While the list below isn't a rundown of all of the reviews that ran this year on Kotaku, it is a fairly strong sampling. Use it to help you decide what you should and shouldn't get.

Which games make your list for wishlist or gift list?

A Boy and His Blob

Price: $39.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Platformer
Subject Matter:A Boy and His Blob is a platform game in which the titular duo use their wits and the Blob's transformative powers to overcome obstacles as they try to save the planet from an evil alien overlord.
Value: Moderately lengthy for a platformer, A Boy and His Blob's main draw is it's combination of platforming and puzzle-solving, using the unique morphing blob mechanic to create ladders, holes, trampolines and more to help traverse increasingly hostile environments. The graphics are gorgeous and the presentation is charmingly bare. It's almost artistic.
Buy it for: fans of the original game and people with a strong bond to their pets
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Bakugan Battle Brawlers
Price: $49.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Marble-shooting, creature-battling action game.
Subject Matter: Based on the wildly popular collectible toy game and cartoon series, Bakugan follows in the footsteps of Pokemon but adds transforming marbles to the mix. The game does a good job of capturing the essence of the franchise.
Value: With a relatively robust single-player campaign and ability to battle up to three friends on one television in a slew of interactive arenas, this game is a pretty good deal.
Buy it for:fans of Bakugan and maybe even curious fans of Pokemon.
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The Beatles: Rock Band
Price: The stand-alone game sells for $59.99, the Limited Edition Premium Bundle sell for $249.99, the Rickenbacker 325 Standalone Guitar and the Gretsch Duo Jet Standalone Guitar sells for $99.99.
Rating: Teen
Genre: Rhythm music game
Subject Matter: The Beatles: Rock Band is a musical journey through the history of one of the world's most popular bands.
Value: For those new to the Rock Band phenomenon and fans of The Beatles, this 45-track game is well worth a purchase because this is the only way you'll play The Beatles music in a Rock Band game. If you're not into the band, give this a pass.
Buy it for: huge Beatles fans.
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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Reflex
Price: $49.99
Rating: M
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Subject Matter: The Call of Duty series jumps from old school wars to modern combat in an edgy politically-charged tale of nuclear warfare.
Value: With Wii shooters few and far between, this is a must-have for FPS fans.
Buy it for: FPS fans who also happen to be Wii owners. Or your grandma, if you're trying to get un-invited to the family reunion.
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Contra ReBirth

Price: $10.00 (WiiWare)
Rating: Teen
Genre: Action
Subject Matter: A new entry in the Contra series in glorious, Super Nintendo-era 2D.
Value: It's short and hard, like a body-building elf. ReBirth takes the classic 2D run-and-gun gameplay of the Contra series and...doesn't do all that much with it. It's a new game with an old look.
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Dead Space Extraction
Price: $49.99
Rating: M
Genre: Dynamic on-rails first-person shooter.
Subject Matter: Sci-fi horror prequel to 2008's Dead Space, featuring survivors on the run from alien horrors.
Value: A short Wii game, but one of the best-looking and most exciting ones in recent memory.
Buy it for: Fans of the Dead Space series and Wii gamers looking for a game targeted to an older crowd; this one's too profane for kids.
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DJ Hero
Price: $119.99
Rating: Teen
Genre: Rhythm
Subject Matter: DJ Hero is a rhythm game featuring a replica DJ turntable so players can mix and scratch to the beat of original music mash-ups.
Value: DJ Hero features upwards fo 100 different DJ-driven mash-ups featuring songs from the 70's on up to present-day hits. Unlike the latest Guitar Hero or Rock Band games, however, it's only good for one or two players, so the party element just isn't there. The innovative turntable-based gameplay makes it a breath of fresh air in the currently band-centric music genre, but it certainly isn't as social.
Buy it for: Fans of eclectic music mixes and lonely Guitar Hero fans.
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Excitebike: World Rally

Price: $10 (download only)
Genre: Arcade racer
Subject Matter: An update to the classic Nintendo racer Excitebike, with a few minor gameplay tweaks and a revised link.
Value: A touch pricey for what is essentially a modern day port of a classic racer, but I suppose nostalgia has no price.
Buy it for: fans of classic Nintendo games and pick up and play gaming.
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Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A Darklord

