Dead Space Remake: sponsored by Tena Lady (TM)
Ok, not really, but Tena Lady are really missing a trick here. Bladder weakness + Survival Horror games = huge untapped market. But enough about feminine hygiene, lets get onto the game.
I remember the heady days of 2008. OK, my first marriage had ended and I had lost my job, but that just meant I had more time for gaming! And one of those games was Dead Space. I’d always loved survival horror, with the Resident Evil and Silent Hill games being some of my favorite of all time. I quickly added Dead Space that list. In fact the Dead Space games squicked me out in ways no other survival horror games had (eyeballs, why’d it have to be eyeballs….)
Remake: good or crud?
Lets face it. The Dead Space Remake had a lot to live up to. Could a remake of such a good game live up to expectations and (hopefully) lead to more games set in the universe? It was with some trepidation that I loaded the game up.
For those unaware of the story, the player takes control of Issac Clarke, an engineer assigned to do repairs to the communications array of the mining ship USG Ishimura, a massive ‘Planet Cracker’ class ship, that has been out of radio contact for some reason. Clarke, however, has received a cryptic message from his girlfriend Nicola Brennan, a medical officer on said ship, so he also plans to find her. But something terrifying has happened to the crew of the Ishimura, and you need to find out what caused it, whilst trying not to become a victim yourself.
Upon landing (or rather crashing) on the Ishimura, an aging hulk of a mining ship, the polished graphics gives the a whole new layer of dust, grime, and pretty quick, gore. The level of detail is amazing; there’s graffiti and adverts galore to read, it reminds me of the London Underground with fewer buskers and more terrifying monsters.
What’s changed and what’s not?
The basics are the same. Necromorphs come in various varieties, from your common garden ‘stab you in the face’ variety to mutant undead babies, and each one has specific weakness and vulnerable areas that you need to target. No one head shot kills all here; hit the wrong areas and it just makes ’em mad(der). In the remake the Necromorphs are way more horrifying in appearance and the blood is much more abundant and lovingly rendered. You still have in game puzzles to solve, and your Armour and weapons are still repurposed engineering tools, which you can upgrade in various ways to suit your needs and play style.
The Necromorphs still burst out of the walls at inopportune moments, hence the Tena Lady joke. That’s not to say the game is all one jump scare after another. Between the empty but bloodstained corridors, notes, emails, audio logs and videos left by the unfortunate crew, there is a real sense of dread as you make your way through the game. New side quests really help flesh out the back story, which was already good. Now it’s excellent.
One notable difference in the remake is to the Zero G areas. You don’t just have magnetic boots now; you have a 360-degree range of movement. I found it fiddly at first, but fun once I got used to it.
Verdict
All in all Dead Space Remake is a huge success. It’s kept the basics of the original game and the new content blends in almost seamlessly. It’s not just prettier, it’s meatier all round. It does still suffer from the same drawbacks of the original though; the quests can be repetitive and close quarters combat is a pain in the butt. It’s not a very long game, you only need about 15 – 20 hours to complete it, but not every game needs to require 100+ hours worth of content.
And now for the important part.
ACCESSIBILITY
Holy crap, this game has it all. This game is the measuring stick against which accessibility in video games shall be judged.
The Dead Space Remake doesn’t just give lip service to accessibility. It takes it and freaking RUNS with it. They haven’t just given us multiple difficulty modes, aim assist, control customisation and subtitles. Oh no, they have given us subtitles that we can choose the size, font and colour of. And allow us to choose the background and have different colours for different speakers so we know who is talking. Control customisation can be tailored to your exact needs. You can complete quick time events with a single button press. You can make it so sprint and aim are toggled on and off rather than by keeping the button pressed. You can remap every single button. You can turn off camera shake to help with motion sickness.
The Remake is also the first game of this it’s kind to offer options in regards to the games content. You can chose to have content warnings, and even hide content if this is what a player wants. There are literally pages of options to allow everybody the chance to enjoy the game.
Final thoughts
For once it feels like disabled gamers haven’t just been an afterthought in the design of a game. And that is a big deal to me, and many others like me. For those who want to complain about EA being ‘woke’ or people being snowflakes, none of these options are on automatically. Everything mentioned here, you turn on by choice. If you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to. You can ignore any or all of the accessibility options. You can have your ultra-hard splatterfest. Not all of us have that choice though, and through no fault of our own.