Dead Space is a third person survival horror game where player character Isaac Clarke is part of an engineering team which has been sent to repair the deep space mining ship Ishimura. However, after boarding the ship they find it has been overrun by deadly monsters.

This is a remake of the game which was previously released in 2008. The original version is one of my all time favourite survival horror games, and I played it (as well as both sequels) 2 or 3 times. This remake definitely feels as good to play.


• Gameplay combines third person shooter combat with classic survival horror mechanics. There are fewer enemies per encounter than an action game, but every enemy can be dangerous, especially because Isaac’s movement speed is deliberately slow which makes the player vulnerable.

• You’ll need to carefully manage limited inventory space and scarce ammo and healing items. You can buy extra supplies from shops if needed, but ideally you’ll want to save credits to buy upgrades for your weapons and armour.

• The dead crew members of the Ishimura have been transformed into necromorphs, many of which will try to get up close and attack you with giant claws. Some of them can fire projectiles from range, while others have unique abilities such as crawling on the walls or ceiling, exploding at close range, or bursting on death to release a swarm of smaller bugs. And there are a couple of massive bosses which have huge tentacles.

• Isaac can use several weapons including the plasma cutter and line rack which fire wide beams of energy, a pulse rifle, flamethrower, and the ripper which holds a rapidly spinning saw blade at close range. The quickest way to kill necromorphs is to dismember their limbs, so unlike other games, you’ll need to aim for their arms and legs instead of the head and body. This will save ammo, and also has the added bonus of restricting their movements.

• Isaac’s suit provides him with two more abilities which are useful during both combat and minor puzzle solving. Stasis can slow the movement speed of enemies and machinery, while kinesis can lift and throw heavy objects.

• The necromorphs aren’t the only threat aboard the Ishimura, because the environment itself is dangerous. You can be crushed or burned by malfunctioning machines, and at times you’ll need to travel outside the ship, where you could suffocate from lack of oxygen, and because there’s no sound in the vacuum of space, its easy for enemies to surprise you.


• The Ishimura is one of the more interesting sci-fi settings in video games, alongside Alien Isolation’s Sevastopol and Prey’s Talos I.

• The story is where the remake has the biggest differences compared to the original version, because some NPCs have more dialogue and a greater involvement in certain events, while the addition of a few side quests provides background detail.

• Main story is good, although it didn’t have as much impact for me because I remembered the main twists relating to its religious cult conspiracy from previous playthroughs.

• Voice acting is good.


• It took me 14 hours to finish the main story and a couple of side quests.

• Controls are fully rebindable and work well on mouse and keyboard.

• I didn’t experience any crashes, but I had to disable DLSS because of a ghosting effect which was especially noticeable when opening doors.

• I had a consistent framerate with all other graphics settings maxed at 1440p (RTX 3080, i7-12700K, 32GB DDR4), however I did notice several instances of stuttering which seemed to occur when loading new areas (traversal stutter?). Thankfully this didn’t happen during combat.


Dead Space is an excellent game which fans of survival horror games should definitely enjoy. Even if you already played the original, the remake is worth playing again.

I hope the developers will make us whole again by remaking Dead Space 2 and 3, which will also give them a chance to fix the disappointing third game by changing its action focused combat into a true survival horror experience.

No idea how EA made such a banger

Huge stutters. In some cases game freezes for a second or two on my machine (R9 7950X, RX 7900 XTX). For me this game is unplayable in current state which is a shame since I liked the original. Visually and gameplay-wise this game was fun when it worked.