We touch down on the USG Ishimura for a look at the prequel to Dead Space.

Dead Space Extraction has a lot to live up to and a lot of preconceived notions to overcome, not just as a prequel to GameSpot’s Best of 2008 award winner for Best Atmosphere and Best Sound Design, but also as an on-rails shooter. In terms of the former, Visceral Games (formerly EA Redwood Shores) has gone to great lengths to ensure that Dead Space Extraction is one of the more visually intricate games on the Wii, coming as close as possible to the level of detail present in its Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 predecessor. “There’s a lot of new content–new weapons, new environments, new enemies, and new bosses,” says Wright Bagwell, lead designer on the game. “But of course, we wanted to reuse some stuff. You’re going to be in some of the same locations, so we took some of the Dead Space assets–environments and characters–and brought them over to the Wii. I think we got them to look really close.” And as with the game’s predecessor, sound is an equally important facet of the Extraction experience. “A lot of the time, sound is the last thing that gets polished,” he adds. “We’re trying really hard to make sure Extraction hits the bar that the original Dead Space hit.”

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Dead Space Extraction is a fresh take on last year’s premier sci-fi survival horror offering, as we found out in EA’s first demo.

Even though Dead Space didn’t do as well as publisher EA might have hoped, the amount of investment in comics, DVDs and merchandise meant that it was always planned as an ongoing series. In fact, so assured of the nascent franchise’s potential was developer EA Redwood Shores, that it started work on a Wii game halfway through development of the original. We got to speak to the team that broke off to work on Nintendo’s console, and hear how they’re turning the survival horror hit into an on-rails shooter.

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This is a review by rikusaki member, Zanimato.

Introduction: This game is not hard , this games fails at being scary completely, this game has the most basic and somewhat annoying predictable mission objectives, this game has almost no in-game story, it just like Final Fantasy 7 had all of the story in the back story, this game, despite all of what I just said which is all 100% completely true, is still a great game.

The game plays extremely well, somewhat like Resident Evil 4 with the way the guns handle and the over-the-shoulder camera, speaking of the guns, some of them (the Ripper) are so un-realistic and even funny to look at at first glance it just makes those guns all the better.

By “predictable mission objectives” I mean that you’ll get a mission like “go here and get the key to unlock the room to do the thing with the other thing” will turn into something like “go here move the thing with the other thing that you need to go find to get the key to go into the hallway before the room you need to unlock as the hallway collapses so go get the other thing to unlock the other door which leads to the alternate route to the first door blah annoying System Shock 2 bull” and this game does feel similar to System Shock 2, at least it’s not a complete ripoff with no differences what-so-ever other than name changes like one game I know of *cough* Bioshock *cough*

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Terror strikes the USG Ishimura, but this time on the Wii.

If there’s one thing that Dead Space proved, it’s that you don’t need to reinvent a genre to be successful. It was a game that took plenty of the best, tried-and-true elements of survival horror, mixed in a few novel features of its own, and topped it off with an intensely chilling atmosphere that stands as one of the best in recent memory. In fact, what might be an even bigger risk for the team at EA Redwood Shores is taking everything that made Dead Space great and applying it to the Wii hardware for the upcoming Dead Space Extraction. This prequel was first announced back in February, though we recently had our first look at the game in the form of a brief gameplay demo at a recent EA press event.

In my previous post I posted the video interview and gameplay. Be sure to check that out at Dead Space Extraction Gameplay.

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When Dead Space Extraction was first announced for the Wii, fans everywhere instantly wondered what the game would be. Luckily, EA was quick to let us know that it was a prequel to the PS3 & 360 original, and would also be an on-rails shooter. I know some of you aren’t the biggest fans of on-rails games but, I happen to really enjoy them, especially if they are done right. If the gameplay included in the video I’m posting below is any judge, EA is definitely doing it right. First off, the game looks beautiful. Well, maybe beautiful isn’t the right word for horrible monsters being blown to smithereens but, you catch my drift. IGN is also reporting that you will be offered different paths to choose from, making the game worth playing more than once. They’ve told us there will be zero-g levels like the original, you’ll have alternative fire on weapons, and they’re also going to be throwing some puzzles at you as well. All of this adds up to what could be the penultimate on-rails game the Wii has seen, even better than HOTD:Overkill. That’s right, I said it. We haven’t gotten any details about scoring or length of the game. What they did tell us is that a second player can jump in to control the alternative fire of the characters weapon. It would be nice to have a co-op mode but, from what I can tell this game doesn’t lend itself to that sort of experience. Dead Space Extraction will be scaring the hell out of Wii owners sometime later this year. For now, enjoy the interview below that is scattered with gameplay footage and check out IGN’s preview of the game.

Dead Space Extraction Producer Interview & Gameplay!