Retro spotlight: Dead Space: Extraction
EA made a lot of weird decisions for this prequel to their instant horror classic, but none of them dinged the quality of Extraction.
This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
Mature games and the Nintendo Wii. Efforts were made, again and again, but it just wasn’t ever meant to be the system that would attract the kind of gamer who wanted that specific thing above all. That doesn’t mean the Wii lacked for quality mature efforts, though. Sure, games like The Conduit missed the mark and felt like they belonged to a generation even further behind the present than the Wii, but the best version of Resident Evil 4 is on the Wii, for instance, while some high-quality, original M-rated titles like MadWorld, No More Heroes, and House of the Dead: Overkill made their debuts there.
The Wii might not have been the console to buy if you were looking specifically for mature games, no, but if you were more open to a variety of experiences, and those experiences included mature titles, the Wii had a few moments of greatness to share with you that, in some cases, you would have missed out on otherwise, or at least missed out on the superior form that was was built from the ground up for the little white tower and its specific functions.
While some developers and publishers relished the opportunity to release violent, mature titles on a system that was generally lacking in them — the idea being that they would get some big fish small pond marketing action out of it, for instance — others were far more cautious. EA had no trouble supporting the Wii, going so far as to make Wii-specific versions of some titles like Madden, which would include game modes that took advantage of functions like the IR pointer, but when it came to mature-rated games, they were more hesitant. Dead Space: Extraction is basically the exception, because it was EA’s attempt to test the system’s waters to determine if more mature Wii games made financial sense for the company.
This isn’t just me guessing, it was actually EA’s thought process, according to their European VP, Dr. Jens Uwe Intat:
"One of the explanations we have is that there's a lot of double ownership," he said. "So people having a Wii and a 360 and/or PS3. They're really playing different types of games on those two machines, and historically up to know we assume those people will have played the more mature content on the more high-tech machine.
“Dead Space: Extraction is going to be a very nice test of that hypothesis, because we're really building a game where the Wii version is very different to the Dead Space game on 360 and PS3, and we'll actually see whether we can reach more people with a) a great game and b) interesting content."
He went on to agree that therefore the publisher will know within six months if it's a genre that's worth developing for in the future.
"If that's not going to work, then obviously the whole proposal from our point of view at least of more mature games on the Wii just does not work," he added.
While I understand, from a business perspective, the idea of developing different games for different audiences, the specific genre that EA chose to produce for the Wii might have made sense for the machine’s capabilities and unique functions, but it was just the goofiest possible plan as far as any kind of litmus test goes. An on-rails horror shooter that prioritized setting, atmosphere, and narrative over pure action, on a system that already had quite a few on-rails games and horror games and on-rails horror games, and in a franchise that had done well but was more critical than commercial darling on the more high-powered Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 systems? Dead Space: Extraction was a great idea for a game and highly innovative for the genre it was contained within, and the game itself ended up being great, too, but as far as a larger plan goes, EA has had better ones.
Consider, too, that EA did a poor job of marketing the game, which is a requirement in general but especially for a console with a large install base that needed prodding to buy things that weren’t published by Nintendo or attached to long-established franchises — Dead Space, a new franchise with one game that existed on consoles besides the Wii, does not quality as either of those. So, EA had a brand new concept for an on-rails shooter, a somewhat niche genre as it is, on a system that could do on-rails with fewer barriers to entry than literally any other system in history thanks to the IR pointer being part of the basic controller instead of a light gun add-on you had to hope developers would support in droves to justify buying, and planned to use it to test whether mature games made sense on the Wii. And then EA didn’t market it like they needed to, which resulted in it selling all of 9,000 copies in its first week. As I said, EA has had better plans.
Enough about EA, though, let’s talk about what Visceral Games and Eurocom pulled off here: a game that merited far more sales and far more support than it ever received. Whereas the on-rails Resident Evil games released on the Wii — Umbrella Chronicles and Darkside Chronicles — just competently redid the classic games and fights and scares you already knew but in an on-rails format, Dead Space: Extraction stood alone as its own original story and entry in still-new Dead Space universe. It’s a prequel that introduced new characters and a new-ish setting — the Aegis VII colony and the planet cracker class ship the Ishimura prior to and in the midst of their Necromorph infestations — while also fleshing out and enriching the larger story of Dead Space in the process. It wasn’t a cash grab to capitalize on the first game in the series — as said, this was a great idea that had almost no chance of succeeding, for a franchise that was more critically than commercial successful — but was instead a way of building out said series.
Even though it’s an on-rails experience instead of a third-person one, Extraction managed to feel like Dead Space. It’s not quite as outright horrifying, for a number of reasons — and yes, some of those, as EA surmised, did have to do with the hardware differences between the two systems — but it still manages to be notably and perpetually unsettling for a game where you’re mostly just in control of where you’re pointing and firing. Much of this has to do with how well the atmosphere of Dead Space transferred to the format: Visceral Games and Eurocom gave Extraction’s story, characters, and setting the time they needed to breathe, so that they all came alive — and then often died — as necessary. That you can traverse areas that are familiar but in a different period of time and context than that which Isaac Clarke experiences in Dead Space helps with all of this, too, just like keeping the audio and text logs that existed in the original helps relate these as a believable shared universe worth mining further.
Extraction’s respect for the themes and universe of the original are apparent, too, with additional emphasis on the idea that corporate greed and a religious sect bent on domination of all are at fault for everything going wrong around you, and the broken world they both exist within, too.
