Dead Space Extraction [Wii Review]

Slice, dice and serve on rice! Oh yes, this is Dead Space where head shots don’t mean jack, in-fact, they waste time! See, you got to think differently with weird things coming at you as they don’t really need a head to do much, but rather their limbs. But lets see if this twist on the On-Rails shooter works?

Space… This First Part and The Final Frontier

Dead Space Extraction is a prequal to the Hallowe’en hit of last year, Dead Space on the PS3 and Xbox 360, so for those who know the story then they will feel quite at home here as this is the events that lead Issac Clark from the first game to investigate the Ishimura.

The colony Aegis VII has found a strange looking object dubbed “The Marker”. Since the discovery of this Marker strange events have been happening on the colony, but a group of religious nuts called the “Church of Unitology” say that this is some holy symbol for their religion and think the events are nothing to do with each other but are all quite happy about this discovery! But as they try to remove The Marker… lets just say the poop hits the fan. So you as a survivor have to make your way through the nasties and get out of the place to safety. In space, I’m not sure what safety is!

The story is interesting enough on it’s own right; it’s not too complex but at the same time, it’s not just something scribbled to justify the game. It’s something you could realistically put into a film, which is very much the case with a Anime based on these course of events called Dead Space: Downfall. I feel the execution is terrible for this type of game. It worked so well in the original Dead Space, but in this On-Rails shooter, there is a little too much of it happening within the context of gameplay.

First point is that there is too much for a On-Rails shooter. Think back to how you played them in the arcades and at home, you have story and you have action and the two were separate for the majority part. Sometime the action will quickly break into story, but then you where back to pumping lead. Dead Space Extraction fails on this front where the others worked: skippable! In any On-Rail shooter game I’ve played, the story is skippable where as in Dead Space Extraction, it’s the game! It often gets in the way of the fun and makes me think what’s the point of playing the story mode through again if half of what I’m playing is story? It’s not like Metal Gear Solid where by that’s why you played, it’s an On-Rails shooter… you want to shoot! The story could be as long as you want, but I want to be able to skip it and great straight to the action. This brings me to…

Point two; with half the story also being told through video logs, sounds files and text logs, you are too much aware of your characters uncontrolled movement towards the enemy to care about this audio log playing. I did like that they carried on the same system where the action doesn’t stop, especially  having the audio logs play out of the Wii-motes speaker, nice little touch. But this worked original because you could find a relatively safe corner, prime your weapon and listen/watch/read the log and not worry about your character walking into an onslaught. Also, a slight issue with the consistency is that the action does stop for text logs… what’s up with that?

Dry Cool Wit and All the Fun Shooting Stuff

So, past the story and we are at the shooting stuff! Huzzah!

It’s an On-Rails shooter like I said, so game-play is going to be somewhat limited, you are forced to go in a certain direction, shoot what’s ever stopping you in the way (if you are me, friendlies count) and carry on till you are at the end of the level. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s a formula that works and works well so no real complaints.

The devs have added extra layers that meld into the Dead Space universe that extends the On-Rails aspect. There are parts where you have to fix/hack doors so you can open them and in order to do this you solder a path onto the chip set. This follows the electric wire game with extra elements acting as hazards; you get hit by a hazard you loose energy, or if you go off the path, you loose your place and back at the beginning. It works quite well and even adds a panic to the game when you have to solder at the same time as enemies are coming towards you… and you can’t shoot and solder at the same time!

There is also the use of the kinesis and stasis modules.

The stasis module acts to slow down enemies, it can be incredibly helpful when you are swarmed down with enemies or having to solder a path on a panel. On the higher difficulty levels you will need to rely on this a hell of a lot.

The kinesis module is the only one that really annoys me. In order to interact with lockers, boxes and the such like to grab loot and story elements you have to use the kinesis module. Now you think with story elements the devs would want you to pay attention to them, but you end up looking around for stuff to grab with the kinesis missing half the plot in doing so. So, why try and do this any way? It’s really for ammo and gun upgrades you want through the game, there is no other way to gain this stuff other than to pick it up.

It works nicely at some points such as picking stuff up to block the way, but these parts are far and few between that in all fairness, the game would have been better off with a system that you can blow boxes up or doors off stuff and then auto grab those items like a lot of other On-Rails shooters do.

