Dead Space Remake Review – I’ve Never Been So Grateful To Be On A Dying Ship

Somehow, I’ve found myself becoming quite the Survival Horror mark. As part of this job you tend to play a lot of genres, but there’s just something magical about the survival horror genre- something that pulls me in almost as much as a good souls like or fighting game.

Dead Space Remake further clamps down on that feeling. By being a ground-up remake of one of the most innovative survival horror titles of its time, it’s poised to reintroduce that same brand of brutalist sci fi to the world that caught so many peoples’ eyes and made the original a cult classic to begin with.

Admittedly, there are some doubts to be had- With the original game’s studio Visceral Games gone, there’s that fear that Motive wouldn’t be able to replicate that same fetishistic reverence for gore Visceral had. Is that fear warranted? Read on and find out.

Body Horror And Combat

Dead Space Remake has a hypnotic stranglehold on me much like any good survival horror should. Isaac Clarke is exploring the ruined USG Ishimura, a massive spaceship overrun with the vile Necromorphs. The world is dark, it’s grimy and it’s kind of beautiful, in a way. While looking much busier than its original, it’s designed in that kind of specular-heavy art direction that really amps up the horror angle.

In fact, that’s probably the most glaring thing you’d see if you were coming from the original Dead Space- the game seems very much more focused on selling that spooky atmosphere, with overall darker environments and a bigger reliance on the flashlight as a result to create that “zombie in the headlights” kind of aesthetic.

While it definitely looks good in screenshots, I do have some minor gripes with this from a gameplay perspective. The darkness can be a bit of a pain when it comes to the smaller necromorphs, since if they’re not in your direct cone of vision they may as well be invisible. Even in survival horror, cheap attacks feel unfair, and having enemies crawling on the floor when it’s too dark to see them definitely evokes that sentiment.

Still, the actual combat of Dead Space Remake is very much that iconic gameplay we all know and love. By having you target anything but the head, the Dead Space series forces itself into your memory as a unique experience. Heck, I’ve been playing the games since Dead Space 2 and still found myself having to force myself to not aim for the head.

Further driving up the point of the game is the Plasma Cutter- easily God’s gift to handguns. Letting you control whether you slice vertically or horizontally, you can do amazing things just slicing off the limbs of Slashers before using the game’s Kinesis system to chuck the blades like a spear, pinning them to a wall.

It works well with one of the Remake’s shiny new toys- the “Peeling system”. Unlike the original Dead Space games which just had enemies kind of flinch on hit, the Peeling System allows for chunks of the Necromorph’s body to be blown off on hit.

Yeah, it’s kind of a gimmick you don’t notice after the first few hours but I prefer it as a fun kind of visual feedback. You really appreciate it with some of the later guns, too. Considering the Force Gun isn’t any kind of slicing weapon, knowing that it’s actually blown the flesh off a Necromorph is a good way to know it does more than just play Christopher Nolan trailers at people.

In the spirit of fairness, there are some comparisons to be made with fellow Dead Space send-up, The Callisto Protocol. Comparatively, Dead Space’s combat feels much, much more defensive. Isaac has no dodge, meaning that you’ll need to be smart about keeping your distance from targets like it was the summer of 2020. It’s not like he has no close range options though- the melee and stomp are both great tools, but compared to Callisto you definitely won’t be eagerly running into combat to save ammo.

Does Dead Space need high intensity brawler combat? Of course not. But as any Survival Horror veteran will likely tell you, it’s definitely better to keep a distance when you can.

The Joys of Survival Horror

Speaking of the genre, Dead Space is just chock-loaded with all the best tropes of it. The same sense of exploration is there, as Isaac traverses the ruined Ishimura looking for ammo, money and Power Nodes, all the while marking locations of upgrade stations and shops.

I especially love how many times the game changes its own gameplay. From time-limited space walks to zero gravity (now with boosted flight like the later games), Dead Space knows to make sure you’re always playing the game- not just walking around listening to chatter.

Even things like resource management feel great to do. The game’s limited ammo really encourages you to play experimentally, sometimes even letting yourself die and reloading a checkpoint to get a cleaner run with some encounters.

I feel like that’s really the hallmark of good survival horror. While yes, running out of ammo is a punishment, the systems of which you mitigate it actually feel fun to do. Checkpoints are frequent enough that you rarely feel like you’re losing too much progress if you decide to roll the dice again. The game, in turn, has its own pool of scenarios to draw from, so that you’re not memorizing exact enemy placements, but refining your actual skill to deal with them as cleanly as possible.

My only real gripe comes in the form of what they’ve done to supply closets: In previous Dead Space games, they were Node-operated, letting you spend one of you Power Nodes to access extra supplies, health, et cetera. That’s not so much the case in Remake, where they’ve instead been replaced with a story-gated Security Level system. How it works is that different points in the story will cause Isaac’s security level to go up, which will allow him to unlock more doors. Storygating exploration always sucks, and this really isn’t an exception. So much of this genre revolves around rewarding your own skill. With the Security Levels, your ability to access loot closets is instead solely dependent on if you’ve seen a cutscene or not.

The one good use out of it though is the Master Level itself- this is a much more in-genre mechanic, where Isaac needs to essentially find hidden collectibles to unlock this specific type of door. Yes, you will need to unlock every zone to get it, but the fact that one of the steps requires you to take time out of the story to go wandering for the pieces of senior officer RIGs makes it feel like an earned reward. Does that justify the rest of the security level system? Not really.

Quality of Un-Life

Of course, being a remake on a new engine, there’s plenty of new quality of life features going for Dead Space Remake too. We’d already covered the boost function when floating. Considering one of the game’s puzzles is a zero G one, you wouldn’t believe how godsent this change really is.

There’s also the upgrades themselves- rather than have rewards be on fixed nodes on the tech tree, they’ve been reworked so that every level now actually gives some kind of improvement. Even if they’re not all game-changers, it’s always nice to feel like you’re actually making progress, rather than being stuck in the “I’m 2/3 of the way to getting my reload speed up” trap.

The other big change is to the story itself. While the major beats are the same, Motive has taken time to kind of change up the approach for the story. Isaac’s crew actually have motivations now, and feel like more than just ticking timebombs to gory death scenes. It’s done in a way that’s subtle enough that you wouldn’t really notice the changes at first- since the story is very much still centered around Isaac, Unitology and his quest to find Nicole.

I really appreciate the restraint shown in bringing Dead Space back to life like this. When following up a studio like Visceral, I imagine there would have been at least a little temptation to do some grand change to make the series “your own”. Instead, Motive went with what you’re supposed to do with a remake. Present a game the way it made you feel the first time you played it, with a few under-the-hood tweaks to account for rose tinted memory.

Closing Thoughts

Suffice to say, I had a blast with Dead Space Remake. It’s a great example of a game that’s fundamentally solid, alternating between new ideas and well-executed classics. It’s got personality, with its HUD-less screen and array of mining tools in lieu of actual firearms. The fact the Remake so effectively brings it to new audiences is an absolute blessing, since there still hasn’t been a survival horror game quite the same flavor as Dead Space.

It’s got flaws for sure- for as gorgeous as everything is, it’s missing that weird fetishistic love for gore that Visceral showed in all their work. But as I continue to adventure along the wreckage of the Ishimura, it’s hard to not just take a deep breath and be so glad for the return of such a beloved series.

Dead Space Remake Score

Game reviewed on PS5. Review code provided by EA.

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