Many people were shocked to hear that Dead Space was coming to the Wii, and they were even more shocked to hear it was an on rails shooter prequel, unlike last years hit 3rd person horror title. Fans of the series are in for a real treat if they decide to dive into Dead Space Extraction, a game rich with exposition, and one that gives developer Visceral Games total control of the experience.
The story starts just as members of the Aegis VII uncover a mysterious artifact, and things suddenly start to go awry. Your character begins to hallucinate, and the crew around him begins to go insane attacking each other, eventually mutilating and killing themselves. Dead Space Extraction pulls out no stops when it comes to blood and gore, and one section in particular may have been one of the most horrific scenes I've seen in a video game in a long time. All of this is experienced from a first person perspective, with little tricks to really pull you into the game like the sound of your character breathing, quick camera cuts to mimic head movement, and a view of your hands during various actions. I mentioned your character earlier, but in reality over the course of the game you'll play as a few different members of the colony, all tied together by the same event. I can't say enough about just how engaging the atmosphere and story are together.
The really interesting thing for players of the original Dead Space are how the events happen in reverse. You actually see yourself causing the set pieces in the environment of Dead Space Extraction, and you re-encounter them in that exact state when you find them in Dead Space. For instance at one point we had to pull a power cell out of a wall and quickly discard it to lock a door - this same room in Dead Space you need to find the power cell to get out. There's tons of these little moments as you travel from the Colony up to the Ishimura and it adds a lot to both the games.
Gameplay is straight forward for anyone familiar with lightgun shooters, but there are a few neat quirks. As you find and pick up guns, you can also find four upgrades for them hidden throughout the levels. At certain times the game gives you the freedom to look around and search the environment for weapons and ammo as well as hidden items like text and audio logs. The audio logs in particular have a nice touch of playing back through the Wii-mote's speaker, bringing you deeper into the environment. Most of the weapons are familiar, though there are a few new additions like the force gun which blows enemies back. Every gun has an alt fire mode which is engaged by turning the Wii-mote sideways, and there's a quick reload function similar to that found in games like Gears of War where reloading in a target zone gives you a ammo faster. Finally stasis makes a return, allowing you to slow down enemies, in limited fashion of course, with the push of a trigger on the nunchuck.
Where Dead Space Extraction really shines though is its flexibility in co-op, allowing another player to join in at any time. They'll get their own cursor on the screen and in no time will be slicing necromorphs apart with you. If they need to go, they can simply quit out and you can continue on your gory way. During co-op the puzzles in the game require both players to work together to complete them - each players will complete a small subsection of it and then the other player completes the next - and so on. The puzzles are similar to the carnival games where you can't touch the walls or a buzzer goes off. It's amazing how much tension and forced communication this adds to some of the chaotic situations the puzzles are placed in. You'll frantically try to hack a door closed to stop an impending necromorph onslaught, yelling back and forth - "GO IT'S YOUR TURN!" Players also share health, which really aids in the heat of battle, as only one player needs to pick up the health to heal the whole team.
If there's a downside to Dead Space Extraction it's that the on screen cursors tend to cover up a lot of the action, sometimes making it difficult to see the enemies. In a game where pin point accuracy for strategic dismemberment is so important, I found it odd that most of the targets are covered up by blue or red cursors. Visceral seemed to focus so much on the immersion of the game, and the cursors sort of break this, it's a minor quip, but one none the less. For an on rails shooter Dead Space Extraction has some serious meat to it, with the campaign taking around 6 hours or more to complete on normal. If you're a completionist you'll want to go back through again on the harder difficulty levels to not only unlock more content, but find more hidden objects you may have missed. The on rails nature of the game makes exploration nearly impossible, so if you catch a glimpse of a log or a weapon upgrade and fail to pull it in, you'll need to replay that level to catch it. Every level you complete unlocks challenge missions as well as chapters of the animated comic to watch.
Overall Extraction is a solid title that's bolstered by an excellent co-op experience. For Dead Space junkies there's a lot of story to be told, and the unique aspect of having it from different characters brings something new to the table. It's an odd choice for the Wii, as the game is incredibly violent and bloody, and even at one point contains some polygonal nudity. So yes, you can have a great mature title on the Wii, and yes you can create a survival horror game using an on rails formula, Dead Space Extraction proves not only can you do it - but it can be fun.