4.5/5 ★ – Tye_Boy's review of Dead Space.

While better than ever before in immersing the player through wicked graphics and impressive sound design, I struggle to determine whether the Dead Space remake truly surpasses the original game. Its been about two years since I first played the original Dead Space, my memory doing me no favours in recollecting everything about it. Still, I did my best to compare and contrast while checking out this remake, and I think I have a fair idea about what sets them apart. Obviously, this game looks amazing! The environments, models, textures, lighting, and gore are incredibly well-done, imbuing even more atmosphere into the USG Ishimura. All the while, revamped ambient music and crisp, subtle sound design brings about much tension and unease, with some awe as well. The game plays about just as well as the original and Dead Space 2, although it seems to be slightly slower in movement this time? I don’t know for sure, but stomping in the remake did not feel nearly as satisfying as the original, and as a result, I didn’t use it as much as I did back then. Elsewhere, the infamous asteroid segment from the original has been altered, being a much-needed improvement from the frustrating blunder it was before. Its controls are great, with the PS5’s Dualsense adding some immersion through its vibration capabilities. Overall, the Dead Space remake is still fantastic. It comes close to rivalling the exceptional status of the original and its sequel, breathing new life into it with newer technology. And yet, there’s a bunch of little things that prevent me from saying it’s better than the original. Not only is there the aforementioned slightly-slower movement, but the presence of a few annoying bugs, expanding the story to hint at the sequels, and giving Isaac Clarke a speaking role when he was silent in the original culminates in bogging down the game for me. I feel like the less is more approach of the original - from what I can remember - proved to be a better core experience than this remake. Back when Dead Space was an entirely new game on the market, where there were no plans for sequels at the time, and it, for a time, existed as its own, sole game. I still feel that EA’s decision to remake this game came about from the huge successes of Capcom and their Resident Evil remakes. Between that and utilizing the IP from the original developer that they closed a mere five years ago before announcing this game, it screams cashgrab to me; one that I acknowledge I bought into. With The Calisto Protocol being worked on by key members of Visceral Games, I really hoped that it would have blown the Dead Space remake out of the water. However, that game came out as a middling mass of regurgitation, with this game coming out on top for being a remake of an already-amazing game.