There isn't a lot to be said about last year's space-horror sleeper Dead Space that hasn't already been said. So I won't bother.

And that's just fine because Dead Space: Extraction really doesn't require the original as a primer or a crutch. It's a damn fine game on it own, and, in some ways, it may be even more important to the genre that birthed it than its predecessor.

Visceral Games has made so many astute design choices in this game that it's simply staggering.

Most obviously, there is the genre. The decision to go with an on-rails light gun game offers a guided experience that has allowed Visceral Games to eek every last bit of power out of the Wii and devote it to Extraction's presentation. Aside from an occasional frame-rate chug, the game is simply stunning to look at. My suggestion? Turn down the lights, crank up the surround sound, and take a walking tour of every horror that the USG Ishimura has to offer.

Really though, graphics are just a nice peg to hang your coat on. They can't change the coat that's hanging on them. And sadly, at least in Wii development, that gameplay coat is often too completely threadbare to wear. Not a problem for Visceral Games.

With Extraction they've vaulted into a Wii design stratosphere that is inhabited by a relative few third-party developers. In this pantheon, people don't develop motion controls as an adjunct feature or a cash-in gimmick. They actually take the time to think about it.

Playing Extraction gave me feeling similar to the first time I played Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barabos' Treasure or Boom Blox. The former played well upon the instinctual design concept of miming real-life action, while the latter succeeded by keeping in mind the basic physicality of movement inherent to motion controls and blending it with digital physics. In many ways Extraction hybridizes these two design approaches, and, because of this, it may be the most illuminating piece of motion sensitive software that we've seen to date.

Careful attention was paid to the ramifications of the Wii-mote's capabilities and how they would translate when interpolated into the relevant intellectual source material. Take, for instance, the secondary fire mode that every weapon in Dead Space has. This is a very common gameplay feature in first and third-person shooters.

The simplest design choice in a light-gun game would have been to either exclude secondary fire altogether, and go with an approach similar to The House of the Dead's, or to express the secondary fire mode interchange through button mapping. Extraction cleverly uses the Wii-mote's gyros to track the players gesticulative movement of the Wii-mote. Holding the device upright, like a TV remote or a gun, activates primary fire, while holding it sideways, gangster-style, unlocks its secondary fire mode.

Similarly, the Wii-mote's infrared pointing mechanism is cleverly fused with Dead Space's kinesis module. Rather that picking up items by shooting them, the A button on the Wii-mote activates that character's “gravity gun”. This is very subtle, but it's a strange feeling in a light-gun game to be picking up something rather than simply shooting everything on sight – collectibles included. It can become a bit distracting during story segments; characters are unflappably wont to disseminate information completely ignoring the player's frantic looting of the Ishimura. But hell, I'd trade that any day for the ability to meter my ammo usage by smashing enemies over the head with boxes that spill out goodies.

There also the melee attacks, glow-sticks, circuit board soldering segments, and audio logs. All these features demonstrate just how appropriate every part of Extraction is to the Wii platform, and just how perfectly everything is laid out.

Melee pick-ax attacks are activated by shaking the Nunchaku. This adds to the feeling that player is dual wielding a “handgun” and a “knife” at the same time. If enemies get too close, swing that pick ax, knock them back into shooting range, and tear them apart with a techno-kinetically controlled floating buzz saw (which, by the way, you can move back and forth by moving its real world analog towards and away from the screen).

Perhaps one of most clever decisions was to make the player is bereft of a flashlight. Light is added to dark areas through phosphorescence rather than incandescence. Players break and shake glow sticks to illuminated darkened sections of the ship. This concept is inspired for two reasons. Firstly it adds even more context appropriate gesticulations to the experience, while at the same time serving the gameplay as a tension building device. The glow sticks elapse, sometimes in the middle of an encounter, and taking your target reticule off the screen to violently and frantically shake the Wii-mote is definitely a difficult decision.

In keeping with the Ishimura's moribund state, many of the circuit boards on the ship have been fried. Generally, the player finds this out at just about the worst time: like, for instance, when he or she is calling an elevator in a room full of enemies. At times like these, the screen is divided, with the player's view of the room on the left, and the circuit board on the right. The challenge is to use a gun to keep the enemies at bay while trying to set aside spare seconds to manically resolder the elevator's control panel.

 And then there's the most inspired use of the Wii-mote ever to be put into a game. The original Dead Space had audio logs, much like Bioshock, and the Wii-mote has, somewhere is its guts, the shittiest speaker known to man.

Rather than play these audiologs through the main audio channels, the player is forced to hear the last static-y, hurried thoughts of the ships victims through the Wii-mote by holding it directly to his or her ear. That's right, Visceral Games actually managed to incorporate one of the most pointless, underused, and technologically unimpressive features of the Wii-mote into the fiction of their game. Great stuff.

As a last bit, to comment on the story, I have to say that while the fiction of Dead Space as a whole is a bit paint-by-numbers – if you've seen any Alien movie, you've basically got the idea – there are a few standout moments in the game. More specifically there are three, the least of which I will spoil here. At some point in the game, due to the switching perspectives, the player will experience an unavoidable first person death. The other two come in chapters 1 and 9, so be on the lookout, especially for the latter.

To top it off, the game is also rife with extras (a story driven cinematic comic) and different modes (the all important multi-player mode) that are meant to encourage repeated abuse.

 And aside from a few minor gripes, such as a couple of inferior voice actors, a boss battle whose objectives are somewhat unclear, and an abrupt, somewhat unfulfilling ending this may be one of the most brilliant games of the year.

 It's sort of like a guy from Visceral Games came up to me and said, “Hey do you want to play a really fun light-gun game?”

 And I said, “Like The House of the Dead? Yeah sure, I guess.”

And while I was putting it into my Wii, as he walked away, he muttered under his breath, “I hope you don't mind that I reinvented an entire genre while I was making it.”

For my money, this game may be better than its predecessor. Or maybe not; I'm waffling on this one. That comparison is a bit apple and oranges.

I know I said that there's been enough coverage Dead Space, and that I wouldn't bring it up. But I do have to say that Extraction is just as big a surprise.

I'd even go so far as to toss Extraction into the hat as a contender for game of the year. It's that good.

 Final Grade: A

~James D., read at The Sophist, heard at, Sophist Radio