

There’s a necromorph, sealed into a vent, and only just thankful enough for its newfound freedom to screech once at you before it dives in for the kill. You play God of War Ragnarok and Marvel’s Spider-Man back to back and, with perfect Pavlovian predictability, you start expecting every optional exertion to end in a delicious treat.

So, with all the predictable, cavern-mouthed zeal of an emaciated plastic hippo anally attached to a lever, I eagerly and thirstily flung aside those crates with Isaac’s Kinesis module, and rubbed my greasy goblin mitts together in anticipation of the goody I was sure to be rewarded for my fastidious situational awareness. I replayed Dead Space recently for the first time since release, time and distance granting me fresh eyes. In the corner of this particular lounge is a pile of crates. If Isaac had not chosen engineering as his vocation, he would no doubt be a low-level mobster worth fearing. Through a harsh regime of treat-speckled scarcity, Dead Space has by this point trained the player to rifle, rummage, scrape, scrounge, and otherwise vacuum until each new architectural victim has been shaken down for its valuables, then stomped on a few times for luck.

