The Dead Space remake will probably go down as one of 2023's best experiences. Horror fans are in for a treat in March as well with the release of another high-profile horror remake via Resident Evil 4. It looks set to be a great year for horror game remakes, with Dead Space helping to start things off with an emphatic bang.
The original Dead Space was unique in that it successfully made a horror game work in space. Many games tried before it and failed. Even newer games can’t seem to capture the magic of space horror exactly. The following titles may be flawed, but there are good aspects to them as well for horror fans looking to venture into space or alien worlds once again.
6 The Callisto Protocol
The Callisto Protocol is the game that was set up to be the most like Dead Space. It was a spiritual successor in many ways because one of the game’s directors, Glen Schofield, also worked on the first Dead Space. It had the graphics and the horror elements worked out perfectly, but the gameplay was a bit clunky.
The biggest omission is the lack of an item box on top of having a minuscule inventory limit. The focus on melee combat with the Stun Baton in The Callisto Protocol is also an odd choice as the countering system isn’t perfectly designed. It is a good one of these types of horror games, but it was unfortunately not the second coming of Dead Space that many fans had hoped for due to a laundry list of small nitpicks.
5 Scars Above
Scars Above is one of the newest games like Dead Space and it came so close to glory. A space pyramid appeared above Earth and a research team is sent in to investigate. Upon doing so, the protagonist, Kate, wakes up without her crew on a foreign planet. Not only is she lost, but horrific monsters are also trying to kill her. Thankfully, players are armed with an assortment of guns and tools to rip these aliens apart.
There is an elemental system to everything players do in the game. For example, shooting the electric-based gun at enemies in the water will do extra damage. That’s a hot tip for Scars Above. This attention to environmental damage makes playing the game so fun. It is a technical nightmare though, as Kate controls wildly at times, the game’s frame rate can chug, and there are glitches aplenty. Maybe, with time, this game still has a chance to be great.
4 Dino Crisis 3
Dino Crisis 3 was such a wild departure for the series at this point. Capcom created this series to be Jurassic Park plus Resident Evil as it replaced zombies with dinosaurs. It was a good decision in the 90s that led to two good survival horror games on PS1.
The third title went to the original Xbox exclusively and set things far in the future and in space. Dinosaurs now haunted a space station which is such a goofy concept. That alone makes it a must-play even though there is a litany of problems from the poor camera to the weird difficulty spikes. It is an uneven entry in this series, but there is no denying how unique it is.
3 Lifeline
Lifeline is another game that gets a hundred stars out of ten for being a new and interesting idea. This 2000s-era PS2 game is set in a space hotel that randomly gets infested with aliens. Instead of controlling a soldier, cop, or any other sort of action hero, players become a waitress named Rio. That’s not entirely right though because players do not technically control her. They instead get to tell Rio what to do via a headset that came packaged with Lifeline.
Players were basically “the guy in the chair,” which is a role Ned coined in Spider-Man: Homecoming. The problem is that even the most basic commands were barely recognized through this headset, creating a frustrating experience. Technology has made voice commands easier in games, so it would be cool to see Lifeline get remastered to hopefully see a better picture of what the developers originally envisioned.
2 Aliens: Colonial Marines
Aliens: Colonial Marines is not the first game in the Alien movie franchise that fans are probably going to recommend. Alien: Isolation is the game to beat and it is great on many levels and keeps getting better with ports. The most recent console port was on the Switch in 2019 and that console miraculously does it justice.
Aliens: Colonial Marines then is an obviously flawed game that was ridiculed when it launched. Even after numerous patches, the game is still sloppy. Also, being able to blast through dozens of Xenomorphs like they are flies sort of defeats the purpose of why they are so terrifying in the movies or Alien: Isolation. Despite many complaints though, Aliens: Colonial Marines is kind of a goofy pleasure akin to Deadly Premonition which is like the king of good/bad games.
1 Martian Gothic: Unification
There are a lot of horror games on the PS1 that most players may not be familiar with outside of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Martian Gothic: Unification has to be at the top of the list and there’s a good reason why many didn’t play it. The game first launched on PC in 2000 and got a PS1 port in 2001. This was a full year after the PS2 launched and players had already moved on. A lot of good PS1 games that were released between 2000 and 2001 were looked over for this exact reason, Mega Man Legends 2 and Dragon Warrior 7 being just two more examples.
While Martian Gothic: Unification doesn’t quite reach those levels of cult success, it is a good game to be sure. It was ahead of its time. The game structurally is like the first Resident Evil but it replaces the Spencer Mansion concept with a Martian base. There are still zombies in the game, but there is a ghostly edge to them. Players could control three characters and had to switch between them to finish the game. It does feature tank controls which is a bummer. It’s a slow, awkward burn but Martian Gothic: Unification is an interesting entry in the annals of horror game history nonetheless.