Dead Space (2023) is a remake of Dead Space (2008).
Did you play Dead Space in 2008? Well, this is absolutely and utterly Dead Space again but given a current-gen tune-up. In fact, everything discussed in Kotaku’s review of the original remains completely true in the remaster.
This is both Dead Space (2023)’s greatest accomplishment and also its biggest problem. It plays just like how you remember it did way back when. It doesn’t, though, of course. Objectively I know that the friction of its interactivity is smoother and that the whole game is considerably better looking, but my predominant feeling through every moment of the 12ish hours I spent with it was, “Yeah, this sure is Dead Space.”
For those new to the series, Dead Space is a third-person survival horror that borrowed its aesthetics from the 1997 cult classic film Event Horizon equally as heavily as it borrowed its gameplay fundamentals from 2005’s Resident Evil 4. Nothing it did on a foundational level was especially new even back in ‘08, but the meat that it hung on those bones was a bloody delight. The setting of the doomed mining ship Ishimura, a place where even the more recreational areas have a hard, work-site feel. The player’s arsenal being mostly comprised of repurposed industrial equipment. The obscene level of gore, which was highly in vogue amongst horror cinema of the era, and the dismemberment-centric combat mechanics it supported. The user-interface being completely diegetic. The superlative sound design. All of these dressings left a bold impression that persists in the minds of fans even now, almost 10 years to the day since Dead Space 3 arguably killed the franchise.
With Dead Space (2023) it feels like EA Motive had a very clear desire not to dilute or diminish any of what made the original so memorable. The biggest change that’s been made is that the entire game can now be played as one continuous sequence, whereas previously, it was broken up into distinct levels. How the team at Motive has managed to seamlessly string together maps that were never originally designed to connect to one another is a heck of an achievement. However, I found myself lamenting the fact that this change now makes the Ishimura feel so much smaller than it once did.
Previously the player would have to make use of the ship’s tram system to deliver them between levels, masked, of course, by loading screens. The tram still exists as a way to travel between sections, but now that it no longer fades away into the darkness while a loading screen appears, the illusion of the ship’s scale is completely gone. I really like the flow that comes with having it all seamlessly interconnected, but I also found that it significantly diminished the original’s oppressive atmosphere. That sense of being one man alone in a truly vast ship full of monsters.
Frustrations with the game’s core structure remain much as they were originally, with each new chapter dropping a fresh catastrophe on top of the one you just resolved. If they’d changed any of those beats, then it wouldn’t be Dead Space, though, and the decision to have the protagonist, Isaac, now be fully voiced as he was in the sequels does go some way toward alleviating the irritation of it. He now suggests solutions about as often as they are dictated to him by others, making the whole story feel slightly less like a series of daisy-chained fetch quests commanded from on high.
There’s a wealth of accessibility options added, though nothing that reaches the gold-standard heights of Sony’s recent exclusives. Multiple colourblind options, aim assistance, customizable subtitles, HUD adjustments, and menu narration are all present, and the remake even allows the enabling of content warnings and a toggle for screen filters to be applied over ‘disturbing scenes’. The game proudly touts a brand new dynamic flesh ‘peeling’ system for its violence, and even I was taken aback by just how gory the whole experience is at any given moment, so these latter additions are cool to see.
For all they’ve added and improved, though, I was constantly irritated by small things that were bafflingly left the way they were or arbitrarilly changed for the worse. It’s a constant low-key frustration that, when selecting an inventory item at a shop kiosk, the default option isn’t to put it into your storage locker but to sell it. More strangely, where previously slotting an upgrade module into a piece of gear would prompt you to confirm the decision, now it just commits with a single button press. These aren’t things that ruin the overall experience, they’re just choices that seem strange for a project that’s entire mandate is updating a design framework from two console generations ago.
Before sitting down with this remake, I hadn’t ventured through the corridors of the Ishimura in almost a full 15 years. While I did enjoy this revisit, it’s a testament to how damn good the original was that so much of it was still clear in my mind all these years later. Dead Space (2023) is an impressively slick remake of a classic, but the original is a classic. It holds up in people’s minds. Re-experiencing it with the power of Frostbite and PS5 just didn’t wow me as it should purely because the game was already so damn well crafted to begin with. From title screen to credits, I can’t say that I was ever disappointed or unengaged. It just felt akin to watching a new 4K restoration of an old movie I hadn’t seen in years. An enjoyable experience, but with a constant feeling of ‘ah yes, now here’s this bit.’ That is no fault whatsoever of the team at Motive, who have done immensely impressive work, but it speaks to the incredible accomplishments of Visceral Games a decade and a half ago.
Dead Space is available from January 27th on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
This review is based on the PlayStation 5 version using a code kindly supplied by EA.
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