Dead Space(2023) Review

Coming from a guy who has beaten the original game around 3-4 times over the years, and hearing the announcement of this remake, I was originally apathetic towards the idea, I was thinking, "what on earth is the point in remaking a game that was already good to begin with?" When I finally played Dead Space 2023, I realized this version of Dead Space is to the 2008 game what Resident Evil 2002 was to Resident Evil 1996. If you played the originals for both RE and DS, both remakes will play with your expectations and turn what you knew about the originals on their heads, if you never played the originals, you are in for a good time but you will appreciate the remakes more if you have played the former.

Dead Space 2023 has the same story and ideas as Dead Space 2008 but there is a lot of differences in the way both games play out. In Dead Space 2023, the Ishimura is much more explorable and is less of a linear affair like in DS 2008. There is tons of locked rooms you will need to find keycards for, power batteries to find and plug in more often, various securities levels to unlock certain doors and more. The upgrade trees are different in that you need to buy upgrades circuts for the suit and weapons to unlock more power nodes. Dead Space 2023 also lets you hold all your guns as opposed to 2008 where your inventory with health items, stasis packs, semiconductors, and ammo would only allow you to really carry 4, on top of this you get more inventory space and the guns you get are on the beaten path except for the Line Gun. As a result, I got to use all the guns I never got to use in the 2008 game and I appreciate them so much like the Flamethrower, Force Gun, and Contact Beam. Getting guns on the beaten path also encourages experimentation more since in DS 2008, you had to guess if a gun was any good by buying them at the store and hope your investment was worth it. My only gripe with this is that the game would benefit with a radial menu of some kind or letting you easily select every gun rather than go into the menu and switch the gun you are using for that slot. Felt like a missed opportunity there. The game also has all the additions Dead Space 2 would introduce like being able to repeatedly stomp on enemies, using Kinesis from dead enemy limbs to impale other enemies, the Pulse Rifle having a grenade launcher alt fire, the improved Zero Gravity sections, and the pukers from DS2. The game also has some new bosses and the already existing ones are decent enough for shooter bosses.

It doesn't just end with gameplay either, even the story is much more expanded upon comapared to the original, Issac can talk now which is good since in the original game it didn't make much sense for him to be voiceless, and it is handled well here, Issac's character is decent enough and he is given a side mission sub plot with Nicole and the Regenerator monster is given more context on how he came to be. Issac also never talks too much and only speaks when spoken to. Dr. Mercer is more proactive by comparison to him in the original. DS 2023 also remixes and adds new takes on existing story events which is what I mean by DS 2023 takes your expectations of DS 2008 and turns it on it's head. The story in this game, while not being amazing, I do think is an improvement over the original due to the remixing and added side missions and sub plots adding more context to existing events.

My only gripes with the game outside of a lack of a radial menu for weapon select are that the Pulse Rifle feels too weak and even it's alt fire isn't that powerful, some of the waypoints can sometimes be hard to tell what exactly to do, this isn't a big deal but I can get stumped a few times which is weird for a game featuring a waypoint system. Some of the aiming for when you get grabbed by tentacles isn't that great.

Overall, I have very few gripes with a remake I was against from the start. I thought EA was just cashing in off the stressed game remake fad that Resident Evil 2 remake started but surprisingly, this game surpassed the game that inspired it's creation by a large margin and I can safely say is on par with the Resident Evil 1996 remake as one of the greatest game remakes of all time. If you think this is the same game with improved visuals, I can assure you, it's way more than that.