Dead Space (2023) Review
Dead Space (2023) is a solid remake, but it preserves much of the bad along with the good.
Exactly twelve years ago I bought Dead Space 2 for the Xbox 360. I loved it, and the moment I was done I bought the first game for PC on Steam. I loved that, too. I liked it even more than the second.
In the time since Dead Space has remained one of my favorite franchises. Although it seemed to be abandoned after the poor reception of Dead Space 3, chopping off necromorph limbs and shooting glowing sacks of amber has never left my heart.
I've tried but always failed to replay the original game since 2011, mostly due to mouse acceleration issues in the PC version. Over a decade later and I’ll confess that I remember almost nothing about it, except set pieces here and there. I've wanted to go back to it, but when I saw that it was soon to be remade on next-gen, I held off. I would wait to play it on my new PS5.
Now the day has come. Ten years abandoned and Dead Space is at last reborn. So how is it? And is it worth $70?
Few games are. But what I can say is that Dead Space (2023) is a good, mostly faithful remake. The graphics have been redone, the gameplay re-refined, a few weak sequences strengthened, and the narrative completely rescripted--all in an effort to capture the feeling of the original. We fans of the franchise will appreciate it as a love letter delivered after a full decade of silence from EA, and new players will find it much more accessible and less frustrating than going back to the game design dark ages of the 360/PS3 generation. But this new release hasn’t attempted to fix many of systematic issues with Dead Space (2008), and problems that have lingered for fifteen years remain yet unsolved.
Fifteen Years Later
Dead Space may at first seem like a survival-horror game. Spooky dead things jump out at you from vents; enemy corpses rise for jumpscares when you get too close; the levels are dark and claustrophobic; and ammo, health, and energy are always limited. This was no doubt the intention in 2008, and so it is here.
I remember the original being moderately scary at age 13. I cannot figure out why. Dead Space has a single formula to startle--as indicated above--but never once contemplates true horror. Compared to a game like Alien: Isolation, the gameplay is much too focused on combat to be anything but an action shooter riff on System Shock 2. Necromorphs are too comprehendible and too killable to be terrifying, and while the game is certainly disgusting, the violence, in which limbs fly off left and right as if attached by Elmer’s Glue, is too absurd to be anything but fun.
Rather than an engineer, protagonist Isaac Clarke might’ve more realistically been a janitor. That is what he spends most of the game doing: running around, fixing other people’s messes, cleaning up zombies. Despite now being voiced he rarely feels like a true agent in the plot; he is instead beholden to circumstance, otherwise forced to comb through area after area in search of bugs to squash. The moment he accomplishes an objective, something out of his hands goes wrong to conveniently reset his progress and prolong his suffering.
Survival? Maybe. Horror? No.
Dead Space is no Prey (2017), but it has a decent immersive sim-esq overworld. This element has been expanded in the remake, and for the better. But the main plotline objectives within that world are oppressively tedious. Levels are protracted to the extreme. Most involve wandering around atriums and corridors, looking for the right button to press or the single glowy thing to shoot.
Wait! No! Not that glowy thing! That’s not a proper glowy thing, even though it is a thing that glows! You’re looking for the slightly glowier glowy thing!
Everything after Hydroponics became a chore to me for this reason. Isaac feels less like a cool action hero and more like an errand boy. There’s one section in which you have to repeat the same basic task eight times. Eight times. Twice was plenty. Four felt like a lot. But eight?
I can’t remember the original well enough to say definitively whether or not this remake’s level design has been improved. It is different in a few places, and my hunch is that the changes are for the best. Yet even so, the levels feel old. Despite the graphics and despite the tight gameplay, Dead Space still feels like an old game. It feels like it’s out to waste time and keep busy, rather than entertain. The levels are too samey and too full of busy work to be exciting.
After Hydroponics the encounter design falls into an almost-rhythmic trance. Any time you spot a necromorph, begin by turning around. Another one will be standing behind you. Without fail. These zombies, who are so braindead they’ll follow you into traps, cryofreezers, and giant walls of fire, are also so intelligent that their ambushes are always executed with flawless coordination.
And it isn’t just while navigating corridors. In every arena, in every fight, necromorphs will spawn in behind you. It doesn’t matter where you are. If you see one enemy, turn around.