Price: $10 (download only)
Rating: E10+
Genre: Tower Defense
Subject Matter: In an twist on the genre, evil princess gets to stack one tower against invaders.
Value: Lots of levels, but the creators charge extra for a lot of the cooler items and features.
Buy it for: Tower defense fans who want a major change to the traditional formula
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Ju-on: The Grudge

Price: $29.99
Rating: M
Genre: Horror, Action
Subject Matter: Relive the eeriness of the Japanese horror sensation in this "haunted house simulator."
Value: With a second Wii Remote, you can randomly inflict scary "haunting" moments on the person playing the game by mashing A.
Buy it for: Japanese horror film fans and anybody you secretly hate but don't dare give lumps of coal to.
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LEGO Rock Band

Price: $49.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Rhythm
Subject Matter: It's the family version of Rock Band, with adorable LEGO characters.
Value:The value in LEGO Rock Band comes mainly from knowing your children won't be exposed to any suggestive lyrics or imagery, so if you're the type of parent/aunt/uncle that actually worries about such things, then there you are. Otherwise, you get somewhere around 44 songs that will just be released as downloadable content for the main game anyway.
Buy it for: Younger fans of good music who already have access to Rock Band instruments.
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Little King's Story

Price: $49.99
Rating: T
Genre: Role-playing game mixed with empire-building
Subject Matter: A fairy-tale-style king at odds with increasingly clever and culturally-interesting enemies tribes and kings.
Value: High. Lengthy, imaginative single-player quest.
Buy it for: Wii owners who want a game that will last; fans of quirky, more artsy video games.
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LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias

Price: 1000 Wii Points
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Platform
Subject Matter: It's the sequel to 2008's LostWinds with the new ability to switch between seasons (winter and summer).
Value: Small touches, like the character being realistically refracted when standing behind ice, made us forget this is not a packaged retail release. The graphics and music are both deliver — as does the Wii Remote gameplay.
Buy it for: Gamers looking for a breezy and cute platformer.
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Marvel Super Hero Squad
Price: $39.99
Rating: Everyone 10+
Genre: Beat-em Up
Subject Matter: A standard tale of good versus evil told with tiny, superdeformed Marvel characters
Value: While the adventure mode will only last a couple of hours, Marvel Super Hero Squad features a Battle Mode that lets your kids fight against each other using iconic Marvel Comics characters, so there is some lasting value there, if only for the youngins'.
Buy it for: kids old enough to enjoy Marvel Characters but not old enough to handle Captain America getting shot and killed
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Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Price: $49.99
Rating: Teen
Genre: Action RPG
Subject Matter: A highly Japanese hack and slash RPG with very striking 2D visuals.
Value:A gorgeous single-player action RPG, Muramasa has a great deal of gameplay but very little in the way of story development. Lots of over-the-top action and some very impressive boss fights make up for the overall lack of depth.
Buy it for: Japanese RPG and anime fans.
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MySims Agents

Price: $49.99
Rating: E
Genre: Action/Adventure
Subject Matter: Make your MySim into the ultimate secret agent by unraveling a huge mystery.
Value: Lots of customizable costumes and outfits, plus a secret alternate ending and bonus puzzles lend the game replay value.
Buy it for: Your kids and play it when they aren't looking.
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New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Price: $49.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Side-scrolling, nostalgia-tugging platformer
Subject Matter: New Super Mario Bros. Wii doesn't explore any new narratives, you're still Mario who is still trying to save the princess, but this time around you can play with three friends, and the game is there to help you when you get stuck.
Value: New Super Mario Bros. Wii feels like two games in one, and there are several mulitplayer modes to add to the fun after you've beaten the game.
Buy it for: Anyone with a Wii, anyone considering a Wii.
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Rabbids Go Home
Price: $49.99
Rating: E10+
Genre: Comedy platformer
Subject Matter: Three manic rabbit-like creatures and their shopping cart put to task to rob humanity of its junk in order to build a pile and pathway to the moon. Plus, the Rabbids can and must yell the clothes off ridiculous people.
Value: A pleasant and funny adventure that will last a weekend, but longer for those who want to collect 100%.
Buy it for: Gamers who want a game that makes them laugh out loud; fans of platforming looking for a Mario alternative; people looking for the Rabbids to finally star in something that isn't a mini-game compilation.
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Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles
Price: $49.99
Rating: M
Genre: On-rails shooter, Resident Evil retrospective
Subject Matter: Single-player or co-op light gun shooter takes on Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil Code: Veronica, wrapped up in a short, new pre-Resident-Evil-4 campaign, all presented with RE's mix of horror and cheese (though this one isn't scary).
Value: Light gun games are usually very short, but this one has three campaigns and enough unlockables to offer at least nine hours of first-time play.
Buy it for: Resident Evil fans; people looking for a less innovative Wii light gun game than Dead Space Extraction and a less outrageous one than House of the Dead: Overkill, but, of the three, the one with the most content. A solid game.
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Spyborgs

