Dead Space: Extraction Preview

29 Apr 2009 at 10:30:14 by Tim McDonald

You people are fickle. Dead Space comes out, is generally well-acclaimed, and you mutter and mumble for more. A sequel (well, prequel) is announced, and you all bitch and whine because it's on the Wii.

Yes, Dead Space Extraction is a rail-shooter, but it's a rail-shooter with a bit more to it than just shooting and it certainly looks like it has a bit more meat to it than just pointing your Wiimote at the screen and shooting.

Dead Space Extraction is a prequel. It opens prior to the events of Dead Space, long before Isaac winds up on the Ishimura, and focuses instead on the colonists. A fair bit of the action still takes place on the Ishimura, though, with there being plenty of sections on the gigantic ship that weren't seen in Dead Space. What's more interesting for fans of the series, perhaps, is that a twist is hinted at which will put the franchise in a bit of a new light. It looks like there'll be plenty of audio logs, as per Dead Space, but the footage we saw had a few other characters wandering around, too.

Simplicity of design is key, apparently. There's no reason to have lots of esoteric waggle movements required if they aren't even remotely related to the action they're meant to be mimicking. In fact, the only two waggle movements shown were both expected – one was a frantic, panicked waggle for shaking off a Necromorph, while the other enables the glowstick. This, apparently, is quite important in the game, as it's a combat choice. Either shoot in the dim lighting and risk not hitting the rather precise areas of the enemy that must be hit (this is Dead Space, remember, so dismemberment is key), or spend time waggling your Wiimote so that you can see. If what you see is something leaping at your face, though, we suspect that your time may have been better served blasting away.

When it comes to shooting at things, you've got plenty of options. Unlike most other rail-shooters, you appear to have an inventory screen, and your weapons still have their alternate fire options, triggered by holding the Wiimote on its side. Not only that, but you've got telekinesis and stasis again, with the former giving a canon reason as to why aiming at items in this games picks them up, and the latter slowing Necromorphs considerably, giving you a chance to get some shots off.

The other intriguing aspect is something that's been dropped by rail-shooters a fair bit these days, and that's simply this: alternate paths. Rather than just having one route through a level, the demo we were shown had a hub area, with various optional routes around it. That hub area itself had a “free look” section, signified by a marker around the targeting reticle, which lets the player look around, find hidden items, and see a bit more in the way of detail. Apparently, this was initially available at all times, but it led to too many problems in multiplayer, and was dropped. When playing in multiplayer, the free-look control is swapped around. If Player 1 got to look around in the first section, Player 2 can do it the next time it pops up.

Multiplayer, really, is another big thing. The emphasis is on making it convenient, with full drop-in drop-out promised. If a friend turns up at your door when you're halfway through a level, they can just pick up a Wiimote and immediately join in. If they then need to go to the toilet (because the game is scary, naturally) then they can drop out just as easily, with no checkpoint restarts or anything of the sort required.

Other than that, there are a few other little bits and y the gaeeplay ah n ehat,ethare little. We can apparently expect a few puzzles and minigames, for instance, with the one on display requiring the character to essentially solder a control panel. This required a steady hand, with various sections doing a bit of damage if the cursor strayed onto them.

It's fair to say that Dead Space has been a cult hit. It's far too early to say whether or not Extraction is going to stand up next to it, but even from the short playthrough we saw, it's certainly different to other rail shooters in terms of pacing, style, and variety. It's worth noting too that this looks surprisingly good graphically. While it's obviously not on par with its big brother on the more powerful systems, it's definitely one of the few Wii games I've seen that's rather attractive without going for a simplistic art style. This actually has a chance of living up to the team's claim that Extraction is going to push the rail shooter genre forward.

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