TommyD100 Dead Space (2023) Review

It’s important to note that I’m no fan of horror, but I’d heard so many good things about this game — both when it originally released and again with this full remake — that I had to give it a shot. It truly delivers a great experience, and although that layer of dread and fear never made me comfortable, it’s clearly by design and to the developers’ credit. When you strip away the horror elements, there’s a genuinely great game here. The exploration, the puzzles, the gunplay, and the level design all work so well together. When the visuals look this good, you don’t mind searching through offices and lockers for loot and upgrades. Games in this genre often make everything too dark, but the lighting here is handled so well. The ambient glow bouncing off metallic surfaces gives you just enough visibility to navigate with ease, while still offering that subtle distrust about what might be waiting around the corner. I don’t like cheap jump scares, but yes, there are more than a few here. I don’t like closet monsters bursting out of vents behind you, but they’re here too. After a few hours, those tactics became predictable, yet the game still managed to throw in occasional curveballs that kept me on my toes. I’ll give them credit for that, even though it’s not exactly fun to feel this uncomfortable. The ominous, screechy music adds to the fear that something is knocking around in the room, and the audio cues of creatures scurrying through the vents made the hair on my arms stand straight. I played the entire game with headphones and toughed it out to the end. As much as I don’t enjoy that level of tension, it’s intentional — and they absolutely achieved what they set out to do. Let’s make no mistake: there really is a good game underneath all that horror. If they swapped the monsters for human soldiers and turned it into a murder mystery, it would still be great. But the constant layer of fear and dread was a lot to bear. After every session, I felt like I needed a cocktail. I gave it a try, and I’m glad I did. As for recommending it, I could only do so with a warning.