Price: $19.99
Rating: Teen
Genre: Beat-em Up
Subject Matter: Spyborgs is a simple arcade-style beat-em up with cartoon tendencies.
Buy it for: Young children and early teens who've yet to develop discerning tastes.
Value: $19.99 could very well translate into keeping your kids quiet (or at least only yelling at each other) for a few hours, or some quality parent-child bonding time. It's not particularly exciting, but it'll do in a pinch.
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Sword & Soldiers

Price: $10 (download only)
Rating: E10+
Genre: Side-scrolling real-time-strategy game.
Subject Matter: Vikings vs. ninjas vs. Aztecs
Value: High, given the amount of levels, the gleefully violent cartoon visuals and the creative campaign.
Buy it for: Fans looking for cartoon violence on the Wii and fans of Patapon the only game remotely like this.
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Wii Energizer 4X Charging Station

Price: $49.99
Rating: N/A
Genre: N/A
Subject Matter:An induction panel that charges up to four remotes at a time.
Value: With four rechargeable battery packs included with the induction panel, this seems like a fairly good deal.
Buy it for:Wii owners sick of burning through batteries and people who have their console set up in a place where space is at a premium.
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Wii Fit Plus

Price: $19.99 (game only), $99.99 (with Balance Board)
Rating: E
Genre: Fitness, Sports
Subject Matter: A slew of next mini-games and a handful of new exercises round out Nintendo's home fitness tool.
Value: With a new multiplayer function and the ability to weigh your cat, baby or dog, Wii Fit Plus pushes its fun on the whole family.
Buy it for: Yourself because you're too lazy to go to the gym, your grandparents who need help getting over last year's hip surgery, or your brother-in-law who should really be watching his weight.
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Wii Sports Resort

Price: $49.99
Rating: Everyone
Genre: Casual sports
Subject Matter: Wii Sports Resort drops you on an island with a dozen sports to attempt using the Wii's new, more accurate MotionPlus device.
Value: Packed with a MotionPlus remote add-on and a hefty collection of sports, this is a must have for Wii owners.
Buy it for: Fans of Wii Sports, casual gamers, anyone looking for some family time on their Wii.
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Is it fair to compare? Not completely. Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, a follow-up to 2007's Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, is not done yet. It comes out in about a month.

The two Resident Evil light-gun games, both developed by Capcom and Cavia for the Wii and both expanding the fiction of the more interactive Resident Evil games, nevertheless invite comparisons to other games in their genre.

Right now, the comparison favors EA and its well-reviewed September on-rails shooter (they call it "guided first-person experience") Dead Space Extraction.

Capcom's game, which once may have impressed, now seems less successful in terms of graphics and gameplay — and maybe storytelling — than EA's effort.

I played the first level of Darkside Chronicles at a Capcom event in New York yesterday. It was set in the game's new slice of content, a South America-based chapter, Operation Javier, that is set between the events of Resident Evil: Code Veronica and Resident Evil 4. I played co-op with a publicist for the game, each of us wielding a Wii remote, me as Leon Kennedy, she as Jack Krauser.

The controls were simple. Point. Shoot. Shake to reload. Weapon selections were mapped to the d-pad. But ambition may have gotten the best of the game's developers. This first chapter of the game is set in broad daylight. That may provide a visual echo of Resident Evil 5, but it also exposes the jagged graphics the Wii is sometimes prone to make for games with quasi-realistic graphics, the jaggedness that the dark shadows of Umbrella Chronicles and Dead Space Extraction kept hidden. (The screenshots in this post, from Capcom's press site, look smoother than the visuals in the demo I played.)

