Reanimated ‘Dead Space’ Is a Gruesome Body Horror Nightmare
Like it or not, we’re firmly entrenched in a sea of video game remakes. With the success of 2022’s The Last of Us Part I and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, alongside the upcoming Resident Evil 4, it’s clear that the trend is here to stay. But if there’s any game deserving of resurrection, it is EA’s 2008 horror classic Dead Space.
And like a corpse reanimated, 2023’s Dead Space brings the series back for the time since 2013’s Dead Space 3. In this complete retelling of the first game’s story, developers EA Motive have set out to rework that original title, with enough modernizations and quality of life improvements to justify its existence, even if some additions border on the excessive.
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Set in the year 2508, Dead Space follows engineer Isaac Clarke, on a mission to rescue his girlfriend from the doomed spaceship USG Ishimura. When he and his crew arrive, they find evidence of a massacre: the corridors pitch black with ominous messages scribbled in blood and mounds of rotting flesh piled up. It seems that the ship is devoid of any life — until mangled and mutated corpses dubbed Necromorphs begin pursuing the crew.
These bloody and aggressive monstrosities will stop at nothing to tear Isaac limb-from-limb, so he must fight his way through the Ishimura to restore power, while also uncovering what happened to the ship’s inhabitants. A feeling of slithering unease permeates the game’s atmosphere. It’s what made the 2008 original so effective. But not everything is the same.
For starters, in the original game, Isaac didn’t have any dialogue, remaining a silent protagonist throughout its entirety. Here he’s an active participant in conversation and interacts with the different crew members often. This makes him feel much more fleshed out this time around and not just a player avatar howling during a dismemberment animations.
The updated story also adds more context and characterization to Isaac’s crew, who are now more fully realized with deeper motivations for being on the Ishimura. Additionally, some of the ship’s layouts have been completely redesigned with new puzzles and traps. However, in the grand scheme, they’re often hard to notice, with minimal impact on the overall experience when compared to the original. The remake retains most story beats and order of exploration too, with little deviation in how events unfold.
The graphics receive the most noticeable upgrade from the original, completely remade from the ground up. Fluorescent lights and splattered flesh on the ship’s walls are incredibly detailed within the oppressive darkness making the environment a horrific spectacle to navigate. Isaac’s revamped suit design also alerts players to health and energy levels. However, among the whole suite of new graphical enhancements, sometimes the game can be too visually busy and essential items or pickups can be hard to find.
As in the original Dead Space, collectible text logs, ammunition, health packs, and upgrade nodes glowed green so that they’re easier to spot lying around. But since every aspect of the remake is meticulously detailed down to the flickering lights and bloom, the items blend into the environments much more. This makes the process of scrounging up supplies occasionally frustrating.
There are some new accessibility settings such as colorblind filters and subtitle options, but something akin to The Last of Us Part I’s high contrast mode would’ve made finding items much less difficult.
Moment-to-moment gameplay has also received smaller, but significant upgrades. Isaac still has a vast array of weapons to kill Necromorphs, but some now have alt-firing modes, expanding the possibilities of gory combat. Dismemberment is essential to core gameplay loop, as players must target enemy limbs to immobilize them for a kill shot or, more importantly, play crowd control during encounters with multiple foes. Limited ammunition forces you to continually cycle between different weapons, adding both urgency and variety that keeps the game from ever feeling stale.
This is where both the original and remade Dead Space prevail over their competition, namely spiritual successor The Callisto Protocol [a recent release from the original creator of Dead Space]. Isaac has limited mobility, but he’s able to isolate his enemies to pick them off one-by-one and make encounters manageable. Compared to the melee-focused combat of Callisto, where players could be easily (and frustratingly) overwhelmed, Dead Space benefits from having more fluidity and less unfair punishment.
Surviving an encounter with enemies always feels rewarding and being killed never feels cheap. The game strikes a careful balance between the stress of resource management and feeling just powerful enough to trudge on.
The game’s famous zero-gravity section also have been overhauled. In the original, Isaac could only jump from wall to wall to get to his objective and having to continually stop to aim in a different direction impeded the flow of the game. Now, Isaac can fire up the thrusters on his suit and freely float around. What was originally one of more weakly executed mechanics is now much smoother and more enjoyable.
There’s also additional end game content, including a New Game Plus mode for after finishing the story once, new collectibles that unlock an alternate ending, as well as a brutal permadeath mode, which give the game more replayability over the original.
Fifteen years on, 2008’s Dead Space is still a great game, and the remake achieves the same by standing on the shoulders of the original. The team at EA Motive put in an admirable effort to make it as faithful as possible while also modernizing the implementation. This game is recommended for diehard fans and newcomers alike – whether you’re revisiting or delving into the body horror nightmare for the very first time.
Dead Space launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on Jan 27. This review is based on the Xbox Series X version.
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