Space. Why must video game characters continue to tempt its infinite blackness with exploration? Sure, there’s about a 15 percent chance they will end up finding some attractive, magical princess or prince whose happy, Utopian kingdom needs saving, but most of the time all that’s waiting up there is something nasty that wishes to dine on their face.

Dead Space: Extraction, developed by EA’s Visceral Games studio, falls well within the face-dining variety of space entertainment. Designated as a prequel to the successful third-person shooter on PS3 and Xbox 360, some were put off by the fact the next installment would be appearing on the Wii as a first-person “on-rails” experience. I can’t vouch for how the essence of Extraction compares to that of the original — I haven’t had enough experience with Dead Space and it’s an opinion better left to the fans. But I will say that, as far as on-rails shooters go, Extraction goes miles beyond others in its genre.

Most on-rails shooters are built for simplicity: create a thin excuse for shooting terrorists and/or zombies and then set the player out to wreak havoc on wave after wave of enemies. A few, such as Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, delve into story and feeling a bit more, but still tend to be disjointed. You’re still playing through scenarios, picking up info that you can’t access until you’re on the menu screen.

In comparison, Extraction feels like a deliberate effort was made to build not only a deeper sense of immersion, but more to sink into. The general plot matches that of the original: the unearthing of an artifact has unleashed an infection that turns dead bodies into vicious creatures. In the middle of all the chaos, you just want to get the heck out of there. You officially have enough plot for a standard on-rails shooter, but Extraction doesn’t stop there.

You play the game through the eyes of several different characters, concentrating mainly on one, but are rarely ever alone. As you shoot through the infestation of “Necromorphs,” you gather a small group — sometimes gaining, sometimes losing — who will often converse. Your character speaks as well, giving a sense of small cutscenes seamlessly interspersed within a stage; or that every stage is a long, cinematic scene in which you get to interact by shooting crap up. Either way, it’s pulled off well thanks to excellent voice acting and top-notch graphics and animation for the Wii. It really makes a difference seeing and hearing the other characters react, even if it’s just turning to a fellow survivor in an empty hall and spotting their expression of “we are so screwed.”

When the game did send me off without any NPC’s, it actually increased my tension; mainly because the infection that creates the Necromorphs also resides in most of the characters and increasingly messes with their heads as you proceed. Hallucinations of both sight and sound occur, and the developers obviously decided that solo outings were a prime opportunity to crank up Crazy Time. Personally, I found the hallucinations unsettling with a few startling “jump” moments, but your freakout mileage may vary.

Oh, have I mentioned that you shoot stuff in this game? IR controls are accurate and never seemed to cause any unwarranted misses. Up to four weapons can be carried at any time and switched between with the control stick. The unlimited ammo Rivet Gun has a permanent place in your weaponry, but the dozen or so other weapons can be found and switched between during the course of a stage. The switching process can be a bit dicey sometimes as you’re only shown images of the other weapons you can replace with your new toy and it might take some time to remember what the weapon you wish to drop actually looks like. It’s not fun the first time you drop your beloved Plasma Cutter by accident and replace it with a piece of junk like the Arc Welder. Every weapon does include a secondary fire that’s activated by twisting the remote to the side, which works effectively.

The Z button activates your “Kinesis,” essentially a tractor beam that pulls pickups and other transportable objects to you. It’s a good alternative to having to shoot pickups and is relatively accurate. Some objects, such as storage containers and the mandatory Red Exploding Canister, can be shot out at enemies for satisfying smacks and mandatory explosions. The C button activates “Stasis,” which will temporarily slow targets down and sometimes comes in quite handy without allowing you to abuse it.

The Wii Zapper felt instinctive and comfortable to use, which I can’t say for every shooter. A second player can hop into the game cooperatively with just a Wii remote.

Instead of haphazardly blasting away at the nasties, the game encourages “strategic dismemberment,” allowing you to slow down and more efficiently kill Necromorphs by blasting away their appendages. The weapons most effecting at doing this do not have rapid fire settings, but working with them feels satisfying. There will naturally be times when you’ll simply be overwhelmed and want to haphazardly blast away, and you can… if you kept a weapon that allows you to.

The Necromorphs are pretty worthy creatures to take down, but there isn’t a great variety of them and their attacks can eventually feel repetitive. The depth of the plot unfolding around you will make this more than bearable during the first play, but replays may eventually feel tiring. There are four difficulties to the Story Mode that may keep things lively, though, and always some extra text and audio logs (that play through the speaker on your Wii remote) you likely didn’t pick up the first time to seek out. Apart from the story, a set of Challenge Mode stages will set you through various scenes to rack up high scores, which is a nice touch. A lack of change-up will always take down an “on-rails” game sooner or later, though; that’s just their nature.

An added bonus gives you six “issues” of a Dead Space story played out in voiced-over comic book hybrid form. It’s a sophisticated add-on that shows how much the developers love their product and one I wish more games would include.

This should go without saying, but Extraction features gore and language of the type you would expect to experience if you were on a ship full of undead monsters all out to stab you and eat your face.

So What I’m Trying to Say Is…
For a game that could’ve easily been phoned in, I’m impressed at the lengths the developers went to make Extraction more than a standard on-rails shooter. Fans of the genre and of Dead Space will likely be thrilled with the experience and others, such as myself, might find themselves sucked in as well. This is a game completely undeserving of facing the apparent “mature game curse” on the Wii, but could not be reproduced elsewhere… at least possibly until Sony and Microsoft’s motion peripherals come out.

Dead Space: Extraction is developed by Visceral Games and produced by EA. It is available for the Wii for $49.99 USD. Game rented through GameFly with Story Mode completed on Normal difficulty. Rating: Mature. Badass Hyrdoponics Scientists with Sawblade Guns: 1.