.jpg) By Dustin Pena |
If James Cameron has taught us anything, it's that Leonardo DiCaprio is dreamy. If he's taught us anything else it's that in space, no one can hear you scream. If the latter is true, would it not also stand to reason that in space, no one can hear you crap your pants? |
The only problem is: I'm not in space and, well, you do the math. This is Dead Space Extraction.
Extraction tells the story of a group of space colonists that decide to steal a haunted sculpture from an alien planet and end up paying the ultimate price for their heisty actions. You see, the sculpture or "marker" begins to cause a nasty bout of space madness with a touch of alien infection that causes the colonists to mutate into grotesque meat creatures with a thirst for the red stuff. You assume the role of several different characters trying to unravel the mystery of the mysterious mystery infection as the story progresses in this on-rails first person shooter from EA and it's through the eyes of these characters that you will experience the terror that is Dead Space Extraction.
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This installment of the Dead Space series is more about story than action and that's not really a bad thing. The game plays out more like an interactive movie with heavy exposition dialogue peppered with intense segments of limb ripping gun-play. At first I was turned off by how much of this game made you idle on your couch while the characters explored their surroundings trying to piece together the puzzling events happening around them but I soon found myself so absorbed into the characters that I totally lost myself in Extraction. I guess you can say I was lost in space. Oh, yes I did!
When you do finally get to whip out your guns prepare to make it rain because shooting up the alien scum in Extraction is a bloody good time! The game insists that the only way to exterminate these bad boys is to take out their appendages with a spray of bullets, thus leaving them bloody and gimpy. And with an arsenal of varied weapons there's no limit to the ways in which you can make amputees out of these moon monsters. Weapon changing can be done on the fly with a quick flick of the nunchuck's thumbstick and I promise you this is what makes an on-rails shooter on the Wii worth the pricetag. For instance, an alien will come rampaging toward you and as it's about to rip you a new one you blast it with a stasis beam, freezing it in it's tracks, you then put a bullet into it's knee caps, relieving it of it's legs, flick the thumbstick and set it ablaze with your flamethrower, flick it again to pull out your line gun and send a laser straight through it's torso, severing it in two. This all happens in a matter of seconds with the implemented control scheme and boy oh boy does it feel good!
The gunplay is made all the more gratifying because all you have to worry about in Extraction is giving your trigger finger the workout it deserves thanks to the on-rails gameplay design. Personally I love this "guided tour" presentation. Imagine if you were on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland, only you had a flamethrower! This is the best way to describe the feeling you get while playing DSE. You just sit back, go where the characters take you, and enjoy the ride. There are a few instances in the game where you are given the opportunity to choose your path but it doesn't really effect where you ultimately end up. There are other moments where the "ride" stops and you are given the opportunity to look around freely at you surroundings. These moments mainly serve for you to collect pick ups and upgrades and end quickly before the "ride" resumes. If motion sickness is a problem for you it would be a good idea to have a bucket handy as the camera moves fast and frequent. There are times where you'll be water sliding through sewer pipes and spinning around in zero gravity and while I find these moments scoring high on my personal enjoyment meter, others may need to put that bucket to good use.
