There are even a couple moments when they crack lame jokes after killing a necromorph. The characters sound almost nonchalant, despite the violence going on around them. This would make sense if this were a printed comic and the artist had to factor in page size, but on an HDTV, put in motion and with voice over, the lack of detail just looks cheap, like it’s a sketch instead of a final drawing. In addition, whenever characters are at a medium distance from the “camera” the detail in their faces and clothing decreases dramatically. The monsters don’t ooze like they did before, they look more like action figures, so they’re nowhere near as scary as they should be. In Ignition, the art is too clean, the lines are too solid.

The world looked oppressive and frightening.

His necromorphs oozed gore, like real mutilated corpses brought back to life, and his backgrounds were always dark and dingy. He was a perfect match for the Dead Space universe. But that comic was aided by Ben Templesmith’s stylized art. The original graphic novel had its own motion comic, so it makes sense that EA decided to go that route again with Ignition. The original Dead Space graphic novel told the same story of outbreak and survival, so did the animated movie Dead Space: Downfall, so did the Wii game Dead Space: Extraction, and they all did it better than Ignition does. However, for anyone that’s sampled any of the other transmedia properties of the Dead Space franchise, Ignition will feel repetitive. Monsters appear, people run, and people die, but there are enough hints to a larger mystery to keep things at least somewhat interesting.

As part motion comic and part mini-game collection, it’s a prequel to Dead Space 2 that revolves around one couple, an engineer and a cop, as they try to survive the necromorph invasion on The Sprawl. Dead Space: Ignition is an interesting experiment.

Dead space animated comic