Dead Space was a well deserved success and remains one of the most amazing titles in videogame history. But it was an EA game and horror themed or not, niche however it might be, they were going to make a gigantic expensive franchise out of it. At the time of the Dead Space’s original release – “Dead Space”, the prequel comic book series in 6 issues and Dead Space: Downfall, the animated prequel movie were out as well. And Dead Space: Extraction, the prequel on-rails shooter for Wii, was already about a year in development. Oh, EA…
Yet, perhaps due to the passion behind the franchise and competent writing teams, this didn’t lead to some terrible disgusting shovelware. Dead Space: Extraction, which sadly remains exclusive to Wii and PS3 with Move controls, turned out to be a really fun on-rails shooter. Perhaps the only one of the kind that I’ve experienced that has a proper serious story and good storytelling.
Note, that I was replaying and capturing the game from the emulator as I don’t have a good way to capture/make screenshots on Wii. So do expect some things look a bit differently, either because the emulation didn’t render something entirely correctly, or because the original is, well, far lower in resolution.
The events of Dead Space: Extraction happen about a day or so before the events of the original game, which is already contradicting the storyline established in the main game. To be fair, this is something characteristic to all 3 prequels – despite sharing some of the writing teams between all projects, they constantly contradict each other or miss out on key characters. Some people play a huge role in one piece of media, yet are completely ignored when the same events are explored in the other. So, while they are all surprisingly good for storytelling reasons, I can’t really advise you exploring them if what you want is to see “the full picture” – main games are all that you need in that regard.
With all of that out of the way, the events themselves are surprisingly good. We join several people as they are experiencing the complete chaos that’s happening with the discovery of the Marker that plays the important role in the first game as we revisit some of the locations from said game and even get to see places that are not explored there. Some parts, honestly, feel like they would belong better to the setting of the second game in the series which was clearly already in development and is even mentioned in the ending. But still, it’s a horrifying adventure through some nice looking places and the story, while weaker than the main games, is still good and the characters are well written, even if their job is to die a few scenes later.
The gameplay itself is solid as well. Not as inventive as some of the on-rails shooters out there, but pretty fun with trying to keep most of the elements from the main game. You get a selection of weapons, all but one with finite ammo and all but two returning from the main game. They still have alternative fire modes, enabled by tilting the Wiimote left or right, which, frankly, only makes sense with the plasma cutter, but is still rather fun. You get kinesis and stasis, though both abilities are far more limited in use this time around. You can get new weapons, but unfortunately there’s never a selection, rather you find new weapons on the level and choose to discard one of the 3 finite ammo weapons to keep the new one, or reject the new weapon. You even get text and audio logs, with the latter playing through the wiimote speaker.
The camera is quite fine. While it gets wild and shaky during movement and more cinematic moments, it avoids the problem Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles had where the camera was moving all the bloody time. In this game as soon as you need to shoot enemies coming at you, the camera goes very still and allows you to shoot away without feeling nauseous. Most encounters and overall pacing is pretty good as well. Though, by the end you do get to visit tight ventilation vents way too many times. Also the two boss fights the game has are pretty badly designed due to the fact that they can be most effectively dealt with only with very specific weapons, the ones that you might not have before the fight or have way too few ammo for them. It’s also pretty rude occasionally with how little time you can get for picking up resources with kinesis, despite not being a quarter munching arcade title.
All that said, this is a surprisingly solid on-rails shooter that manages to fit the series really good. It has a really good story and storytelling, good moments, cool mechanics and can be played in coop for added fun. It is also one of the very few games that I can enjoy on the Wii, as the on-rails shooters tend to fit the console really well. Of course, it still features way too much “shake the wiimote”, “shake the nunchuk” bollocks – perhaps it’s not as terrible on the PS Move, but I’ve not tried that version. Besides, apparently it lacks the ability the view the voiced version of the Dead Space prequel comic, all of the 6 issues that get unlocked as you progress through the game.
If you like on-rails shooters and Dead Space – definitely give this one a try if you can get a copy of it somewhere or get the PSN version. It gets a bit tiresome by the end, but it also has some good moments and a solid story. Could be nice to see this one remastered on more platforms, but, of course, with the franchise dead and the studio closed, EA might not see this as a good decision. There’s no franchise to milk anymore, after all.