Dead Space Mobile Holds Up Impossibly Well
Dead Space On the Go
The mobile gaming scene is a wild beast. When Dead Space Mobile first released, it was during the final years of truly premium mobile exclusive spin-offs. Phones weren’t at the point of playing something at the scale of PUBG or Fortnite yet, but they were more than capable of fully 3D experiences. EA was surprisingly open to investing in the market, commissioning spin-offs for Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge, Mass Effect, and Battlefield.
Yet out of all of them, Iron Monkey’s Dead Space Mobile reigns as the MVP to beat.
Where other horror games on the go like Silent Hill: The Escape and Resident Evil 4 Mobile were compromised to fit the platform, Dead Space’s often forgotten handheld sequel is a fully realized experience. Which is why I’m grateful that a fan has finally fixed the APK to work again, freeing it from the sands of delisted apps.
A Cut Above
Detailed animations, a high frame rate, numerous on-screen enemies, physics, dismemberment, voice acting, achievements, and even a horde mode as a free update to the iOS version. Best of all — it actually plays well! The absolute geniuses adapting Dead Space’s gameplay over managed to harness the integrated HUD only require two thumbs to play a near-perfect demake of the main games.
You control movement, firing stasis, and reloading your chosen weapon with the left thumb, swiping high to sprint and merely nudging your thumb to walk slowly. The right thumb holds down to aim the camera and taps to fire. Both thumbs can interact with objects, use telekinesis, and pick up items. You swipe where directed for quick-time events and melee attacks. The sole concessions made for ease of play are the health and inventory systems.
Adjusted Parameters
Your inventory still matters, but you won’t need to worry about organizing it. Capacity upgrades for weapons also expand how much ammo you can carry for each, and there are only four weapons total, save for a bonus fifth weapon that can be carried in addition to the main arsenal. Meanwhile, your health regenerates slowly, the charge rate going down the higher you set the difficulty.
Zero-G jumping works mechanically the same as in Dead Space, but you have to shake your device. This is actually a major hurdle when emulating it, as there seems to be no workaround to make this input register correctly in Bluestacks. Hence why all my screenshots are from the earlier portions of Dead Space Mobile.
These concessions do break some of the core Dead Space formula of a seamless third-person experience with only diegetic HUD elements. However, given the sheer overwhelming constraints Iron Monkey’s developers were working against, these are more than fair. That everything else plays wonderfully is a triumph worth the adjustment.
A Sprawl-ing Tale
As for the game itself, purely on its own merits, it’s a tight two to six hour experience. It’s really a question of how skillful you are and your familiarity with the levels. There’s New Game Plus support for all versions. The horde mode added a ton of extra replay value, but sadly the fan remaster for Android only has the main campaign. Mobile ports in the 2000’s weren’t exactly known for consistency or content parity.
What is preserved for players today is a tightly woven prologue that evolves into a simultaneous story alongside Dead Space 2. It’s actually the last story in the franchise written by Antony Johnston. Which also results in the supporting characters not being the greatest, but the lead heroine is likable enough.
A Severed Tie-In
You play as Vandal, an engineering tech manipulated by the Church of Unitology to unwittingly cause the necromorph outbreak on Titan Station. While we see the Sprawl in the aftermath during Dead Space 2, here we watch it unfold in real-time, listening as the citizens of Titan Station struggle to survive for even a few minutes.
Vandal spends the rest of the game trying desperately to stop the outbreak, a few of her audio logs left behind for Isaac to find in Dead Space 2. Along the way, her own mind starts to fall apart under the influence of the Marker, experiencing escalating delusions. At one point, she even hallucinates being a necromorph, something surprisingly ever done in the main series.
Up Your Arsenal
Though you’ve only four primary weapons — Plasma Cutter, Line Gun, Ripper, and the new Core Extractor — you still have plenty of reasons to scrounge for resources. You can fully upgrade your arsenal and equipment, buy better armored suits, and restock on ammo. The drop rate for ammo is forgiving on the lower difficulties, but again, this is a mobile game, one where you can accidentally shoot when trying to pick something up. That’s more than fair.
There’s a unique hook to Mobile that I’d also love to see in other Dead Space games. Rather than your alt-fire being a single tap, you switch firing modes by tilting your device. This lets you be more strategic with how you aim projectile ripper blades and fire off the line gun’s timed mine. The timed mine also explodes on contact consistently here, making it substantially more useful.
New Toys
The core extractor is one of the two exclusive weapons. One firing mode is essentially the line gun, but in a diamond shape blast, while the other unleashes a persistent minigun-like laser beam until the charge runs out. Of the two, the beam is the only function the average player is going to bother with. It’s far easier to use, feels awesome to wield, and can devastate bigger enemies.
There’s also a token micro-transaction encouraging heavy military rifle. It has unlimited ammo, only requiring a recharge cool down. It’s… fine? Tolerable. The amount of credits required to unlock it are absurd, and it’s far from as satisfying as the main weapons. One presumes this was a corporate mandated addition given how out of place it is to the rest of the experience.
Seriously, How Big IS This Game?!
Not to be outdone, Iron Monkey even comes up with clever ways to get around loading screens. Between every chapter, there’s now a tram fight where you hold off waves of opponents while enroute. Though there are brief loading screens, the majority of the experience is near-seamless. The battery life while playing was just as amazing for the time, lasting a good few hours on my Mom’s old iPhone 4S.
If do you somehow manage to sideload the iOS version onto supported hardware, the horde mode adds an extra wrinkle that upgrades from the campaign stack there. Your reward for performing well is increasingly huge stacks of credits that can be spent in the campaign. This is a huge advantage when trying to get the speedrunning achievement where you have to clear the whole game in two hours.
Dead Space Mobile is More Than a Tie-In
There’s no other way to put it — Dead Space Mobile is a great game. Sure, Johnston’s penchant for obvious plot twists is a bit too on the nose, and emulating it on PC is tricky, but if you have an android device, I absolutely recommend giving this a try. It’s rock solid in every way that matters: tight gameplay, great atmosphere, astonishing presentation — it’s got it all.
If Dead Space itself is receiving a remake, then I think it’s be extremely apt to bring back this hidden gem with a new coat of paint too. Now if only it’d receive a proper official re-release…
