As a pumpkin smashing enthusiast once said “The world is a vampire, set to draaa-aaa-aaaain.” Grunge-fueled poeticism truly is most befitting Dead Space, especially at its best. Every new challenge asks more of you, leaving you a little weaker until you can recoup your spent resources. You have to parse apart which weapons to rely on, how much ammo you can spare, if there’s anything in the environment that can help or harm you, and stretching it all across a seemingly unending horde of Necromorphs.

Then, traditionally, you go into New Game Plus to absolutely rip and tear with all your hard-earned upgrades to get your revenge. Except in Dead Space Remake, you can end up pretty powerful well before that point.

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Several weapons have been buffed substantially, a few to the point that they barely need upgrading to be viable into the endgame fights. There’s also no use for power nodes besides upgrading your gear. With the same general amount of nodes dropped, and some more frequently dropped ammo types selling for higher, it’s possible to max out two weapons and your suit with ease, as I’ve discovered over my repeated runs through the game. This undercuts a lot of the tension of revisiting the game. Even by the series' New Game Plus standards, Remake is fairly easy. That’s why you should hold off on playing New Game Plus to instead dive into Impossible Mode right after your first run.

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On the one hand, beating the mode nets you the Foam Finger, a fan favorite joke weapon that blasts every enemy in a single hit, as well as the only alternate suit of armor you can get without paying for the Deluxe Edition. More importantly, you’ll rediscover the thrill you felt on your first playthrough - not because of starting from scratch, but because any death means starting over, rogue-lite style.

Impossible Mode is the full manifestation of Motive’s aspirations to capture the mood of the Resident Evil remakes, and it's delightfully intense. There are no checkpoints, only save stations with just a single save slot you have to overwrite to save again. The underlying difficulty settings are set to Hard, so you’ve got minimal ammo and credit drops, as well as the fiercest ambushes from the Intensity Director. A single swipe of a Slasher Necromorph can take out half of your starting health. It’s wonderful, especially since all normal accessibility options are supported (so no worries about irritating QTEs!).

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Impossible Mode is perhaps the finest iteration of the Hardcore mode spanning the series since Dead Space 2. It mixes the balancing of Dead Space 2 with the rules of Dead Space 3 to create something truly special, where everything feels fair, and the tension is palpable. Every reflex is tested wonderfully, making foreknowledge as useful a tool as your plasma cutter. Where knowing what’s coming might spoil the mood on a normal return run, here it’s a lifeline. Every ounce of genre savviness, careful timing, and memorization is key to making it through not only each battle, but navigating the countless hazards (old and new) that Motive has set in place to demolish you.

As great as the rewards you receive at the end are, truly the greatest gift Impossible grants is letting you do the actual impossible feat of feeling like you’re playing Remake for the first time all over again. The edge that dulled as your arsenal and skills grew on your initial run is back, sharp as ever.

So if, like me, you’re looking to get the most out of Dead Space Remake, dare to try the Impossible and see if you too can best the Ishimura’s horrors without dying.

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