annoying” parts, but maybe those were the parts where I had to fly in zero-gravity and kill enemies at the same time were little bit more difficult to do at the same time. Also the enemies were supposed to be killed by shooting their tentacles or limbs off, by just shooting them in the body didn’t harm them that much, that also were sometimes difficult to do. Overall, I didn’t find Dead Space to be too difficult for me. It also has lots of difficulty settings, so everything for everyone.
Controls were the same as in the original, Isaac can use guns, hit and stomp enemies, fly in zero-gravity and use Stasis, which is a kinesis that can temporarily freeze enemies and throw objects. Everything is very simple, yet effective. Natively the game is set to perform in 60fps and I think it is better that way, even though the graphics takes a hit. But the game is such fast paces that playing in 30fps might make it little bit more difficult.
As I said, the game is not filled with extra things and so are the enemies. There are probably a handful of enemy types which made the game little bit predictable, but I liked that there weren’t million variant of enemies running around. One odd thing I have to say about the final boss of the game; it had probably a bug. Because two of my weapons I had didn’t reach the enemy so I couldn’t hit it. All of my other ammo was used and everything I had was a flamethrower and a shotgun-like weapon, but they ammo didn’t reach the boss so I had to start it over and pray that my ammo would last all the way to the end.
Visually, Dead Space looks amazing. I played the first half the game with 60fps (with lower quality of graphics) and the other half with 30fps (better graphics). I did saw a huge difference in the graphics. The game had such a great play with the light and shadows, smoke and spark effects, so at times it almost looked like a movie scene. All the gore when killing enemies (or Isaac) were such detailed. The enviroment was also detailed and it really felt like a place where people had lived and worked.
I played this with wireless 3D headseats and it is almost must to do so, because I could hear the enemies where they were, but sometimes they managed to surprise me from behind. All the ambient sounds and rattle and clatter in the airvents around me gave me anxiety. The game had a very good music and effects and it was very movie-like.
The final stomp
Dead Space was a really well-made Remake of an already great game. It had new additions but they weren’t overpowering the original idea, rather additing more details to the characters and story. I did enjoy this game very much and it also wasn’t overly difficult to play. A game that I like to 100%. Dead Space was not just a new coat of paint, but a perfeclty made Remake. Others should take a note.
Dead Space is available on PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X|S and PC.
(Review copy kindly provided by the publisher)
SCORE:
5/5
“The game had such a great play with the light and shadows, smoke and spark effects, so at times it almost looked like a movie scene.”
One More Level 