It’s There!

This is a minor point that I think is more of an issue for the Wii rather than the game itself, but you have no option to turn off the reticle on the screen. I say it as a minor point as I think a lot of people like having this reticle on the screen to help them aim and know where they are shooting in regards to these enemies (which I’ll get to in more detail why), but why force the player to play with it? It would be nice to have a free shooting system thats more On-Rails apt that you don’t know where you are shooting there for adding excitement when you miss and realize you’ve only got one shot left.

It would be difficult to not have the reticle at all in the game as the Wii-mote doesn’t make it easy for shooting, but those with a gun attatchment (a la moi) would like some un-guided shooting. It feels like too much a point-and-click to kill interface where you are selecting an area and shooting at it. So no guess work and steady aim work, just point and kill. Just doesn’t feel quite right…

Now I said about taking into regard shooting an area on an enemy. This is a good, nay, cool part of the game where doing simple head shots isn’t going to cut it as these things don’t need a head to move, but they do need limbs. That’s right, you are cutting limb-after-limb off these enemies in order to get the better of them. A real nice way to, one, keep in line with the Dead Space universe itself, and two, to stop that annoying person from doing “BOOM! HEAD SHOT!” as it mean bugger all! It is a nice change on it’s own merits and also as strategy to how you kill something, so either slow them down first, or reduce their attack? Your choice!

“Looks like one doomed space marine!”

The graphics are very nicely done on the Wii, especially following the art style on the PS3/Xbox 360 versions of the game. The Wii did have to undergo a downgrade process, but this hasn’t suffered the game at all, to be honest, it can be a little hard to notice unless you’ve played both games recently. It’s a good job well done on the Wii.

An annoyance I find and so have others is this game is very dark, meaning you will find it hard to spot some enemies coming at you. I’ve tried sorting out the brightness and contrast on my TV, but it looks unnatural when I do so (and all my other games don’t look right on the same settings), so I am strongly lead to believe it is a game issue . I understand the need for low lighting in space in all, but it’s a shooting game and I can’t see what I’m shooting at.

A big flaw I found is with a glow worm you get at the beginning the game. You enter a low-lighting area and are told to shake the Wii-mote to charge up your glow worm; it gives you a green light and you can see better what is attacking you. But this is only available in certain areas and those areas you might not use it that often, yet in areas with low lighting and lots of enemies coming at you, that’s when you really want it but the game says that you don’t. The bastard.

Further Limits

Dead Space Extractions sound is pretty good, the voice acting is well cast, but I did find the woman a little annoying and bland

I said the story intruded a little on the game; this is true but is also made up as the game has two little extras that tackle my issues! Both of these are more available as you play through the story making it worth while.

The first is the Challenge mode that allows you to jump straight into a game and fight wave-after-wave of enemies. Great! It’s the game without the story, so you can blast all the limbs you want to playing through areas that where featured in the story and there is no story! This makes is so worth it to unlock all the areas by playing through the story.

The other is a voiced graphic novel from the actual prequel graphics novel illustrated by Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night, Fell: Feral City). It’s like having a cast reading the comic book to you while having somebody making sure you focus on the correct panel.

These are both cool additional features that do add a lot for fans of Dead Space, shooters and comics in general.

Final Breach

Overall, looking at the gameplay mechanics and story, in my opinion this may of done better as a FPS, rather than an On-Rails shooter and I feel this could have been the original direction.

I may have found some real faults with this, but there is fun to be had, just you either have to look/wait for it or you really enjoy a story that takes over the On-Rails shooter experience. Just to justify that this isn’t being picky; to overload a On-Rails shooter with story is the same as removing the crazy hair from a JRPG; it might work, but it removes the charms.

So if you liked the original Dead Space and want to play through the prequel story to find out more, then this is a good title, but if you are looking for your simple On-Rails shooter then this may not be it.

Related posts:

1. Dead Space Extraction [Wii First Impression]
2. WET [PS3 Review]
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen [Xbox 360 Review]
4. Nintendo’s E3 Keynote Rundown
5. Gaming in Hell [Hallowe'en Special]