The Dead Space remake improves on excellence

One of the weird things about gaming in 2023 is that the word “remake” has simultaneously become both ubiquitous and functionally meaningless. After all, a “remake” can now refer to a truly vast array of approaches to the problem of reviving old IP, from the “tear the whole thing out and start again” renovations performed with the Resident Evil franchise or Square-Enix’s massively reworked Final Fantasy VII, to the near carbon-copy reprisals featured in Sony’s Demon’s Souls or The Last Of Us Part I.

Dead Space, Motive Studio’s revival of the space-horror hit that put EA’s Visceral Studios on the map way back in the distant era of 2008, lands somewhere in between these two extremes, to genuinely excellent effect. The base structure of the game’s plot—nice-guy engineer shows up late to a spaceship-based zombie apocalypse, dismemberments ensue—is almost entirely intact, albeit with a few new embellishments. (Protagonist Isaac Clarke talks now, for instance, something he didn’t start doing until Dead Space 2 the first time around; blessedly, Isaac’s dialogue, still provided by Gunner Wright, is sparingly used, and Motive resisted the urge to ever have him engage in the tension-killing practice of talking to himself for the audience’s “benefit.”)

Elsewhere, the “remake” hand has been used thoughtfully, and to genuinely good (and often even great) effect. Sequences that were straightforward in the original game have had new and interesting tactical wrinkles added to them, for instance—including a stand-out early bit where Isaac is forced to choose between completing a lengthy combat room either with the lights off … or the air. (The asteroid-shooting bits have also, mercifully, been reworked, to the deep pleasure of anyone who remembers those weird rail gun segments as a nadir in an otherwise excellent experience; they now use the game’s improved zero-G combat mechanics.) Characters are a little less cartoonish, plot points somewhat better explained. The story itself is still nonsense, mind you—space Scientologists who worship desk tchotchkes that turn people into extras from The Thing remain the order of the day—but the relationships that power it have at least been given more weight. It’s hard to look at any of the changes that have been implemented here and not see them as evolutions for the better.

Just as importantly, Motive has made like good space engineers and resisted the urge to fix that which simply wasn’t broken. Those things that were exceptional about the original Dead Space—its sense of location, its relentlessly horrifying use of sound, and especially its best-of-a-generation combat—have all survived here intact. The USG Ishimura remains a great space-based haunted house to get lost in, slowly opening up and expanding for the players in ways reminiscent of a low-key Metroidvania game. (The return of the original game’s excellent “push the button if you want a line pointing to your next destination, ignore if you don’t” navigation system helps immensely.) The keening soundtrack strings of an imminent Necromorph attack, and the cold silence of space when Isaac works in vacuum, remain absolutely haunting.

And the combat—with its heavy, precision-demanding focus on slicing off limbs instead of aiming for the enemy’s head or center of mass—is still thrilling, scary, and fun. The limb thing isn’t just a gimmick, and never was: Instead, it’s the engine for a million thrilling close calls or badass trick shots, as you shoot off the sword-arm that was just about to chop into you, or fire a scything blast that literally sweeps multiple targets off their rotting feet. (And shins. And thighs.) It’s one of the key ways that Dead Space—then, and now—refuses to let its combat go rote on you, even as your playclock ticks upward of 20 hours. With a tactically diverse horde of monsters, and some of the most satisfying weapons in recent (or distant) memory, it remains compulsive from the first Necromorph to the last. (Excepting the last boss fight, because, well … only so many things you can do to improve that particular ordeal, apparently.)

It’s worth camping out on those guns for a minute, too. With only one “traditional” rifle in the bunch, Isaac once again arms himself with a set of shockingly lethal modified engineering tools, slicing off limbs with his trusty Plasma Cutter, pounding brutes down with the laser-esque Contact Beam, or hacking foes apart with a hovering, spinning saw blade that can also be sent ricocheting around the room. (Still one of the most satisfying unorthodox weapons in all of gaming.)

Each of these weapons is great in its own right, with a distinctive kick and an undeniable feeling of power every time you pull the trigger. But they’re also tied intimately into Dead Space’s immensely satisfying upgrade economy, which ensures that Isaac is always willing to poke into another nook or cranny, regardless of danger, because you never know when you might find another precious, beautiful power node that you can turn into a meaningful power-up for your babies—er, weapons.

(By the way, old-school Dead Space fans: Motive ditched the thing where you had to hold onto a few nodes at all times to pop open emergency caches in the levels, a bit of mostly meaningless friction that it’s difficult to miss.)

The end result is a game where satisfaction and scares arrive in equal measure—even if, as with the original, the spooky does give way to the “Hell yeah” side of things the further you get into the game, and the more of an unstoppable killing machine that Isaac becomes. It looks beautiful, too, gory and awful in all the best ways. The only real flaws are largely holdovers from the structure of the original: This is still a game that loves to tell you to do a chore on the way to doing your next chore. And, yes, it’s still goofy that the crew of the Ishimura took time out of their various deaths or psychotic breakdowns to politely scrawl instructive graffiti on their walls. And, yeah, the game is, if we’re being brutally honest, still about one chapter too long, after establishing a breakneck pace that eventually just gets exhausting.

Still, though: This is a very good—in fact, we’d argue, the best—version of something that was already a very good video game. (One that, in a nice change of pace from the typical remake trend, has not been remastered into the ground already.) If you played Dead Space 15 years ago and loved it, you’ve got a beautiful, improved version of it to come home to. And if you never played it, you’ve got a genuinely great experience ahead of you, a winning blend of horror and action that at no point feels needlessly beholden to its own past.