The opening level of The Darkside Chronicles has Kennedy and Krauser, soon to be rivals in RE4, helping each other shoot through the infected hordes in a South American village. Your taste for shooting ambling zombies in the head may vary with mine — it is a popular pleasure in games. But I just recently was shooting specific limbs off aliens in Extraction, making the gunplay in Resident Evil feel less finessed. Some would say that Resident Evil shotguns aren't meant for surgery on a zombie stomach, and they'd be right. But are you up for shooting piranha that leap out of the water and mutated giant frogs? Would you like zombie body parts to fall off in the places you shoot them?

The draw of Darkside Chronicles will be the fiction, which certainly has a bigger following than that of Dead Space. The game brings back sequences from Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil: Code Veronica in addition to providing Operation Javier's new bridging content to RE4. It's telling old story and new, in the light-gun format.

One hopes, though, that game design advances aren't passing Capcom's Wii series by. Extraction presented a more dynamic on-rails shooting experience than the rest of the Wii's many light-gun games have. It did much of the work Capcom and Cavia have attempted of integrating narrative with rail-shooting. But it did so by pulling the player through such physically dynamic sequences — through space-walks and tunnel-crawls and panicked rushes from scary enemies — that it seldom felt like the player was a floating gun. Instead it conveyed the sense that the gamer was the hands of an intelligent character. Darkside Chronicles felt more conventional than that yesterday. It pulled us down dusty streets, allowed us to choose between a couple of branched paths (first player to press the button dictated our decision) and brought us toward a boss. Chatter between our characters was relegated mostly to cut-scenes.

The Darkside Chronicles demo had some awkward moments. Occasionally, one of our characters would get pulled out of our limited control for scripted drama. For example, my targeting reticule for Leon stopped working as an infected person leaped on my character, who was suddenly on-screen as if this was a third-person game. That was a cue for my co-op partner to free me by shooting her cursor at the guy wrestling with Leon. This didn't happen because I messed up. It happened because the game was programmed to run that sequence at that time. In single-player, I was told, these first-person-interrupting scenes would happen to the partner character only, which would probably better preserve the consistency of first-person control. But, in co-op, to have one of our characters removed from our control while the other person can still play, was confusing.

The game has many of the standard light-gun staples. Objects in the environment can be shot to reveal healing items and ammo. Discoverable gold bricks can be used to buy weapon upgrades. An inventory screen accessible whenever the game is paused can allow players to share and swap weapons. We had stand-bys like the shotgun, machine gun and magnum at our disposal, in addition to an infinite-ammo pistol. Holding a button and swiping allowed for a last-gasp knife attack. The game is playable with the Remote or the Wii-Zapper. A Nunchuck is not supported.

Not all prospective fans should be deterred. Pedestrian gameplay that drives players through an expanding fiction that fascinates millions of gamers may be enough to get people excited about Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. And you should know that I was unimpressed with EA's Dead Space Extraction both times I saw it demoed before I was able to play the real thing. Maybe I'm a bad judge of light gun games in preview form? Or maybe The Darkside Chronicles still needs that something special to impress in a genre that just got a boost from a horror series rival.

When a major Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 title makes the trip to the Nintendo Wii, you generally expect a watered-down version of the original game. Not so with Dead Space Extraction, which presents an entirely new chapter in the sci-fi survival horror experience, complimenting the original game rather than simply aping it. Trading in the third-person shooter gameplay of the original title, Extraction capitalizes on the Wii's strengths, delivering on on-rails shooter experience that heightens the tension by wresting control from the player.

Is Dead Space Extraction a worthy entry in the series, or did Wii owners get the short end of the remote again?

Giant Bomb
I almost feel like I need to offer apologies or excuses while recommending Dead Space Extraction, EA's Wii follow-up to last year's breakout original sci-fi horror shooter. Extraction's marketing campaign would like you to think of it as a "guided experience" that whisks you through the dramatic beginnings of the series' horrible space-monster outbreak, but in blunt terms, Extraction is an on-rails shooter. Blunter still: it's a light-gun game. These days, that's not a style of game serious game players usually gravitate toward. But keeping the genre's inherent restrictions in mind—not to mention the limitations of the Wii hardware—Extraction is really pretty good, for what it is.

Game Informer
Dead Space: Extraction runs on rails, pulling the player forward at a scripted pace. Developer Visceral Games did a commendable job of making this experience feel more organic. Shaky cameras constantly distort your field of view, and you can hear your character's labored breathing. As intended, the bobbing camera combined with dancing shadows plays tricks on your eyes, and can lead to a few shots being fired ­at ­nothing.

