Just another lightgun game for Wii? Not quite. While Dead Space: Extraction pushes you around its house of horrors on a shopping trolley and gives you a cursor to fend off things that leap out of the shadows, it's a long way from the likes of Ghost Squad.
The most obvious difference is the pacing. While typical gun games supply you with wave after wave of enemies to kill, this one frequently has a couple of minutes of, well, dead space, as your character clambers through air vents and looks around nervously. Scenes of prolonged action are placed considerable distances apart, and a large part of your time is spent walking around very slowly, waiting for the odd handful of creatures to suddenly attack.
So don't expect a thrill ride, or the sort of replayable shooting gallery you'd revisit for high scores. Extraction is almost closer to a massive interactive cutscene, and if that doesn't sound like the most exciting thing ever, it's because it most definitely isn't.
Dead wait However, if you're at all interested in the world of Dead Space, whether via the classic survival horror game on other formats or the animated movie and comics, you'll get a lot of story-based enlightenment out of this prequel.
Extraction begins on the planet that you visit at the end of the original Dead Space, before everything gets overrun by mutant monsters and you escape to the orbiting mining ship Ishimura. Unfortunately, things are about to get just bad up there, though you'll find a few people uninfected by the mutation bug.
Most of the time you're accompanied by three fellow survivors who offer constant banter and give you something to look at when you're not scanning the walls and ceilings for beasties. The character models are really high-quality, with expressive facial animations and enough detail to be displayed at screen-filling size without looking crap.
When the monsters appear, your cowardly 'buddies' tend to hide behind you until you dispose of the danger and they reveal themselves once more.
Plenty of locations will be instantly familiar to Dead Space fans, but you don't always get the chance to admire the lovingly recreated environments in as much detail as you might like. The entire game is filmed in shaky 'nervous cam' and the view rarely settles on anything for long. As a simulation of somebody scared witless in a brief scene in a movie, it's quite effective. However, in a game where you'll want to grab every last bit of ammo from closets, crates and corpses, it's a bit annoying.
You might notice an item glowing in the corner of the room, when you're suddenly assailed by monsters. You'll shoot them all down, train your cursor over the thing you wanted to grab and - whoops! - the camera lurches away to follow some random noise in the pipework or talk to one of the characters behind you. Will it return to that spot so you can refill your weapons? Possibly not.Collecting items is, if anything, harder than shooting monsters. At least the viewpoint stays more or less fixed when there's a fight.
Get back here! Extraction is built around a similar template to its parent game, which itself is a lot like Resident Evil 4 - explore scary places, never knowing when the next bad thing is going to burst out or creep up and tap you on the shoulder. That's a recipe for tension, heart-thumping fear and a game you'll be reluctant to play with the lights off.
Trying to replicate that in something that moves on rails doesn't work so well. In the original game you know full well something is going to make you jump at some point down the next corridor, and you force yourself to inch forward, fearing the worst. In Extraction all the decisions are made for you. Seeing your character stare down at his feet, wheel around sharply to focus on uninteresting things on the walls or crane his neck to check out a panel overhead is never scary, and the trick is repeated so often it gets boring.
Extraction is still worth playing just for its dark atmosphere and fine graphics, particularly if you're into Dead Space. But we found the Story mode way too slow to be worth seeing twice, and neither the script nor the acting are of a high enough standard to make it a legitimate contender as an interactive movie.
started playing this last night, and i'd say that its a pretty fair review.
As a Deadspace fan it's fantastic,
Graphically its brilliant, But as you start playing it you just wish that they'd made it an fps. It would of been something truely special if you weren't hearded through it.
Monkey man - do you play every game on evey console? How do you find the time and money? Are you a secret millionaire? Can I have some of your old games please?
agree with monkey: started this myself yesterday; looks good but feels like a virtual tour of dead space. i just wish i could control the movement. i think it'd suit mp3 style controls more than an on rails affair but maybe that's just me.
shame really,there's a good game in there somewhere.
on a plus point the engine is decent,i'd like to see it refined and used again in future.
