FEATURE: Games That Scared My Wii Off - Part I: "Dead Space: Extraction"

[The first of a multi-part series devoted to horror games on the Wii and the films that inspire them.]

Report

Developers: Eurocom, Visceral Games, Electronic Arts
Price: ~$20 USA
Rating: M
Release: Sept. 29, 2009
Sales: 350,000

Recap
The Aegis VII space colony digs up a bizarre alien pylon.  The ancient artifact somehow awakens, driving the living to homicidal hysteria and infecting the dead with a pathogen capable of resurrection and DNA recombination.  The player controls many members of a diverse group united by their mutual need to survive and escape the escalating horrors of the colony.

"Scenes" where you shake a light-stick may reveal more than you want to see.

Review
One of many on-rails shooters for the Wii (limiting environments to pre-ordained paths saves a ton of processing power), Dead Space: Extraction plays as little more than a hasty assemblage of sci-fi and horror film cliches, and yet the game's consistently exciting, a fast-paced nightmare trek through a ruined space station (and spaceships, and endless tunnels).  Credit the great presentation and production value, the branching paths of gameplay, and occasional breaks that allow for true first-person control (point the Wiimote to seek out clues and ammo).  The best moments occur early in the game, when you play as a character whose grasp on reality is tenuous; you may not be fighting the aliens you think you are...but the game settles into a more predictable groove.

The loss of objective perspective opens up so many possibilities - what if you only think you're killing aliens?  What if the whole event's a nasty case of mass hysteria?  Or what if that's simply what the monoliths want you to think?  I'm not saying those should be the actual answers...but promoting those kind of doubts would elevate this game from a superior shock-story into a more stimulating experience, where your gameplay directives are constantly called into question.  Said directives including the cheap but undeniable pleasure of nailgunning unholy mutants into oblivion.

RATING: B

The red lights either offer homage to (or shamelessly crib from) Cameron's Aliens.

Resemblance

40%: 2001: A Space Odyssey - The obvious reference going in.  All the gory tomfoolery in this game begins with the extra-terrestrial excavation of an alien monolith dubbed the "Red Marker."  Like the monoliths from Kubrick's sci-fi watershed, the monolith impacts the human minds approaching.  However, while 2001's monoliths remained benign, the Red Marker drives people to psychosis and facilitates the mutations of antagonists called "Necromorphs."  Don't you love this stuff?

15%: Event Horizon - Also dealt with the recovery of an object in space that caused people to lose anything resembling a human perspective...and also offered an idea of cosmic horror that ultimately just meant a bunch of arbitrary body horror.  Paul W. S. Anderson's film borrowed liberally from Solaris, and while Extraction doesn't depend too much on this film, it offers plenty of those imposing octagonal corridors that capture Anderson's imagination.

45%: The Thing - Like so, so, so many horror titles, this game focuses on monsters made from reconstituted human parts, and The Thing (with apologies to Society) pioneered reconstituted monsters.  Necromorphs fly around, scream like banshees, whip their tails back and forth, and claw their way toward whatever protagonist you're currently steering.  Rob Bottin, your dubious legacy lives on.