There are many, many instances in this game where there is no action at all, just exposition and vibes, all building toward ensuring that when the action does return, you’re fumbling around in terror trying to aim at just what you need to aim at in order to not die, or very aware of how much you wish a certain party member of yours would end up decapitated so you didn’t have to listen to them anymore. Time Crisis or House of the Dead this is not, and the action is not designed to extract quarters from you, either, but to make you feel desperation and fear, to wonder if the enemy you’re firing at is even real or if you’re just seeing your character imagine them as they lose their grip on reality.
You are not limited to just firing weaponry, either: in the original Dead Space, Isaac Clarke utilized whatever tools and accessories he could find to combat the Necromorphs and survive, and those same tools and accessories that were essential to Clarke’s day job exist for the other workers on the colony and on the Ishimura. So, you can still use shots of stasis to not just solve puzzles, but also to slow down enemies or their projectiles. You can utilize Kinesis, too, to grab objects — item boxes, enemy projectiles, explosive barrels — meaning that Extraction has all the central components of the Dead Space combat experience despite the very different genre presentation. They all work well, and have to be mastered if you are to play beyond the first campaign run, too. There’s a feedback loop at play here, since earning a higher ranking on stages unlocks more health and a faster Statis recharge, which will in turn allow you to survive longer and play more effectively on replays, which will in turn unlock more upgrades, and so on. It works well, and ensures that, even though this is a more narrative- and mood-driven on-rails shooter than you might be used to, it’s still very much that arcade-like experience. Albeit much longer, and with a lot more standing around.
Extraction is difficult to master on the Normal setting, in the sense that it will take effort and some replaying in order to achieve a five-star rank on each of the 10 stages. It’s not impossible, though, unlike the goal of the difficulty level that’s named… well, Impossible. It’s unlocked, along with the second-toughest difficulty, after completing the campaign once. And it, like the original Dead Space’s unlockable difficulties, does not mess around. Use Normal to collect a bunch of guns and build up your Stasis and health, then tackle the version of the game that is actively trying to kill you.
You have quite a bit of freedom with your weaponry, once you’ve managed to unlock the various options in the game, anyway. You always have a Rivet Gun equipped, which includes infinite ammo and a useful secondary firing feature that can blow through just about any Necromorph limb with a proper charge, but then you get a second choice, too. All your favorite tools used as weapons from the original Dead Space are here — Plasma Cutter, Flamethrower, Contact Beam, and my personal pick, the ore-cutting Line Gun — as well as the most boring stuff, like the Plasma Rifle. Ho hum, a gun with bullets, how very novel. There are also a couple of newer weapons — another actual gun, a security pistol (yawn) and the Arc Welder, which fires out electricity. That’s more like it.
In case you aren’t familiar with how Dead Space’s combat works, one of the reasons standard weaponry is boring and should be avoided at all costs is because you are not just filling monsters with bullets until they stop moving here. Necromorphs are weak in a very specific way: their limbs and tentacles need to be severed in order to efficiently take them down, which is necessary to help you conserve your ammunition and your health. Blow a Necromorph’s head off like Dead Space is any other shooter, and it will just keep running at you — and likely more dangerously than before, as all you did was take away its sight and also aggravate it, so now it is going to flail wildly and violently at where it thinks you are. No, the key is to take out a leg so they need to crawl, to blow away a tentacle that is going to launch a projectile at you, to shoot at the glowing orange arm that will explode if it makes contact with you and hope it takes out other Necromorphs along with it. Bullets can do the job, but not better than, say, a high-powered rivet going through an elbow, or a “gun” that is an ore-cutting tool that shoots in a wide line and can sever multiple limbs from multiple enemies at once.
Upgrades for these weapons are hidden around the game, so keep your eyes peeled, especially since some of them give you very little time to spot and grab them before the screen shifts elsewhere. If you do, you’ll be thrilled with Past You when you play on a tougher difficulty and have said Line Gun capable of wiping out entire waves of enemies with a well-placed shot or two. Otherwise, things are going to go real poorly at that level.
Combat becomes more of a puzzle than you are used to in many shooters or on-rail games, since you’re performing calculations with every shot and reload and movement-slowing Stasis blast. Which Necromorphs do you need to slow the progress of? Which of them do you need to use one of your precious Stasis shots on, to avoid ever being surrounded or grabbed? When is the right time to fire or attempt Stasis on enemies that move slowly until they decide to preemptively dodge your attacks and ruin your day? It’s not just about where you aim, but when, and on whom, and it all meshes together to make Extraction an extremely busy and stressful on-rails experience.
Extraction would end up released on the Playstation 3 along with Dead Space 2, with options to play it like the original release as a Move game, as well as with standard controls. Like with Resident Evil 4, you certainly can play with analog sticks, but the trade-off to HD might not be worth it to you if you have to play without the precision and speed that the Wii Remote’s IR pointer allowed for, especially if you happen to have a Wii Zapper to hold the Remote and Nunchuk steady and in place. This isn’t to say that the PS3 Dualshock version of Extraction is a bad game or an unnecessary one by any means, but the Wii iteration took the original Dead Space’s role as a critical darling that didn’t blow anyone away commercially to its extreme end: it didn’t need standard controls to work, that’s not why it failed to sell. Though, I will say that the ability to play without any kind of motion control is a welcome change. There were buttons leftover on the Wii Remote that could have been used to reload, you know? Shaking the Wii Remote worked for me, but motion controls are not always accessible controls, so options are welcome.
Dead Space: Extraction no longer appears to be available on the Playstation 3’s digital storefront, not even as part of the Ultimate Edition release of Dead Space 2, and the price of the physical Wii copy fluctuates wildly: I see it anywhere from $12 to $35, depending on when I look. So it might not be the easiest game to get your hands on these days. If you can grab a Wii copy of the game, though, it’s going to be worth your time, especially since it remains both playable and replayable all this time later.
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