Dead Space 

2008 that is when the original Dead Space launched on PC and consoles alike, fast forward 15 years
and the classic game has received a wonderful remake that is most true to the original with some
tweaks overall, not only counting Graphical and Sound, Light overhaul but also some added dialogue
that fills in more on the story for those who remember it and were perhaps left with some questions.

I have to confess I played Dead Space around the time it launched, but I could not remember the whole story,
so this was a delight for me to revisit and behold; the new beautiful graphics and sounds
in a environment that is guaranteed to keep you glued to the chair whilst playing, and perhaps make you
a bit twitchy every time you hear some strange sounds.

For those who might not be familiar with the story of Dead Space, a quick summary of what has happened.
You are Isaac Clarke an Engineer onboard USG Kellion with your fellow crew mates responding to an
emergency help request by the giant Planet harvesting/mining ship USG Ishimura, and as you guessed
things go wrong straight away, your ship crashes onto the Ishimura, your crew mates are scattered
around the ship, and you have a bad feeling about the situation, and this is where the game begins.

Trying to find out what has happened on the Ishimura, becomes very clear quickly in the game, systems
malfunctioning everywhere, blood everywhere, and you stumble upon the first bodies and text written
in blood on the walls, the game already nailed the atmosphere back in 2008, but with todays technology
it is amazing to see the difference or should I say how far we have advanced within computer games,
the added light effects, raytracing and even in the sound department.. takes this classic up to
a whole new level of creepy and fun. I have added below a few pictures from the EA Website to show
the graphics back in 2008, and the slider on top of course features snapshots I took whilst playing
the game on Steam for your comparison: to have a better sense of how much work or rather love has
been put in.

 

As you notice from the tone of my writing so far, I am full of praise for this remake and rightfully
so, this is out there with remakes such as Resident Evil 2 and 3, well executed for old players
and new alike.

Dead Space depending on the difficulty choice you make, in it’s 12 chapters and side missions
to play from beginning to end takes around 8.5 hours minimum if you remember to use those save
spots frequently, and manage not to get yourself killed in some gruesome way. The game caters to all
levels of players, beginners and hardcore with the choices from Story Mode, easy, medium, hard and
later on a New Game+

The controls of the game felt solid the whole way, easy to wrap your head around but you also have
customization options if you feel the need to change the layouts.

For those who might be wondering about collectibles and different weapons, suits etc. The answer is
Yes; The Deluxe edition of the game also comes with a variety of different suits for Isaac, and you’ll
have a grand time during your playthrough to find power nodes for you to upgrade the weapons which are
plentiful or the suit mechanics, investing in upgrading at least one of the weapons fully and aiming
for a full suit upgrade makes the game a bit easier to handle in your playthrough as logically you
are more powerful, but it also gives you a bit more time on certain missions to scurry around and
find hidden items, log entries, or even more power nodes etc. Steam has a total 47 achievements
to unlock and includes such things as collecting all the logs, schematics, and something for those
with patience and skill, not afraid to tackle the Impossible difficulty level.

As time passes in PC Gaming we’ve been pretty fortunate that most games in the past years have not
required the most modern and powerful CPU:s and GPU:s for us to enjoy the adventures laid on us,
I am starting to see a trend where after so many years the minimum has been a 2-4 GB GPU card, and
a 5-6th gen Intel CPU to accompany is not enough anymore, new games are starting to raise the bar,
and it’s understandable when tech moves forward, and games become more complex and beautiful.

This is the time where we are going to need perhaps some upgrades made to our rigs to be so called future proof.
Dead Space is no exception to this, raising the bar quite substantially with it’s minimum requirements
being a Ryzen 5 2600x or a Intel Core i5 8600 with 16GB of Ram, AMD RX 5700 or a Nvidia GTX 1070.
As you can see from the below image.

I played the game on my main rig, i5-9600k, 16GB of ram and a 8GB 3070 Nvidia GPU, paired with a 3440×1440
Monitor, whilst using DLSS on auto and occasionally trying out the other options such as balanced and
performance this netted me through my whole playthrough around 70-90 FPS, with one substantial dip to
the low 10’s on the End Game boss, changing my settings during that boss fight, got me back up to 40fps
so it was playable again, I’m not sure if this was a bug or what crapped out the frame rate here, but
overall on my playthrough the game was more than enjoyable, this also based on that I have the game
installed on a SSD, which ensured super fast loading times, starting the game or accidentally killing yourself.

Also worth mentioning, that I had 0 game-crashes during the playthrough, and the only odd “negative” thing
was that frame dip in the end game, but I am sure it will be mangled out in any updates if it is a bug.

I think I’ve covered what I wanted on Dead Space with this review, so I’ll move onto my final words.

Whether you played the game in 2008, or not played it yet, if you want to experience a good story,
some gory action, a game that actually will have you jump a few times because you got spooked..
Dead Space is the game for you, it’s worth a revisit, a first visit, and even a second visit
with new Game+

9
Out Of 10
Pros
  • A Story that keeps you on your toes from the beginning to the end
  • Sounds might make you a bit paranoid in a good way, atmosphere.
  • Beautiful Graphics and well implemented DLSS.
  • Deluxe edition comes with Dead Space 2 bundled on Steam.
Cons
  • Major performance issues on end game boss.
  • Requires quite a lot of horsepower to run at Maximum detail levels.

Thank you to EA PR for providing a review code for the Dead Space Remake. Dead Space is out now on Steam, EA Play launcher (formerly Origin), and can also be purchased for Consoles; Playstation & Xbox in their respective online stores or at your local retailer. Please see Steam for regional pricing.

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