Having a necromorph sniff your hair Biden-style isn’t scary. It might be startling the first time it happens, but thereafter it’s predictable and frustrating. Endless anal spawns are what makes the second half of Dead Space so exhausting. The encounters become formulaic and repetitive.
The new graphics are excellent at building ambience. The sound design is satisfying, and what little music there is has strong Alien vibes. The lighting above all else is spectacular. But non-stop action is antithetical to horror, and unlike real horror games, Dead Space never presents an issue that can’t be shot to death (or cut into pieces, frozen, and easily evaded). Most missions are no more complicated than “shoot at the glowing orange thing until it isn’t glowing orange anymore.” Occasionally you will have to press X instead.
This is the same problem I recall having with the original. Dead Space wants to be a horror game, but it isn’t. It’s a shooter in space. I have no problem with that, and in fact this is the reason why I am among the elite few who like Dead Space 3, but the muddied identity is a big problem that was crying out to be solved in a remake.
It wasn’t. But this franchise had never understood what it is. That might actually be part of its charm. On that front, Dead Space does not disappoint.
Similarly, survival elements are only successful at first. Supplies matter. The game never gives you free health. Resource management is vital. Backtrack for more loot and more credits or risk getting stuck. I particularly like the progression scheme; find schematics and power nodes to upgrade your equipment, and choose whether to focus on weapons, armor, or simply restocking supplies whenever there comes a moment of rest. Dead Space, and its remake especially, does exploration and advancement better than any other entry in the franchise.
But by the end, smashing boxes to get loot becomes frustratingly formulaic. Whenever you see a blue, kinesis-able box, smash it open to find: ammo for one of your guns, credits, or a stasis pack. Maybe a medkit, if you’re lucky. There’s never nothing. There’s never a teddy bear meant for delivery to some kid, or a new PlayStation 75, or a HelloFresh order. It’s almost always ammo.
By the time I smashed my last crate, I was ready to never smash anything again.
As for ammo, Isaac is only allowed to carry four weapon. But there are nine weapons in the game, and crates will aggressively give you ammo only for the ones you aren’t using. I followed my memory’s intuition and focused on upgrading the Plasma Cutter; by the time I had power nodes in every slot, the designers were refusing to give me any plasma cutter ammo, ever. Instead I found myself with infinite amounts of Line Gun and Ripper ammunition. I can’t stand the Line Gun, but I was using the Ripper--out of necessity--throughout the whole game. Yet even despite this I never ran out of ammo for it, unlike the Cutter, which could only be usefully loaded up if I spent a fortune at the shop.
Forcing interaction with the clumsy inventory system to constantly swap out weapons is severely grating, but I was left with little choice. This was an element of Dead Space clamoring to be remade. Either let me carry every weapon at once, or rework the system to allow real specialization. This might also have allowed rectification of the jarring fact that, in a game where every detail of the UI is painstakingly represented diegetically, Isaac can pull sniper rifles and laser guns out of his invisible pockets.
That didn't bother me in 2011. But in 2023, something slightly less ugly would’ve been appreciated.
Note: it has since been brought to my attention that the game won't, or at least won't so aggressively, give you ammo to any gun you put in storage in the store. Thus I could have dumpstered the Line and Force guns where they belong and alleviated this particular issue. Even so, inventory management in this game is a huge chore by the end, and no number of shopping trips will change that.
Story Time
The new narrative elements may or may not be an improvement. They are different, but whether that is preferable will come down to the player in question. Eliminating Isaac’s vow of silence certainly helps smooth the transition between the games in the trilogy, but dwelling so long on his tragic backstory, involving his mother and Unitology, added nothing for me except cutscenes I wished I could skip. He and the rest of the crew are still altogether devoid of characterization; they talk more, but they don't feel more human. What is there to Isaac Clarke? What are his traits? Who is he? And what about the rest of the characters? Why don't they ever seem scared or concerned? What’s up with all that bullshit with Chen? How stupid are these people? How does one necromorph cause so much damage in the narrative, but Isaac, an engineer, can effortlessly dismember endless hordes of them? And why don't they ever attack the other NPCs?!?
Shoving more words into everyone’s mouths has slowed down the pace, but hasn’t actually addressed any of these underlying issues in storytelling. At best the game has gone from underwritten to overwritten. Both are bad, but I do prefer the former on balance.
You can get a sense of what I mean by comparing the openings here. Is the new version superior? It's longer. There's more dialogue. The important expository details are certainly easier to miss. But it isn't obviously better or worse. It's just different.
