News
Dead Space: Ignition Review: It’s No Case Zero
Dead Space: Ignition is out and it would very much like to get you hyped and excited for the upcoming Dead Space 2. Ignition is an interactive comic that offers four unique endings depending on the decisions you make along the way, and once you complete it you’re rewarded with content Isaac can use in the upcoming sequel.
This is all about the story as its goal is to bridge the gaps between the first and second game, but sadly, that’s where it falls short. Instead of giving us an interesting story with good looking drawings and animating Ignition offers a less than entertaining cast of characters, awful visuals, and a story that won’t capture the attention of even the most hardcore of Dead Space fans. The Baby Factor: If three fairly amusing mini-games got together with a poorly done digital comic, Dead Space: Ignition would be their boring, repetitive offspring.
I should also mention that outside of watching characters float and bob as if they were animated by an intern and sporadically choosing whether you should go right or left, the things that will be filling your time are three puzzles that get progressively difficult: the Hardware Crack, Trace Route and System Override.
The Hardware Crack has you using mirrors to direct various beams of colored light to their hub. It starts off simple enough; get the green light to its green hub and the red beam to its hub. Later on you’re given different abilities and obstacles to overcome including mirrors that move and beam splitters.
The Trace Route is arguably the most interesting puzzle of the three as it’s essentially a side scrolling racing game that has you trying to make it to the finish line before the other tracers dropping obstacles in their way while you dodge traps, walls and aggressive tracers that want to end you.
The biggest draw here are the visuals. You’ll be watching a comic play out so it has to look good, right? Apparently it does not, because outside of some good color work the drawings and animations (specifically the latter) are, for lack of a better word, ugly.
And the decisions you have to make throughout the story usually aren’t the type of ones that take much time to decide between. My first decision was between fixing the power in an area of the Sprawl station or negotiating a hostage rescue so it was essentially between saving possibly hundreds of people or some a few people that were captured by a crazy guy. Not exactly the life-changing decision making I was hoping for, but then again, everything here feels poorly executed.
Dead Space wanted to have the same incredible success that Dead Rising 2’s Case Zero did. They’re both midquel content that are supposed to get us in the mood for the sequel they’re promoting by bridging gaps and filling plot holes and upon completing them we’re rewarded with content (or progress) that can be used in the game. But where Case Zero was a slice of the full game that really gave us a taste of what we should expect in Dead Rising 2, Ignition is a horribly animated comic with dull voice acting and an even less spectacular story.
The Final Word: While this shouldn’t make you any less excited for Dead Space 2, Ignition is a failed attempt at getting us amped up for what will almost definitely be a great game.
This review is based on the Xbox 360 version of Dead Space: Ignition.
Only one episode remains in Season 3 of “Chucky,” and what a bloody road it’s been so far, especially for actor Devon Sawa. The actor has now officially died twice on screen this season, pulling double duty as President James Collins and body double Randall Jenkins.
If you thought Chucky’s ruthless eye-gouging of the President was bloody, this week’s Episode 7 traps Randall Jenkins in an elevator that feels straight out of an iconic horror classic.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with series creator Don Mancini and actor Devon Sawa about that ultra-bloody death sequence and how the actor inspires Mancini’s writing on the series.
Mancini explains, “Devon’s a bit of a muse. Idle Hands and Final Destination is where my Devon Sawa fandom started, like a lot of people; although yours may have started with Casper. I was a bit too old for that. But it’s really just about how I love writing for actors that I respect and then know. So, it’s like having worked with Devon for three years now, I’m just always thinking, ‘Oh, what would be a fun thing to throw his way that would be unexpected and different that he hasn’t done?’ That’s really what motivates me.”
For Sawa, “Chucky“ is an actor’s dream in that the series gives him not one but multiple roles to sink his teeth into, often within the same season. But the actor is also a huge horror fan, and Season 3: Part 2 gives him the opportunity to pay homage to a classic: Kubrick’s The Shining.
CHUCKY — “There Will Be Blood” Episode 307 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Devon Sawa as President James Collins, K.C. Collins as Coop — (Photo by: SYFY)
“Collectively, it’s just amazing to put on the different outfits, to do the hair differently, to get different types of dialogue,“ Sawa says of working on the series. “The elevator scene, it’s like being a kid again. I was up to my eyeballs in blood, and it felt very Kubrick. Everybody there was having such a good time, and we were all doing this cool horror stuff, and it felt amazing. It really was a good day.”
Sawa elaborates on being submerged in so much blood, “It was uncomfortable, cold, and sticky, and it got in my ears and my nose. But it was well worth it. I didn’t complain once. I was like, ‘This is why I do what I do, to do scenes like this,‘ the scenes that I grew up watching on VHS cassette, and now we’re doing it in HD, and it’s all so cool.“
It’s always the characters and the actors behind them that matter most to Mancini, even when he delights in coming up with inventive kills and incorporating horror references. And he’s killed Devon Sawa’s characters often. Could future seasons top the record of on-screen Sawa deaths?
“Well, I guess we did it twice in season one and once in season two,“ Mancini counts. “So yeah, I guess I would have to up the ante next season. I’ll really be juggling a lot of falls. But I think it’s hopefully as much about quality as quantity. I want to give him a good role that he’s going to enjoy sinking his teeth into as an actor. It’s not just about the deaths.”
Sawa adds, “Don’s never really talked about how many times could we kill you. He’s always talking about, ‘How can I make this death better,’ and that’s what I think excites him is how he can top each death. The electricity, to me blowing up to, obviously in this season, the eyes and with the elevator, which was my favorite one to shoot. So if it goes on, we’ll see if he could top the deaths.”
CHUCKY — “Death Becomes Her” Episode 305 — Pictured in this screengrab: Devon Sawa as James Collins — (Photo by: SYFY)
The actor has played a handful of distinctly different characters since the series launch, each one meeting a grisly end thanks to Chucky. And Season 3 gave Sawa his favorite characters yet.
“I would say the second one was a lot of fun to shoot,“ the actor says of Randall Jenkins. “The President was great. I liked playing the President. He was the most grounded, I hope, of all the characters. I did like playing him a lot.” Mancini adds, “He’s grounded, but he’s also really traumatized, and I thought you did that really well, too.”
The series creator also reveals a surprise correlation between President James Collins’ character arc and a ’90s horror favorite.
“I saw Devon’s role as the president in Season 3; he’s very Kennedy-esque,“ Mancini explains. “But then given the supernatural plot turns that happen, to me, the analogy is Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, the character that is seeing these weird little things happening around the house that is starting to screw with his sanity and he starts to insist, ‘I’m seeing a ghost,‘ and his spouse thinks he’s nuts. So I always like that. That’s Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, which is a movie I love.”
The finale of “Chucky” Season 3: Part 2 airs Wednesday, May 1 on USA & SYFY.
‘Infested’ Review – One of the Best Spiders Attack Horror Movies in Years
‘The King Tide’: An Island Town Rots with Moral Decay in Canadian Folk Horror Fable [Review]
Limited Edition Morticia & Wednesday Addams ‘Monster High’ Dolls Releasing Next Week!
TWO New ‘Evil Dead’ Movies Now in the Works; Sébastien Vaniček & Francis Galluppi Directing
“AHS: Delicate” Review – ‘The Auteur’ Gives Birth to a Lackluster, Laughable Finale
You must be logged in to post a comment.