Wii Review
By
Iun Hockley - 15th November 2009 16:31
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"Visceral have not made a good game with a story, but a good story with a game. And it’s told with style and panache."
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Immersion. If there’s one word that accurately describes Dead Space Extraction, then that is it. Immersion. From the very beginning to the roll of the credits, you are in the game. The game surrounds you, binds you, pulls you in and devours you like the screaming, twisted Necromorphs that charge from the shadows.
The Wii is now officially the home of the on-rails/lightgun genre. Why? Thanks to the genius of the Wii remote, there’s no need to buy expensive peripherals to allow the arcade gameplaying experience – though if you have a Wii Zapper, you will get much more out of DSE. Wii owners can look no further than House of the Dead: Overkill, Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles and now Dead Space Extraction for the best lightgun experiences on any current, and dare we say, previous generation of consoles.
Having never played any other game in the Dead Space series – nor having ever heard of it up until this point, we had no idea what to expect. Have you seen Alien and Aliens? Ok. It’s a bit like those. Did you ever catch Screamers? Yeah, similar to that one. Any of the “…of the Dead” films? Elements of those there as well. The original PC Unreal? Totally.
The truth be told, there has never been a game that so intensely believes in itself. Right down to the last detail, you are there. When you move forward, the camera wobbles and shakes as it would when you walk with a video camera in your hand. FPS games have been doing this for years, in a rythmic unbelievable fashion. In DSE the character movement has an enormous effect on your aim. To begin with, it’s quite disconcerting, and it’s certainly the first time we’ve been motion sick in years playing a videogame. Once you get used to it, you begin to compensate automatically for the lurching viewpoint and aiming becomes second nature. You will seriously want to consider a Zapper or other peripheral help steady yourself, at least to begin with.
The story starts in typical tutorial fashion: look around using the remote, this is the button you press to fire, turn the Wiimote on its side for alt-fire mode, see the big glowing red thing that’s obviously going to have a big effect on proceedings… so far pretty standard. What adds to the experience are things like the constant chatter of your companions and the video and audio logs that you pick up at semi-random intervals. Ordinary logs give background information on the story, and when you see a log labelled “Dr Carmichael’s Warning” or “Recent Security Breach” you know that things ain’t exactly peachy ‘round here. The audio logs are an excellent touch: when you pick these up, the log is played through the Wiimote speaker, meaning if you want to hear some potentially life-saving information you’re going to have to hold the speaker to your ear while the rampaging hordes of Necromorphs are trying to go kungfu on your space ass.
And the game looks pretty good too, which helps a lot. Everything is heavily stylised and the different locales are easily distinguishable through the hallways and large open spaces that make up the game world. Offices seem real, with paper and data storage devices strewn about al over the place, and the computers have a fairly convincing-looking OS which adds to the feeling of total immersion. Character models are a little bland sometimes, but the lip-syncing is mostly spot on, and the facial expressions are pretty believable. However, the Necromorphs themselves seem pretty identikit, and for the first part of the game you’ll be seeing the same guys over and over again. A small complaint, and more of one that can be levelled at the Wii hardware than the developers who have really gone all-out to polish the experience.
The only detraction from the atmosphere is bizarre variety in the voice work. You have South African, Army-style British, Canadian, Russian and a woman who can’t seem to decide if she’s Scottish or Cornish half the time. Yes, it’s nice to think that in the near future all races, nations and creeds will live together in harmony. But this isn’t Star Trek and some of the voiceovers are just plain offputting. In fact, sometimes it takes a minute or two to register what has been said, given the changing accents on offer. It’s a shame, because the game seems to use action scenes as an excuse to set up the character interaction scenes. It’s a bit “Final Fantasy” in this approach, as if you are walking from one cut-scene to another with a minimal amount of play time in between.
A few of the more interesting elements of the game include the ability to grab objects at a distance – all lightgun games have this feature, but DSE makes it believable with the ability to telekinetically grab objects using a sticky-looking beam of light. Then there’s the recharging ability to render enemies inert using a stasis beam – a real godsend when things get frantically out of hand. Puzzles occur in real time using the Wiimote, and when you’re being overwhelmed by ugly-looking mutants, the tension is tangible as you desperately try to plug that gap or re-wire the circuit board before you’re cut to pieces. Nice.
Without spoiling the story for you, things get out of hand rather quickly: it’s pretty obvious that forces are at work on this colony that should not be dealt with lightly, and the questionable sanity of the games characters certainly recalls Eternal Darkness at its mind-warping best. Visceral have not made a good game with a story, but a good story with a game. And it’s told with style and panache. If anything though, there’s perhaps too much story: with the constant chatter of your companions in later levels, you never really feel alone in the game, even though the NPC’s are good for nothing except getting caught in traps and suchlike. Unless, that is, you want to replace them with your friends in the instant drop-in co-op, which certainly helps during some of the more hectic passages.
This game won’t last long on the first playthrough though: the developers themselves have stated that the Story can be gotten through in a mere 6 hours. But of course, the obligatory extras are supposed to keep you coming back for more, as is the co-op play. As it stands, the jury is currently out on the games’ ultimate longevity. Put it this way: if you’re going to collect every single item and explore absolutely all the alternate routes and regularly play the game with friends, then it’s going to be a keeper. If you just want to blast the game in story mode, it’s probably no more than a weekend of fun. Shame.
Don’t let longevity issues and dodgy voice acting put you off though, this game is a real gem and is certainly one you will want to play if you’re getting tired of the same lightgun formula. For old hands and rookies, the game offers a fresh and fairly original spin on a classic formula that needs to be played to be fully appreciated.
© Copyright by N-Europe
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