
The audio design in Dead Space is integral to the experience, giving the game an immediately tense atmosphere through the use of high-pitched, unnatural screeches, creaky pipes, and sci-fi mechanisms whirring away around the player. The game should start with audio design, an aspect that even the least critically-acclaimed Dead Space games have nailed.
DEAD SPACE EXTRACTION SERIES
While the true gems may only come about a few times a year, the VR market is constantly flooded with mediocre horrors and first-person shooters.įor a Dead Space VR game to stand out, it'll need to take what the series is known for and polish it to an extremely high standard. As VR is progressing at a steady rate, every new year brings with it more innovative and immersive experiences. While a Dead Space VR game has inspiration from its own series to draw from, as well as the VR groundwork already laid out for it by The Persistence, it would need to do something pretty special to stand out from the crowd. RELATED: Lessons BioShock 4 Should Take From Dead Space There's plenty that a VR Dead Space game can take from The Persistence, even if it is just the confirmation that a sci-fi horror game in a similar vein can definitely work on the VR platform. While horror VR experiences are a dime a dozen, The Persistence is one of the few that are actually worth playing for more than an hour. In fact, The Persistence is a pretty great VR horror game, using rogue-lite elements to keep the player engaged, and constantly keeping the player hooked with new upgrades and weapons. As such, the similarities between the two games are fairly obvious, but that's not to say that The Persistence is just a blatant copy. A sci-fi horror title set on a ship, mutated humans stalk the halls and a definitively bleak and gory environmental design is visible. When it released in 2018, The Persistence drew immediate comparisons with Dead Space. Thankfully, Firesprite's The Persistence is there to lend a hand. īut while Dead Space: Extraction laid the foundation for a first-person Dead Space game, a VR entry in the series may need a little more help to get started. Dead Space: Extraction is compelling evidence that a first-person Dead Space game could absolutely work. The excellent audio design is there, all of the enemy variations are present, players eventually unlock a whole host of classic Dead Space weaponry and abilities, and the game still manages to capture the series' iconic sci-fi horror atmosphere. While the game undeniably feels a little more arcade-y than its main series counterpart, with a scoring system being used to grade the player at the end of each stage, the inherent Dead Space DNA is present within the game. Occasionally, some narrative sequences will have the player completing puzzles, using their tool weapons for their actual in-universe purpose to bolt down hatches or plasma-cut through panels.
The gameplay is pretty simple, with the player just needing to aim at the screen with their Wii remote, and press the trigger to sever the limbs off the various Necromorph creatures throughout the game. The Wii isn't exactly known for its excellent range of first-person shooters, and Visceral Games knew this, instead opting to focus on a tight narrative and thrilling action with fairly barebones gameplay. One of the main reasons for this (what some would consider to be) limitation was the game's Wii exclusivity upon launch. This Dead Space spin-off uses on-rails gameplay, taking the player through all of its set-pieces in a linear and meticulously-timed fashion. However, what's interesting about Extraction is its first-person perspective. Just a year later, Dead Space: Extraction was released.ĭead Space: Extraction acts as a prequel to the first game, taking the player on a terrifying character-hopping adventure through the Aegis VII mining colony, and eventually the USG Ishimura, where much of the first game takes place. Amongst the comic and sequel plans for Dead Space, an interesting spinoff game, first conceptualized during the first game's development, came about. After the success of the first Dead Space, the IP quickly became one of EA's favorites, and a range of projects started to be greenlit.
