I sat down and tried playing through the first level of Dead Space Extraction just to see how it was, and the best thing I can say about it is that I didn’t want to stop playing it. In fact, I ended up playing through all ten levels in two days, which goes to show you that it is an enjoyable game – especially for Dead Space fans. In contrast, I’ve played through a few levels of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, and even though I’m a Resident Evil fan, I just found RE: UC to be too boring and never could force myself to get through it.
Dead Space: Extraction has many positive things going for it: an interesting prequel storyline that can be appreciated by those new to Dead Space, but even more appreciated by fans of the original game. Even though stuff can be hard to make out that’s far away at times, the graphics seem to be as good as what the Wii can handle. The sound, dialogue, and music are top notch. There is tons of spoken dialogue, and there are even audio files that you find that get played out of the Wii-mote itself, which is a nice touch. Part of me feels like the amount of effort put into the audio was to makeup for the “weaker” video presentation that the Wii is hampered by.
Finally, the best thing going for it is that the game works as an on-rails shooter. Visceral Games, the developer of both Dead Space and Dead Space: Extraction, manage to preserve the enjoyment of the interesting weapons and dismemberment of enemy limbs from the 360 game to the Wii game. I felt like practically very little of the gameplay was lost: I still grew worried as enemy aliens lurked closer, I still had to aim for limbs to slow enemies down, and I still had to effectively manage my reloading in the middle of being swarmed. The sense of fear present in the original was captured marvelously in the Wii game, and what I can say is that fans of Dead Space will enjoy Dead Space: Extraction. And who would have thought, but the Flamethrower is actually awesome in this Wii game!
However, there are some glaring negatives that make me cringe. Each of the ten levels is about 30 minutes long, and while that sounds decent for an “on-rails” shooter, Dead Space: Extraction is the first on-rails shooter I’ve played where practically half of each level is really just unskippable cutscenes and dialogue. Thus, it’s more of a “story-based” on-rails shooter, which doesn’t lend itself well to replay value at all. The first time through is amazing, but you’ll never want to go through again. There is a challenge mode that gets unlocked later that pits you against waves of enemies with no storyline whatsoever, but without any sort of online leaderboard, there’s no real incentive to go through it. And I don’t know how else to put it but say that the game is buggy. I’ve had to reset a couple of times when playing the game just because an enemy gets trapped behind an object or wall, and since you can’t kill it, you can’t progress through the game.
I enjoyed the game a lot as a Dead Space fan, but it’s not a game that should be in your collection as it’s short and lacks any sort of replay value. Dead Space fans should rent it, while others can probably pass. It was a delightful 5 hour ride, but it’s over so quickly that I can’t recommend paying $50 for it.
