


For starters, you can now shuttle freely back and forth between the tram stations connecting all the different sections of the Ishimura (once you’ve unlocked them), and you can also travel between certain areas on foot via new corridors like those that connect the flight deck to the medical deck, or indeed off your feet in other sections. Although Isaac’s initial arrival in the hangar and flight deck very closely mirrors the layout of the original, it’s not long until you start to notice some substantial differences. Not only does the Ishimura look more striking than ever before, it’s also been restructured to encourage more exploration. Boy do I love what they've done with the place. Our ominous spaceship surroundings are made to feel substantially more spine-chilling thanks to realistically weathered steel surfaces and walls overrun with putridly pubescent levels of pus-filled pimples, and impressively moody lighting highlights the enhanced environmental detail while keeping plenty of corners cloaked in shadow – and us in the dark in terms of what might be lurking in them.

For one, it looks amazing: the supreme level of detail on Isaac’s instantly recognizable engineering suit alone makes that of the original look like a cheap fabric onesie picked up from the bottom shelf in a costume shop. Although it spawned sequels, comic books, and even a spiritual successor in the form of 2022’s The Callisto Protocol, in my mind nothing has come close to exceeding Isaac’s first heavy footsteps onto the deck of the Ishimura – at least until now.ĭeveloper Motive Studio has made some major renovations to Dead Space’s house of horrors, and boy do I love what they've done with the place. It sets its strategic brand of slaughter onboard a doomed spaceship that seems straight out of Event Horizon, and focuses on the determined plight of engineer Isaac Clarke and his increasingly disturbing search for his scientist wife Nicole.

If you missed it the first time around, Dead Space takes the action-oriented brand of survival horror established by Resident Evil 4, evolves the combat with a combination of gunplay and the ability to throw objects with Kinesis and temporarily slow enemies down with a Stasis power, and forces you to unlearn everything you know about killing zombies – its hordes of agitated mutants must be blasted limb from limb as opposed to being instantly dropped with a headshot. This new Dead Space enhances the original in almost every way, using a Plasma Cutter to drop its ugliest appendages on the cutting room floor while preserving the essence of what made its distinctly dismemberment-heavy shooting so special, and grafting on welcome new character details in order to present its creepy sci-fi horror story in its very best light – and its most intimidating shadows. After just over 12 hours spent stalking through the revitalized USG Ishimura I’m happy to report that of the many things to legitimately fear about this haunted space hulk, that was not one of them. Never mind the numerous necromorphs, the tortured torsos sprouting out of walls, or the terrifyingly towering space sphincter – the thing I was most scared of going into the Dead Space remake is that it wouldn't live up to my fond memories of the fantastically horrific 2008 original.
