Virtual 100 – Game 18
I have a confession; I never beat the original Dead Space. I… honestly, didn’t even really like it that much. I beat Dead Space 2. I even beat Dead Space 3.
But that first one broke me.
The first Dead Space was amazing. At the time, Resident Evil was starting to get a bit ridiculous with RE5 and RE6, and Dead Space gave us the tense creepy atmosphere we felt that Capcom had all but abandoned. And we ate that shit up.
I excitedly bought that game and booted it up and loved it, at first. Then over the course of the game, my excitement began to wane. By the time I got to the final few chapters, I just wanted it to be over with. Then I got to where I had to move that damn Marker, and I was done. I just couldn’t do it any more. I gave the game a break, with the intention that I’d get back to it some day. And I never did.
My problem with the game was that, while the atmosphere and tension was incredible, the gameplay loop was really limited. The “shoot the limbs” gameplay was novel at first, but after you’ve shot the legs and arms off your hundredth necromorph, it’s just not as fun. There was also a very predictable and formulaic staple of the genre that Dead Space took advantage of ad-nauseum. You know the one; Pick up key item X, get attacked by enemy group Y.
Resident Evil was the king of this mechanic, but Dead Space did that to a degree that was almost comical. I always used to laugh at the mental image of a group of necromorphs hiding in a vent, waiting for Isaac to pick up that key card. Waiting patiently. They can’t do anything unless he picks up that damn key card! C’mon Isaac. PICK IT UP ALREADY.
Remember that scene at the beginning Labyrinth, when the goblins are literally just sitting there, waiting for Sarah to say the words? And they’re practically piling up on top of each other, anticipating it, getting more and more impatient the longer she takes? Yeah, like that.
As funny as that image always was to me, it did get really old after I’d pick up that item or hit that switch, and for the umpteenth time, I’d get a lockdown or something and have to fight off a group of necromorphs yet again.
It was this mechanic that finally broke me, as by the time I was trying to move that marker, I just couldn’t be bothered anymore. Having to stop every ten feet and fight off a horde was just more than I could stomach. So again, like I said, I put it down for a bit, never to return.
Fast-forward to 2023. By some stroke of luck, for whatever reason, Xbox put the Dead Space Remake on sale for like, 8 bucks. And even though I had no intention of playing it at the time, it was 8 bucks. It still took me a while to get to it, but now here I am.
So what do I think of the remake in 2024? Did they manage to tweak the gameplay enough, and maybe re-work some of the weaker parts of the first game?
Honestly, it’s hard to say. A few things are different this time around.
The biggest and most important part of this equation is that I’m old now, and I don’t have the time or patience for a high degree of challenge. So I’m playing this game on the Easy (not Story) setting. First off, let me say, kudos to the team for even including a Story difficulty. I almost used it. I almost played on Normal as well, but I didn’t want to hit that wall that I hit with the original. But I also didn’t want a game that was so easy that I felt robbed of the experience. I didn’t want to shoot five feet to the left of a Necromorph and just have it be like “aw I’m dead now” and fall over. I know that’s probably exaggerating but I’m sure you get what I mean.
Luckily, they did manage to re-work some of the scenarios in the game to remove some of the tedium that existed in the original. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still retain some of those moments that really made me groan. By the time Chapter 11 rolls around, you’ll be getting really, really tired of that damn lockdown alarm. It’s still every bit as predictable as it has always been. You can bet money that every important moment in the game will be accompanied by a lockdown and a handful of enemies jumping out at you to get in those cheap shots and eat up your ammo before it allows you to move on to the next section.
The graphics are top-notch, and they really nailed the look of the Ishimura, even if the nature of the beast means they don’t get much variety. You’re looking at metal hallways no matter what. It is what it is. Still looks damn good though, and they really got creative with the lighting. The lighting was good in the original as well, but they were still limited by the hardware. This time they get to pull out all the stops and really immerse you in the experience. Which is weird, because while they did all this, you would think they would have included some of the little flourishes that were seen in the game and its sequels. Like Isaac’s suit clamping together and his helmet extending up around his head, Iron Man-style. Granted, that didn’t happen till DS2, but I dunno, it felt like a step back.