I prefer the old version. But maybe you won't.
Giving Isaac a voice and a backstory enables some level of investment in the search for Nicole. There was no reason to care about him or his girlfriend at all in the original. Yet all things are trade-offs, and introducing more talking into the game exacerbates problems we might not have otherwise noticed.
Throughout this remake I found the dialogue, especially from Isaac, to do a poor job capturing what real people would really say if they found themselves in such a horrific situation. Dead Space’s script is tolerable, and it’s certainly no Forspoken, but never once did I believe Isaac’s reactions to the game’s horror, and to the necromorphs more generally. His words weren't truthful. They didn't strike me as authentic.
Writing that dialogue was never going to be easy. I doubt I could do it well either, which is why I won’t be as hyper-critical here as I am with some other series. But cutting out Isaac’s tongue did something to alleviate this problem previously. Giving him his voice back instead brings it straight to the surface.
More broadly, allowing Isaac to be the super-engineer he is ultimately leads to his ideas being the ones that save the day, rather than Shodan’s. There is a reason why the original wasn’t structured this way--and also System Shock 2, as it happens. To enter a puzzle and have Isaac himself explain what to do is mind-bending, especially when you yourself are yet to figure it out. Either I want to be the one to devise the solution, and Isaac can inform the other members of his team once I have; OR I want someone else to tell me what to do, and then Isaac can, like a player character, do it--under my instruction.
So the rescripted dialogue is underwhelming. I would’ve preferred they left it as-is. But it’s no worse than mediocre, and however generic Dead Space’s plot is, its narrative components remain at least sufficient to impel the player down the dismemberment simulator and toward the final boss.
What does bother me is that they gave Isaac a new face.
The changes to the narrative were unnecessary, but they weren’t pointless--the developer were trying to rectify a perceived issue. But why change Isaac’s appearance? Even if structural alterations were necessitated by the use of facial mocap, which I’m fairly certain is the verbiage used in-house to justify this, why give him different hair? Why remove his gray? Why shave his beard? These changes, unfortunately, do little but make Isaac feel like someone who isn't Isaac at all. This would seem to defeat the purpose of giving him a voice, if the intention was to make the original more consonant with the rest of the trilogy.
Alive Space
By the time I beat the final boss last night, I was screaming into my PS5 controller. I was dead sick of ping-ponging between identical objectives, suffering constant pointless setbacks, and being prison showered by necromorphs wherever I went. I was desperate to be done with Dead Space.
But this morning, as I started on my review, a strange desire to start a NG+ playthrough bubbled in my stomach. It hasn’t faded since. Despite frustrating level and encounter design and unnecessarily tedious inventory management, Dead Space remains a good game. I don’t think it’s scary, but it is an enjoyable sci-fi survival shooter, just as it was back in 2008. I was sufficiently engaged that I didn't feel the need to distract myself by taking notes, even as it began wearing on me. That is more than I can say for God of War: Ragnarok.
Dead Space is good. It’s an excellent remake of a great, but old, game. There are numerous minor changes--like the ability to open doors while using kinesis--that most people won't notice, but do a great deal for QoL. It solves some but not all of the original’s issues, and otherwise stands well enough on its own. On PS5 it runs at 60fps with an adaptive resolution, which sometimes causes Isaac’s hardsuit to become N64-levels of pixelated, and presumably the horrific mouse acceleration issues on PC have been rectified.
For those latter reasons the remake is worth it. Framerate alone gives Dead Space (2023) a reason to exist, which The Last of Us: Part I did not have. But as ever with remakes we must ask ourselves: did we really need this? Did we need new dialogue and new graphics for the outrageous price of $70, for a game that was already pretty good?
This time I think the answer is yes. Most other critics seem to agree. But I do think it could've been even better. Not as a remake, but as a stand-alone game. That's my real frustration. I didn't want Dead Space: Again, I wanted Dead Space 4. But for now, I'll settle with what I can get. Dead Space (2023) is still far better than nothing.
I played through the game on normal difficulty, over the course of two days. It took about eleven hours, and I did everything: every door opened, every sidequest completed. I played on a digital copy on the PS5, purchased via the PlayStation store.
EDIT: After finishing this review, I played the game again, and had an enormous amount of fun. I would revise my overall opinion to be much more positive. Dead Space 2023 is a great game. But it’s definitely not perfect.