Dead Space
A full remake of the 2008 survival horror classic, rebuilt with the isolation, resource scarcity, and dismemberment combat that made the original work -- and that EA stripped out of Dead Space 3.
- //This is a remake of the original 2008 Dead Space, built by EA Motive after Visceral Games, the original studio, was closed by EA in 2017.
- //Dead Space 3 added co-op, microtransactions for weapon upgrades, and shifted tone toward action -- all of which broke the resource-scarcity and isolation systems that made the series work. This remake restores none of those changes.
- //The dismemberment combat system, where shooting limbs rather than torsos is the correct approach, remains one of the most elegantly designed combat mechanics in the genre.
- //The original IP sat unused in EA's catalogue for six years between Dead Space 3's underperformance and this remake being announced.
- //Reviewed at 89 on Metacritic and holds over 90% positive on Steam across 70,000-plus reviews.
This is EA Motive's 2023 remake of the original 2008 Dead Space, not the underperforming Dead Space 3. You play Isaac Clarke, an engineer sent to repair a mining ship, the USG Ishimura, that's gone silent and turns out to be infested with reanimated corpses called Necromorphs. Combat is built entirely around dismemberment -- shooting torsos does almost nothing, cutting off limbs is how you actually kill things -- and the horror runs on genuine resource scarcity and total isolation, with no co-op partner and no way to share the weight of what's happening. The remake restores every element EA had stripped out for Dead Space 3: no mandatory multiplayer, no microtransactions for upgrades, and full commitment to dread over spectacle.
What survival horror looks like when the people making it are allowed to make it correctly. Every creative decision in this remake is an implicit repudiation of what EA imposed on Dead Space 3 -- and it proves the original approach was right the whole time.