Dead Space: Downfall Fails As A Prequel
Writen by Tectonic
Posted on October 29, 2008 at 05:32:33 pm
While Dead Space the game has been highly anticipated, and has proven to not be quite as amazing as expected (big spoiler there), Dead Space: Downfall is its proverbial goofy younger brother. Nobody really wanted him to come along, and now that he's here nobody really knows what to do with him. Some people are going to feel like they HAVE to say hi, see what he's about, if only to learn something about their REAL friend, the game, that they wouldn't have known otherwise.
Mind you, Dead Space might not be happy with you for not at least saying 'hello' to Downfall, but that wasn't exactly in your agreement when you made friends in the first place. What was in the agreement was that Dead Space be entertaining, which it's barely followed through on as is, and now the cheeky bastard's asking for favors. This is why I have no friends, be they made of flesh and blood or ones and zeros.
 I can see how people that REALLY liked Dead Space the video game will enjoy the prequel animation. It helps give context to the events of the game, and even as I say that we should be able to appreciate the danger in that. Dead Space is a horror game -- knowing too much makes it all more difficult for you to get spooked, and isn't that the POINT? In that respect, it's highly suggested you watch the movie AFTER you've beaten the game or it might compromise your ability to enjoy fending off face-humping mynoks, or whatever the hell those things are.
But after playing the game, you might not so much care anymore. I get the feeling EA was hoping to get people to watch their shitty movie merely off of antsy-pantsy anticipation for their new FPS, but as stated earlier, that puts the player in sheer danger of bringing down their ability to enjoy the game. Strange business strategy? I think so, but this is EA we're talking about.
What do you need to know about the movie? Art style's funky, plot's simplistic, and honestly - who actually thought you could write a script like it was gonna be filmed and then animate it? I didn't feel scared, and I didn't feel excited either. There's way too many characters for us to develop a bond with any of them, and I only counted about two scenes I genuinely enjoyed, surprisingly not counting the fat religious guy's fruitless last stand against hordes of space zombies with only a lightsaber-chainsaw to comfort him.
The story is rushed at best and simply unexplained at worst. I'd give you names but I honestly can't remember any of them and can't be bothered to look them up. The movie left me with many questions I'd already had from previous space horrors like if we figured out how to simulate gravity on a space ship, why do all our pod-bay doors close embarassingly slow, thus letting the alien infection onto our ship? I'd like to think human enginuity is better than that, but there I go again expecting too much out of mankind.
In the end, the movie's just a long commercial for the game that really doesn't even do that job well. I wish I could say something nicer, especially seeing as it had a lot of my favorite voice actors in it, but I can't. I leave you with this: yes, the black guys still die first, and, yes, the short white-haired guy goes insane and TKs, and, no, the main character isn't Ripley no matter how much she might want to be.
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