Dead Space | PS5 Review

Like it or not, we are in the age of the video game remake. Every other major release these days seems to be either a remake or reimagining, no matter the publisher. So it would make sense that EA would resurrect Dead Space, despite not even a decade ago claiming it was a disappointing and unpopular franchise. While the corpse of Visceral Games isn’t even cold yet, EA charged Motive with remaking a game the publisher claimed missed every sales target in front of it. Business is weird.

Blood and Rage

Dead Space is the same tale of engineer Isaac Clarke being sent to investigate a distress call from the USG Ishimura. His girlfriend Nicole is on board, making this a very personal mission. It may surprise you to learn that things do not go as planned. Necromoprhs (space zombies) are everywhere, and most of the crew is dead. Isaac is desperate to find Nicole, and your crewmates are desperate to get off this death trap.

The biggest difference in this version of the game is Isaac’s ability to speak. While Isaac was chatty cathy full of bad ideas in Dead Space 2 and 3, he was curiously mute in the first game. I’m a massive fan of Dead Space, but it always bugged the absolute hell out of me that Isaac was a silent protagonist. It just always stood out as outrageously awkward that this engineer never had anything to say about a derelict spaceship in obvious need of repairs. It also makes the very personal plot twists later in the game land more humorously than seriously when the guy barely even shakes his head.

This has been remedied here, and it makes the presentation of the story a lot better. Isaac Clarke is now an active protagonist, coming up with the ideas on how best to get the ship back to running order. While I have some qualms in the revised plot revealing way too much way too early, that may be a complaint only older fans will have. Although some of the text and audio logs straight up give away some twists long before the characters learn the information, so maybe not.

Crimson Red

As great as the lore and characters are, Dead Space is far more about its atmosphere. The Ishimura is one of the great haunted houses of video games, and the remake makes it even better. The increased technical fidelity is obviously nice, but the lighting takes it to the next level. The darkness is truly haunting, and you’ll often have to rely on the scarce ambient light or your own flashlight. It creates a constant sense of terror and dread. You never feel safe from enemies, not even while browsing the shop, and that’s the way it should be.

A Corpse so Freshly Dead

The atmosphere is heightened by the creepy blood graffiti littering most walls, and by the bodies strewn about everywhere. The bodies tell a story of how these people might have died, sure, but they also might be a necropmorph lying in wait. Necromorphs can get at you anywhere, through vents or behind a locked door, and in that way Dead Space keeps you tense.

Battling Necromorphs is every bit as fun as it’s always been. Contrary to just about every video game out there, headshots don’t count for a damned thing. It’s always been about dismemberment, as the iconic tutorial graffiti “Cut off their limbs” will attest. Thankfully, an engineer is primed for this exact task. The frantic nature of trying to hit the wide variety of enemies in their different weak spots makes for some of the most intense and engaging combat in the horror genre.

Our Hellish Hate

Most of the weapons in the game serve a practical, engineering purpose, and Mr. Bad Idea Isaac Clarke knows just how to turn them into murder machines. The first and best weapon is, of course, the plasma cutter. Designed to assist with cutting metal quickly, it also rips through bones like butter. Most of the weapons are clever like this, such as space buzz saw The Ripper, which keeps a blade spinning in mid-air several feet ahead of you. I don’t want to go through every weapon, but I found so much fun with all of them.

In fact, I used weapons I never even touched in the original release. This is because of one of Dead Space’s smartest tweaks. Instead of buying weapons from the store as in the original game, here they’re put on the narrative path. This sounds like a pretty small tweak, but it totally transforms your relationship to them. In every instance, you’re given the weapon and then a scenario in which that weapon works best. You get the flamethrower before being confronted by tiny, crawling swarms, for instance. It’s brilliant design and it deserves to be commended.

We’ll Burn You All

In fact, Dead Space makes myriad intelligent changes to the original game. You can now backtrack through the Ishimura instead of it being wholly linear, and while there’s only maybe once or twice where you really need to outside of the story path, it nonetheless makes the ship feel more like a real space.

Zero-G sections of the original release were a clunky point-and-jump affair, but here in the remake they’re fully 3D, allowing you to fly around freely. This brings with it completely reworked puzzles and combat scenarios in these sections, so there’s a lot here that’ll be fresh for returning fans. In fact, these were some of the best parts of the game, somehow improving a bonafide classic game.

That is Your Fate

That’s the biggest takeaway from my time with Dead Space. It somehow took one of the greatest action horror titles ever made, and improved upon it in almost every way. My biggest fanboy complaint is that Isaac no longer looks his age. The character is almost fifty, and has a full head of gray hair in all the other games, so it’s super weird to see him with brown hair and looking younger here. If that’s my biggest complaint, that should speak to the quality of this remake. Actually, calling it a remake is a bit of a disservice, because so much of the story and puzzling is changed around. Dead Space is sure to be one of the best games of the year, and nobody should skip it.

This review is based on a purchased copy of Dead Space on PlayStation 5. It is also available on Xbox and Microsoft Windows.