Dead Space: Extraction Review
Visceral Games made a name for themselves last year with their survival-horror hit game Dead Space, redefining fear and isolation in the blackness of the final frontier. Now, Extraction explores the events before the original game, providing a bit more insight on the mysterious Marker and its effects on the Aegis VII space colony. This on-rails light gun shooter retains all the horror and panic of the first game in a “guided first-person experience,” forcing you to face down hordes of enemies as they crash into your line of vision. It may be on the short side, but Dead Space: Extraction continues the tradition of light gun shooters on the Wii with a truly cinematic and thrilling ordeal.
When miners on Aegis VII discover a mysterious red statue that resembles a Marker, a symbol of the Unitarian religion, strange things begin to happen. People have disturbing visions, hear haunting voices, and turn homicidal on their closest friends. Soon horrific monsters overrun Aegis VII, and the remaining survivors will have to escape any way they can. You’ll control a variety of characters as they fight to understand what’s going on and escape the madness that has descended upon them, all while shooting apart alien abominations. From your first-person perspective, the plot unfolds in a wonderfully cinematic way, as characters bicker about how to proceed before being interrupted by monster attacks. You’ll feel like you are in the middle of a horror movie, talking with the well-defined and strongly developed characters. Some of the dialogue is a little stiff, and the ending just raises more questions than answers, but the plot is nonetheless gripping and drives you to keep playing.
A HUD display in the corner shows health, your current weapon, and ammo.
You may not be free to roam about Aegis VII or other locations, but Extraction doesn’t skim on the survival-horror action. Enemies charge toward you in disturbingly dark environments, and you’ll have to shoot them down before their arms, claws, or fangs reach you. Unlike other shooters, you really have to perfect your aim to survive, as enemies are only defeated when you blow off their limbs. The greatest obstacle to your aim is the overwhelming darkness. Naturally, a survival-horror game will be thoroughly blanketed in shadow, but in Extraction the gloom is overly abundant, and becomes more annoying than atmospheric. At specified points the game allows you to use glow worms–glow sticks, to the layman–but these glimmering items are weak in large environments, and can only be used occasionally. Of course, you have your own ways of leveling the playing field. By using stasis, you can temporarily freeze individual enemies–a vital skill on harder difficulty levels. You’ll have to learn to watch the shadows and use stasis wisely to survive the nightmare. Furthermore, you can bring in a second player at any time, providing a valuable second gun hand, but be careful, you each have a separate supply of ammo, forcing you to think strategically and cooperatively.
To ensure that you are in the moment, frantically running from enemies and searching for an escape route, Extraction employs a shaking camera technique, moving your line of vision as a panicking disaster survivor might. It can be a little dizzying after playing for a while, but it emphasizes the frightening tone of the game and guarantees that you’ll be immersed in the experience. Additionally, you have some breaks from shooting everything on screen. There are some light puzzle elements with motion controls and your trusty rivet gun. You may need to unlock a door by soldering a connection, tracing the proper line between hazards; don’t think the monsters will pause while you carefully trace the proper path, though. In some scenes they’ll continue to charge, adding to the panic of the scene. These simple puzzles are short and infrequent enough that they fill out the game world of Extraction without detracting from the survival-horror action.
The glow worm casts a feeble green light on the horrors around you.
A good shooter relies upon a variety of guns to keep combat fresh, and Extraction has some wonderfully imaginative weapons. There’s the standard pistol, automatic rifle, and the basic rivet gun with infinite ammunition, but there’s also the Ripper, which allows you to hold a spinning saw blade in mid-air to tear into your enemies, or the Line Gun, which emits a powerful beam of energy in a wide line, guaranteeing that you’ll sever multiple limbs. The best part, though, is the secondary function of each gun, activated by twisting the Wii remote to the side. The difference can be as simple as changing a horizontal beam into a vertical one, or as drastic as changing a shotgun-like blast into a grenade launcher. Each weapon is cleverly constructed–finding and experimenting with each one and deciding which is most vital is half the fun of combat.
Along with the clever secondary function mechanic, the controls of Extraction work wonderfully well. Motion controls are only present where they need be–secondary function, soldering–and even though the button mapping is fixed, the placement is simple enough to master quickly. Obviously, you’ll aim by pointing the Wii remote at the screen, but since you don’t have to move yourself, the control stick on the nunchuk is used for switching between weapons. You can only carry four, but by merely flicking in one of four directions, you can quickly and easily change guns when you run out of ammo, or need more firepower. You don’t need to pause and you don’t have to scroll through your weapons, just a simple flick and the seamless combat remains uninterrupted. Furthermore, Wii Zapper fans have another chance to dust off the plastic shell for monster shooting, though as usual it doesn’t add a lot to the game, just another option.
If enemies manage to latch onto you, you'll have to shake frantically to throw them off.
Though the game is simply drenched in shadow, the colony and spaceship locales are bursting with sci-fi style environments, and set great backgrounds for your alien blasting adventure. Character models are expressive and look good at a distance–unfortunately the game has a habit of providing close-ups while characters speak, which look distinctively less amazing. Still, the monsters look creepy and detailed (when you can see them) and the visuals run at a steady rate. The music also has plenty of creepy moments, as well as full voice acting for every scene. Though some lines fall flat and accents seem to dip in and out, the voice work is good, and prevents too much unnecessary text.
Playing through the game once will only last around five hours–a paltry length for most games, but Extraction doesn’t feel artificially short, and there’s plenty to keep you playing. Each level has a number of hidden collectibles, including new guns, weapon upgrades, and text or voice logs that explain a bit more about what has happened on Aegis VII. You can even unlock a lengthy series of digital comics that explore beginning of the panic. In addition, there are a few small branching paths, four difficulty levels, and a challenge mode where you fight waves of enemies to earn a high score, providing a whole different dimension to the gameplay. There’s a lot of dialogue and plot to retread when you replay levels, though, so it isn’t quite as easy to replay over and over as other light gun games.
Dead Space: Extraction’s brilliant cinematic presentation is complemented by frantic and exciting gameplay, all in the form of an on-rails shooter. The genre takes a lot of flak for its seeming simplicity, but Extraction makes a great effort to pull the most out of the gameplay, barring overzealous shadow use. It may be a short experience, but its well worth the time for one of the best Wii-focused games of the year.
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