The ammo allocation is, and always has been, my biggest problem with Dead Space. It uses ammo scarcity to artificially increase the difficulty. Any one of the weapons Isaac has access to can be upgraded to be a pretty powerful and effective weapon, and can make chum out of the necromorphs. The Plasma Cutter is still a beast of a gun when it’s upgraded, but good luck ever getting ammo for it. The game will consistently drop ammo for any weapon you aren’t using, which in kinda forces you to rotate through your weapons regularly.
What kinda sucks though is that there are only so many nodes with which to upgrade your guns and your rig. So unless you want to be a jack of all trades and a king of none, you’ll want at least one of your weapons to kick ass, not to mention you’ll probably have a favorite go-to weapon to fit your tastes. It gets frustrating to upgrade a weapon and then not get to use it.
Money can be spent to buy ammo, but you’ll likely be using that money to buy extra nodes, upgrade your rig, and purchase upgrade schematics for your weapons. Shit can get expensive. You have a storage case to stash extra stuff, but if you’re like me, you’ll be selling anything you don’t need in order to buy extra ammo.
I don’t have a soft spot for resource management. I have been a lifelong Resident Evil fan, and I have actually enjoyed RE more since they drifted away from the ammo-scarcity mechanic. But even RE had their slow, avoidable zombies that you could ignore for the most part if you wanted to save some ammo. Dead Space’s necromorphs are fast, and the ones with ranged attacks are amazingly accurate with their projectiles, so if you’re attempting to carry objects are perform other tasks with even so much as one ranged enemy in the room is pretty damn dangerous. You pretty much have to kill everything around you if you want to do anything. That doesn’t even count the lockdowns which force you to fight.
What compounds this, and I don’t remember if this is a new addition or not, is the inclusion of a Nemesis-style necromorph that can’t be killed. Every encounter consists of shooting off it’s limbs and then hitting with it with some form of environmental mechanic. Whether it’s trapping it in a cryo-chamber, or toasting it with the burners from a shuttle, if you miss, you’ll have to do it all over again. I burned through quite a bit of resources trying to get that damn thing in just the right position.
One of Dead Space’s other gimmicks has persisted as well, and that’s the cheap shots. If I’m not mistaken, the vents and drop-in points for the necromorphs are not fixed, but are dependent on where Isaac is in a room. I could very well be mistaken, but I think the game intentionally has a necromorph drop in behind Isaac no matter where he is. This may have been done to ramp up the tension but it also results in a lot of cheap shots, where the necro will often get in a quick hit before you know it’s there. Much like the little baby things that will hit Isaac with projectile from a dark corner of the room.
A lot of times, there’s a misdirection. A loud noise from a necromorph fifty yards in front of Isaac, but also another necromorph that spawns in from behind, not making a sound. One thing you’ll quickly learn is whenever a monster drops in ahead of you, is to run forward a few steps and turn around, because there will almost always be another one behind you.
This was novel back in the day, but it got old quickly back then, and it gets old even quicker now.
Lastly, the part that killed it for me in the original, the moving of the Marker, returns in all its glory in the remake. And again, I had to play it in short spurts. They broke it up a bit this time around, which helped. They made it where you had to remove some of the tentacles from the hive mind (I don’t remember this being in the original, but this was around the part of the game where I bailed, so it might have been there.) It wasn’t as bad as I remembered, but that’s not to say I didn’t give a frustrated shout or two when getting stuck between necromorphs on a platform, because the walkways get pretty damn cluttered at one point.
The game still does that thing where they throw everything and the kitchen sink at you toward the end. It’s something I’ve never been a fan of, in any game. Dead Space ramps up the moving targets while pulling back on the available ammo at the same time. Luckily, and this could be entirely due to the ‘Easy’ setting I was playing on, but I never fully depleted my ammo stores. I get it; the game probably does this on purpose, to make the situation feel almost hopeless and to invoke that feeling of vulnerability. It’s probably just me getting lazy and impatient in my old age, but I don’t like feeling hopeless and vulnerable. I get enough of that in my daily life. I play video games to feel like a badass.
That’s why I generally enjoy the New Game + feature on games like this. Starting over, with all of the upgrades I’ve acquired, makes for a generally wonderful experience. It’s easily my favorite part of the later Resident Evil games. RE4, RE5, and Village were fun as hell in their subsequent playthroughs.
In any case, just like the original, I liked Dead Space. I didn’t love it. I’m glad I experienced it. I will definitely do a NG+ playthrough at some point. But for now, it’s on to the next one. Gotta keep this train a-rollin’.
