The acid-vomiting variations of the basic spike-handed Slasher seem to be far more common than they were in the original, and they kept me on my toes even after I’d sheared off their legs from a seemingly safe distance – thankfully Isaac is considerably more nimble than he used to be. Enemy types resemble the same gaggle of ghouls that seem to have been plucked right off John Carpenter’s Pinterest board, but there have been a few welcome tweaks made to the variety of threats you have to encounter. Additionally, the storage rooms in the original game that could only be accessed by spending a precious power node are thankfully no more instead, gaining access to them requires a bit of enjoyable environmental puzzle solving, like finding the right angle through a shattered window in order to disable a door’s locking mechanism with a pinpoint shot.Īn equal level of accuracy is demanded by Dead Space’s combat, too, which remains focussed on literally disarming (and/or dislegging) each snarling flesh golem rather than wasting ammo on their vestigial, brainless heads or spongey torsos. The benefit of this more interconnected Ishimura is twofold, since not only does it engender a far greater sense of place than the more compartmentalised original, but it also allows for backtracking to access previously locked doors as Isaac’s security level increases over the course of the journey, giving you the opportunity to discover weapon upgrade schematics and various other treasures and making progression feel a bit like a more murder-heavy Metroid. A spectacular new zero-gravity detour that takes you from the hangar bay to engineering is just one area that takes advantage of far more liberating flight controls that allow you to manually steer Isaac through space, as opposed to beaming him in rigid straight lines from surface to surface. For starters, you can now shuttle freely back and forth between the tram stations connecting all the different sections of the Ishimura (once you’ve unlocked them), and you can also travel between certain areas on foot via new corridors like those that connect the flight deck to the medical deck, or indeed off your feet in other sections.

Although Isaac’s initial arrival in the hangar and flight deck very closely mirrors the layout of the original, it’s not long until you start to notice some substantial differences. Not only does the Ishimura look more striking than ever before, it’s also been restructured to encourage more exploration.

Dead space 4 plot