Monkey man - do you play every game on evey console? How do you find the time and money? Are you a secret millionaire? Can I have some of your old games please?
he isn't the only one, some of us make it priority to play top games on every console. i rent the ones that aren't essential and buy the ones that are.
back to extraction, i think after reading eurogamers review that i agree with them.
does make you wonder if the need to make it a rail shooter was some kind of half bottomd attempt to make it more "accessable" seriously modern gaming is like the whole give a man a fish thing. How can we hope for new people who get into gaming to ever play traditional genres if we don't give them the option to.
Dead space is definately worth a go though. I played the original to death and will definately play through this, but so far i'm not sure i'll have any want to more than once.
does make you wonder if the need to make it a rail shooter was some kind of half bottomd attempt to make it more "accessable" seriously modern gaming is like the whole give a man a fish thing. How can we hope for new people who get into gaming to ever play traditional genres if we don't give them the option to.
Dead space is definately worth a go though. I played the original to death and will definately play through this, but so far i'm not sure i'll have any want to more than once.
Boo if that's the case I may have to wait for the price to drop.
it is brilliant. in no way any less good than the original. i bummed last years game so using the line gun etc again feels sweet as f**k. i am going to try to finish story mode tonight and have a pop at challenge mode. i played level one on that and it is exhilerating. do not wait for the price to drop.
I agree with some of the other posts here. - It really does look fantastic for a Wii game. Surprised at how close to the original games. - Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying it (three levels in), but I can't help thinking how good a fully-fledged FPS would be. The engine, textures and effects are there guys. Make us one!!
It's still a good game though, and anyone who loves the Dead Space story and universe will no doubt enjoy this.
does make you wonder if the need to make it a rail shooter was some kind of half bottomd attempt to make it more "accessable" seriously modern gaming is like the whole give a man a fish thing. How can we hope for new people who get into gaming to ever play traditional genres if we don't give them the option to.
Dead space is definately worth a go though. I played the original to death and will definately play through this, but so far i'm not sure i'll have any want to more than once.
Boo if that's the case I may have to wait for the price to drop.
What do you prefer then! this or Overkill?
Overkill just because of how damn funny it was.
But i wouldn't wait for the price to drop on this either. they're both brilliant but becasue Deadspace is less 'arcadey', you end up feeling like they missed a trick. Its becasue its so good that you wish there was more to it. if you get what i'm saying.
personally i'd say Extraction definately stacks up to the original and is definately taking rail shooters in the right direction, but becasue of old preduces you want it to be another genre. I'd say it would make more sense to call it on rails horror rather than shooter.
Take an excellent game. Dumb down the graphics, put it on rails et voila. 7...
What a surprise! f***ybuoy puts in his usual negative two-penneth. - Don't try and criticize something you haven't played or have no intention of doing so.
Amazing as it may seem, the graphics are not dumbed down in the slightest. They are as atmospheric and detailed as the original game, and yes, I own both games.
While your three points may be valid, your conclusion is not. You haven't even played the game and yet you make comment about standards.
Show me some evidence of their being less good games in this generation per year then perhaps you might even have a point, but it still wouldn't be Nintendo's fault. They, themselves, have pushed out a decent amount of quality.
Finished it over the weekend and i have to say that once i got into it i couldn't put the bloody thing down.
So what if its on rails it's every bit as deadspace as the original and fills in a lot of plotholes in the original as well as showing us some likely characters and senarios in Deadspace too.
If you have a wii and any love for the original you should go and buy this game.
Whats all this s**t about Nintendo lowering standards. Last time i checked Nintendo's offering this gen have garnered critical praise and sold by the bucket load.
Nintendo in all 25 some plus years they've been making games for have seldom made a bad one. Different yes, Not always conventional, definately, but bad. Never( well except hey you pikachu but everyone needs one)
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