DEAD MAN WALKING

The Dead Space remake is a triumphant return for the beloved survival horror series

DEAD SPACE PS5,
Xbox Series, PC

This is a game about how space is downright scary, an abyss into which we gaze and see our nightmares reflected right back. It's hard to marvel at the universe with a Necromorph's blades in your gut. Necromorph is a fancy space word for zombie, by the way, and you'll come to know them intimately in Dead Space, as they jump-scare you every few minutes for the next ten or so hours.

If there is one thing I am happy this remake didn't change, it's the Necromorph jumping-out-of-a-vent scream that almost sounds as if they're as surprised as you are. It's good to be back on the Ishimura, even if this is a remake instead of a fourth game. It's a fact made all the more frustrating by how much this remake feels like a brand-new Dead Space.

Meet your Marker

Isaac Clarke is your average space engineer, hoping to see his girlfriend Nicole after a long time spent apart. Instead, he finds himself working the worst shift in human history. As you bounce from crisis to crisis trying to keep the dying planet-cracker USG Ishimura on its last legs, you also have to contend with the ship's changed crew, now Necromorphs of all shapes and sizes who very much want to make friends. Your only defence? An array of sci-fi power tools that turn out to be pretty effective at dismembering aliens.

Dead Space manages more in ten hours than most games do in thirty, and that narrative has been further focused in the remake. Isaac actually talks now, and this helps make him feel like an active participant in the story. His dialogue does err a little towards action hero at times, with lines like, "I'm all out of good ideas, so guess what's left," but you do get more of a sense of him barely keeping it together as the crisis continues to escalate.