Dead Space Ignition (Video Game)

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Dead Space Ignition (click for larger image)Reviewed by KW Low

Published by Electronic Arts

Developed by Sumo Digital/Visceral


From the towering height of Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, we see the ugly side of the prequel Arcade/PSN release with Dead Space Ignition.

Ignition is intended to be a prequel to Dead Space 2, but in every single way that Capcom blew my doors off with Case Zero, Sumo/Visceral completely botch it up. This thing is a complete and total disaster. That they’re giving it away for free with a pre-order should be a sign, but I’d suggest that giving this turd to anyone could be taken as an act of war.

Ignition tells the story of the fall of The Sprawl, the city in space that Isaac Clarke will be dismembering in come next year when the much awaited sequel to Dead Space hits the shelves. It does so as a ‘motion comic’, a term I immediately protest. For something to be a ‘motion comic’, it has to be a comic to begin with. Ignition was never a comic. Unlike the motion comic released with the Watchmen DVD, this is not a comic book brought to life.

Dead Space Ignition ReviewIn this case ‘motion comic’ means ‘We didn’t want to pay for real art or animators, so here are some sketches we had a Flash intern monkey with for a few minutes’. I’m not kidding. The cutscenes look very much like animatics you may have seen on DVD special features, explaining how complicated sequences are sometimes charted out using storyboards that are crudely animated. The difference here is that those animatics are never intended for public consumption, and EA is charging for these.

There’s a game here. Kind of. Three different kind of mini-games are embedded amidst the animatics. (I won’t call them motion comics. I won’t. You can’t make me.) One is okay but broken. Another is boring, stupid, arcade-y nonsense. The other is frustrating, overly complex, and tedious. ‘Fun’ is not a word I’d use to describe anything in Ignition because I can’t even rip the disc out and fry it in the microwave, giggling at the sizzling, since it’s a digital download.

There’s also a ‘choose your own adventure’ kind of pathway selection a few times during the…experience. (I’m also not going to call it a game again. On principal.) This means absolutely nothing except that your crappy, broken mini-games will be played in a different place.

I assume there are multiple endings. I don’t know; I gave up. There was no point in hacking through the soul-sucking nonsense to try and see one. I’d be shocked if it has any bearing on Dead Space 2 so why suffer any more than I already had?

Ignition represents everything that can possibly go wrong with a ‘prequel’ release. Unless you’ve decided to write some sort of dissertation examining the vast gap between the two experiences, stay the hell away from it.

Even if you get it free with a pre-order. I’m serious. Don’t do it. Burn that pre-order code and inhale the smoke. That’d be more fun than Ignition.

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