Review: Dead Space: Ignition

With Dead Space 2 on the horizon, Visceral Games and co-developer Sumo Digital decided to let eager fans in on a little “bonus” while awaiting the post-Christmas launch. That “bonus” is Dead Space: Ignition, a motion comic-styled puzzle game on Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network. I repeatedly quote “bonus” because it’s more of a digital crime to the rock solid Dead Space brand, than any bonus I’ve ever received. The game is set at the high price of free for those who pre-order Dead Space 2, and $4.99 (PSN) / 400 MSP (XBLA) for those holding out on their pre-order action.

Dead Space really set a high bar for itself by being a truly unique experience. A new survival horror game had been long begged for by fans of the genre before Dead Space delivered this gen. It’s unique, it’s exciting, it even has some crazy religious cult. Dead Space really brought its A-game together by compiling plenty of what horror fans love. Dead Space: Ignition, however, does not. Ignition is a motion comic prequel to Dead Space 2, with the most atrocious production values I’ve seen in a while. I’ve seen decent motion comics before, and this is an insult. The art is poor, the way the comic is animated is embarrassing, and the story it seeks to add to Dead Space’s canon is just about non-existent in its entirety.

The story takes place on the Sprawl before the Necromorph outbreak and revolves around an engineer named Franco and his girlfriend. Insert various sexual innuendos, choose your own adventure here and there, hacking mini-games, annnd success! You’ve unlocked a costume for Isaac in Dead Space 2.

The gameplay itself is actually not terrible, it’s just pointless, nearly irrelevant to relate to the Dead Space franchise, and oh, not very fun. The gameplay is made up of three hacking mini-games that you’ll rotate through a few times throughout the game. The first you’ll come in contact with is Trace Route, pictured above, where you must guide your signal to the end of this race-like mini-game, beating out the ones trying to shut you out of the system. You’ll avoid various obstacles, be able to drop your own obstacles to counter the “enemy.” This is the best of the three. The second is Hardware Crack in which you’ll have to bounce light off of mirrors to get the light to a particular spot on the grid. You’ll get upgrades that make it slightly easier as you progress through the story. System Override is the most senseless of the three, it requires no skill and is pointless (see: without point) and will have you just spamming your attack because… you can. You send virus cores into the path that contains lasers and whatnot that’ll destroy your virus cores and trigger an attack. Spam the attack and win.

The game consists of 4 acts, each contains a more difficult level of the previous three games each time, with a total of around 12 mini-game missions. At the end of each act you’ll have a storyline branch to choose, and also earn some upgrades for the mini-games. You can replay the game again to experience the branching storyline paths, but I think even the most dedicated Dead Space fans might find it not worth the trouble. Replayability here I can see for the trophy and achievement hunters of the world. I can’t really imagine many will want to replay the game for pleasure nor curiosity of the other paths, because it felt like hardly anything happened story-wise anyway. Isaac Clarke was mentioned in the last 2-3 seconds of the ending for me, but the art was so unattractive that even that was difficult to appreciate.

I really found Ignition to be a shame to the grandness of the Dead Space franchise, even at the price of free (for those who pre-order). If anything, I’d have been much, much more excited and grateful if the team decided to make an actual physical comic to package in as a pre-order bonus, and not with this art style. Dead Space: Ignition felt like more of a chore than a bonus to me, but I won’t let that hinder my excitement for the upcoming launch of Dead Space 2. Please don’t buy this with a real $5 digital bill. Only play this if you have pre-ordered the game and received it for free, that’s all I ask. I know the Dead Space team could have done better than this.