Feature: Silver Screen: Dead Space: Downfall (360)

As a standalone film Downfall could be considered a disappointment. A story that doesn’t have a clear beginning and end, it’s obviously a product sandwiched between two different mediums, with the comics taking place before and the game taking place after. If you’re coming into this knowing beforehand that you’ll never pick up the game then you’ve just wasted your money on something that’ll mean nothing to you. Having played (and loved) Dead Space, Gamestyle can actually see some cleverness between the cracks.

The film revolves around a mysterious statue known as a marker which is believed to be of alien origin. The USG Ishimura, a planet cracker (a ship that breaks apart planets harvesting them) brings it aboard and as you’d expect all hell breaks loose. If you’ve followed the animated comics on Xbox Live then you’d know that the colony that discovered the marker went crazy and major bloodshed ensued, Downfall follows that pattern in the confines of this massive ship. What’s quite clever is how it borrows elements from the game. The health meter, which is shown by a blue light on the back your character is here and when a character does die you actually see it deplete. The popup videos also make an appearance when characters are contacting one another, it’s certainly an interesting visual moment.

Where Downfall falls apart (quite badly) is in the tension and fear. Being animated the movie can never recreate the games feeling of suspense and dread; and the few ‘jump’ moments that happen aren’t handled the best. It also has a weird Saturday morning cartoon look to the art style, it looks far too clean for the horrors that ensue. The animators obviously felt that what scared people was blood, and there is an absolutely ridiculously amount of claret flying all over the place. It certainly makes use of the 18 certificate. Well, that and the hilarious amount of cursing. What could be the movies biggest downfall (pun intended) is that maybe something’s are best left unexplained. By filling in the gaps left by Dead Space it takes away the mystery and intrigue. Gamestyle watched the movie before finishing the game and therefore were slightly disappointed that we discovered so much. Perhaps, despite being a prequel, this experience is best left till the game is done and dusted.

If you take Downfall on its own merits as a standalone product then there is really nothing here to get you interested. The plot is clichéd to the extreme and aside from a spiritual native American and a captain losing his mind the characters are badly realised. Even the main character is so forgettable that we can’t even remember her name without looking it up on Wikipedia. The only thing we can tell you about her is she’s your standard Ripley clone with a bad attitude and is voiced by Kelly Hu. The rest are just your standard space marines that wouldn’t look out of place in your generic Xbox FPS.

The movie itself isn’t the only disappointment with this package. Available on both DVD and blu-ray the extras are almost non-existent. The only two things of note is a trailer and a deleted scene. The latter of which isn’t even animated, only using badly drawn storyboards. It’s a wasted opportunity.

If you’re desperate to get the full story of what happens in Dead Space then you may get some enjoyment here, and EA have certainly taken a lot of time in creating a world that people will love to delve deeper into it. But a boring plot and dreadful characters mean the true story of the USG Ishimura is best left unexplained.

Words by Adam Gulliver