I remain convinced we’re in a transitionary period of gaming, for as it said in the Book of Revelations “And I beheld a great beast, and with its left hand did it smite the nonprofitable live services, and with its right hand did it stealth drop a remaster of Metroid Prime for some reason, and the lord spake, ‘Yea do we officially not know what you people want anymore. Here’s some remasters of shit you used to like while we await the day we can rip off some innovative indie game that inexplicably does gangbusters.” And then of course there’s the recent Dead Space remake. “First you re-review No Man’s Sky and now this,” I hear you cry. “What’s next, Yahtz, a Greatest Hits album? A clip show?” Well, I feel justified in tackling the remake on multiple fronts – firstly, the original Dead Space and my review of it was so many whiskey sours ago I can barely remember either, secondly the remake brings enough changes that I found I had sufficient new things to say, and thirdly, the longer I put off having to do Hogwarts Legacy the more time I have to shop around for glaziers I can hire after, like, nine diametrically opposed internet communities come over and smash all my windows.
And fourthly besides, Dead Space 1 is perfect remake fodder. We’re always saying, don’t remake stuff that was good in the first place, remake something that had a spark but didn’t quite reach its full potential. And that certainly was the impression I got rewatching my old review. Phew, you people are right, I did used to be a lot harsher on things. I spent five minutes kicking it just for being Resident Evil 4 in space and for having the characters and dialogue of a low budget original Syfy channel horror movie crafted from living turd. That led me to a Youtube longplay of the original game to refresh my memory, and oh Christ, I agree, past self. Leaving aside the fact that graphics from that era now look like slighty greasy sausagemeat in a packing facility where the workers all smoke too much, why is every voice actor delivering their lines like the bus home from the recording studio leaves in five minutes? And why is every character such an abrasive prick? That main female support NPC in particular, it’s like her whole job is to immediately and screechily disagree with whoever spoke last. I don’t know who the fuck pissed in HER cryosleep chamber humidifier.
So while the Dead Space remake is for a large part a copy paste of the game’s basic skeleton with shinier wallpaper slapped on, there have been many significant design tweaks to get more in line with modern sensibilities, including a complete rework of the story and dialogue. In brief, shit makes slightly more sense. I mean, it’s still rubbing up against the fact that it’s the Dead Space universe where every single human authority is either inexplicably corrupt or mad, to a degree beating out even the Alien and Resident Evil canons, but check it: the main female NPC now has a more nuanced personality than “insufferable paranoid bitch constantly demanding to speak to the manager.” And double check it: Isaac Clarke isn’t a silent protagonist anymore. So instead of being a mute idiot who keeps getting volunteered to go touch all the computers in the monster soft play area, now he’s a tryhard idiot who volunteers to go touch all the computers in the monster soft play area. Silent protagonists have always been a slightly immature approach to game narrative, and the remake has made the game more mature across the board. Isaac and his love interest now both look distinctly middle aged.
Which makes sense, I mean, they’re top-class professionals in their fields which would require decades of experience, they shouldn’t look like fucking twentysomethings on Spring break. This is the part where every fucking anime in the world makes awkward eye contact with each other. But while the individual dialogue lines and character arcs have been polished up, the broad strokes of the plot remain the same. Isaac Clarke, space engineer whose fashion sense lies somewhere between the Michelin Man and an Edwardian-era central heating system, comes to deep space mining vessel USG Ishimura to investigate a communications blackout that it turns out was caused by the crew finding something on an alien planet that was causing death and madness and deciding that trapping themselves in space with it would be a really whizzo idea. As I say, it’s the Dead Space canon, if you’re not corrupt or mad already you will be after the higherups tell you to invasively research the evil alien monster artefact to see if it can be repurposed to inexpensively manufacture Reeboks or something. So yeah, half the crew have become hideous monsters and the other half have gotten a wasting illness that makes all their arms and legs fly off if you lightly kick their bodies three times.
So the core gameplay and combat haven’t changed, it’s just, out with the loading screens, in with the very high contrast lighting. Refer to my review of the original for most of what’s worth knowing, pay particular attention to where I say the Ripper weapon is kinda OP, because that’s absolutely still the case. I can use one single shot of that thing to keep two necromorphs permastunlocked until they’re carved up like the inexpertly assembled Turduckens they somewhat resemble. But one significant change is that new weapons are now lying around rather than bought from the shop. A change I support, ‘cos it meant I didn’t have to blow all my savings to try out the beam laser and discover it to be a useless pile of unused Ikea components. Another significant change is that the zero gravity sections have shifted to the omnidirectional freeflying that the sequels had rather than that thing where you point to a wall and torpedo over to it like M. Bison. And honestly I support this change a lot less. Dawdling around in freeflight like a frog tied to a balloon just feels like you put Noclip on; the original method at least required some creative thinking, and I liked how it made me feel like a great big poo being flushed down a perfectly straight pipe, although I suppose I’d need the original graphics to get the full effect.
Another thing worth mentioning is that I played the PC version this time and made the command decision to use mouse and keyboard since the combat loves accurate aiming so bloody much, and lo and behold, the combat became completely trivial. Point at the elbows, click click click. Then get the ripper out and use it to point out that they forgot to tie their shoelaces. But this came with the tradeoff of the GUI controls now sucking cosmic quantities of ass. Apparently adding a mouse pointer to those fancy-pants in-universe menu screens wasn’t in line with the creative vision or something so you have to unhand the mouse and navigate with the cursor keys like it’s Microsoft fucking Word. So, do I recommend Dead Space Redismembered? Well that’s the weird thing. About halfway through I realised I completely wasn’t engaged. Even the jumpscares didn’t startle me much. I did know the entire plot ahead of time, but my immersion was also being hit by the GUI problem and the mouse aiming making things so easy I could use my free hand to compile last year’s tax documents. Honestly, I wonder if the characters being more reasonable non-pricks with adequate voice acting made them less interesting. Sensible is nice but prick is what gets attention. I have that written over the hole in my bathroom door.
