Dead Space Extraction PS3 Review

Dead Space Extraction came out two years ago on Nintendo's console and grabbed IGN honors like an editor's choice award and the title of Wii shooter of the year. Now, the on-rails, first-person shooter has come to the PlayStation 3 with PlayStation Move controls, DualShock support and Trophies rounding out the original package. Without a doubt, Extraction is a fun frolic for those looking to blow limbs off of shambling monsters, but it lacks the punch that would make it a must buy.

Dead Space Extraction follows a group of survivors through the worst day of their lives. Some time ago, scientists found a religious artifact known as "the Marker" on planet Aegis VII. When the excavation begins, the Marker gives off a pulse of energy that drives most folks mad and creates monsters known as Necromorphs, hideous creatures who can only be killed by being dismembered.

Take aim with our video review.

Lopping off those limbs comes down to you and your aiming skills. You can use a traditional controller to play Dead Space Extraction, but the game is designed to be played with the PlayStation Move. The Move controls are quick, easy and responsive. After shooting the ghouls this way, I couldn't go back to the functional but slower DualShock scheme. 

The general gist of the gameplay is that you move the reticle on the screen and blow away whatever it's covering. This is inherently fun, and Dead Space's monstrous Necromorphs with their disgusting growths make for good targets. Extraction engages you further by giving you a wide variety of weapons with alternative firing modes and implementing a mini-game reload system that rewards you for being quick on the trigger. 

You could get most of that out of a lot of games, but what Extraction packs is the Dead Space staples fans know. You'll blow bad guys away with the Plasma Cutter and tear them apart with the Ripper's spinning saw blade, but you'll also grab items with telekinesis, freeze bad guys with stasis and take on a neat hacking mini-game. Even though this game plays differently from the major Dead Space games, it feels, sounds and looks like the universe fans are used to. 

Those individual parts make up Dead Space Extraction's biggest draw -- its story. Once again, developer Visceral Games has delivered a tale that players can connect with. You bounce around between a few different perspectives in the game, but this actually gives you more access to what the characters are going through and the chance to see them in different lights. Why people are acting cagey, if they're going crazy, and so on. All of this is touched on with an interesting story and a really talented cast of voices. 

My problem with Dead Space Extraction is its pacing. Whereas the Dead Space franchise is traditionally about scaring you, that doesn't really happen here. I'm on rails, and while the game is great at shaking the camera and making me feel like I'm the person in the game, I don't experience a sense of worry like the characters do. I know that I'm going to be pushed into a room and some combination of fast and slow-moving monsters are going to come at me. I wanted to go through these levels for the story and I enjoyed exploring, but they never set my hair on fire. 

Shoot those limbs, man!

Another frustration is that levels tend to get a bit long and there is no mid-level saving. When I got frustrated with Chapter Six's boss, I wanted to put the controller down and take some time off. However, I couldn't without forfeiting all the progress I had made so far. 

Don't let that stuff dissuade you from the core of what's happening here, though. Shooting is fun thanks to tight controls and weapons like the flamethrower made me feel like a badass. If you're just looking for a quick fix where you can kill a ton of Necromorphs, the game packs a challenge mode that's essentially a bunch of different shooting galleries. Like the story, a second player can jump in at anytime and blast the space zombies. 

Those shooting galleries are all about competing for the high score, but that's just a local leaderboard. In this way, Dead Space Extraction doesn't make use of the PS3's capabilities. There isn't that online competition that makes similar score attacks in Tetris or Pac-Man Championship Edition DX such a blast. In the same vein, while graphics are better than the Wii, they're not spectacular by PS3 standards. The game looks good, but water textures and little things fail to impress.