Dead Space

An even more gruesome remake

- Samantha Greer

Fuck this ship,” says graffiti, down on the mining deck where the bulk of a humongous spacecraft’s work takes place, “it’s a shitty capitalist organisation.” Dead Space may be a remake of a game from 2008 set in the future, but its concerns are modern. Through small, cumulative changes, developer Motive has not only revitalised the game, it’s highlighted its humanity.

As in the original you’re Isaac Clarke, an engineer (and a welcomely mundane kind of bloke) sent as part of a search and rescue team to investigate the loss of contact with a massive mining ship. Naturally, once aboard, you learn there’s been more than a technical issue and soon you’re fighting tooth and nail against murderous zombies.

“Cut off their limbs”, scrawled in blood on a wall at the outset of the story, isn’t simply a piece of environmental art that’s endured from the original, it’s instruction and world building wrapped up in a package with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer moulded out of plastic explosives; an approach to horror that’s effectively gleefully tossing buckets of red slop at the audience and yelling ‘Boo!’ between throws. It’s remained iconic because it is both an incredibly efficient way of communicating the game’s tone and mechanics and so morbid that you just have to laugh.

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