Eurogamer
One area that definitely benefits from the on-rails nature of Extraction is the overall pacing. Sometimes you creep along agonisingly, other times it feels like the enemy onslaught is never going to end. There are few occasions where you don't come away feeling like your scraped through by the skin of your teeth, and even on the game's lowest 'Normal' difficulty, there's a definite sense of achievement when you get through.

Extreme Gamer
The controls in the game are perfectly matched for what the Visceral was trying to get acrossed. The Wii-mote and nunchuck are required unless you are going to use the Wii Zapper. Reloading the weapons, using your suits powers and melee attacks are all balanced out perfectly and the controls never get in the way of the action. The game slides you through all the different ways you'll be using the controllers and eases you into the game without any confusion. It's good to see a developer really think about the controls in a Wii game and how they can be immersive to the in-game situations and not just a gimmick, or a borrowed scheme from an already proven game.

The Onion A.V. Club
The characters often fall into horror-movie tropes. There's the hardened security officer, the shady guy who won't tell you why he's there, and the scared woman mourning her recently deceased boyfriend. The game controls your movement and facing, so you often have to grab items as soon as you see them, or miss the opportunity. Events are often timed, which is frustrating when you have to spot a creature's weakness and determine the best way to exploit it within a few seconds. At least the time issues become easier in co-op mode.

Kotaku
Dead Space Extraction is not just a light-gun shooter. It's not just an on-rails game. It's an adventure as exciting as anything I've played in a while. If players can stand the brevity and don't mind something else controlling their hero's legs, it's well worth playing. The game presents a model, like tennis in Wii Sports, of how to get a whole lot more out of a simplified user set-up. I can imagine some gamers - and some potential gamers - who wouldn't have the skills to have a fun time in the original Dead Space. They'd have ample skill to get through Extraction and might even have a better experience doing so.

What they'd tell you in a catalog is that Dead Space Extraction is the Wii prequel to last year's PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 sci-fi horror hit Dead Space. They'd write that it is a shooter that runs on rails and is rendered in the first-person, can be played with a light gun and that looks and sounds better than most Wii games.

The catalog wouldn't tell you it's shorter than an honest work day. Nor would it classify it, as I would, as the Wii Sports Tennis of so-called hardcore games. It is a most unusual specimen even among the few spectacular games on the Wii not developed with moms in mind, because it uses the Wii's attributes to do something new, daring — as did Nintendo's famous pack-in game — to give gamers more with less.

Plus it single-handedly justifies the use of the Nintendo nunchuk.

Loved
This Wii Tennis Thing:Like Wii Sports tennis, Dead Space Extraction dares to present a fully satisfying experience in its genre — not tennis this time but sci-fi horror — without giving players control of its characters' legs. We just get to use our hero's arms. Plenty of people, myself included, wanted to classify this game as an on-rails shooter. The game's creators accurately resisted that, because this game feels less like a shooting gallery on wheels and more like players have been given a chance to ride — and shoot — shotgun on board someone's perfect play-through of a Dead Space game.

Just as Wii Sports tennis let us both forget about body movement and focus on the swings of a well-played tennis match, Dead Space Extraction presents a more physically involved adventure than even the one the first Dead Space's protagonist had. The various heroes we can control in Extraction's 10 levels can run, crawl, climb, swim, fall, pilot spaceships, spacewalk, jump through zero-gravity — all under the control of the computer — while the player worries about making those same heroes shoot, chop, saw, hack, heal, illuminate and snatch. And there's no dull downtime, because the computer always knows the next exciting event toward which to drive the player.

The Non-Stop Adventure: The bulk of Dead Space Extraction involves the attempts of four horror-movie-cast survivors — the leading man, the pretty lady, the wry Brit, the suspicious old businessman — to survive the bad things happening on the planet of Aegis VII following the unearthing of a mysterious artifact. Escape is the simple goal. Said "bad things" arrive in the form of monsters who, as in the original Dead Space, are best defeated using the game's arsenal of limb-severing pistols, welding tools, laser rifles and buzzsaws. Our quartet has a hell of a time on Aegis VII, constantly on the run, reaching level-ending cliffhangers involving surprise attacks, crashed shuttles, unexpected encounters with other humans, all of which make it hard to stop playing. And then they get to the spaceship Ishimura where things get even more frantic. Could you film a movie of the first Dead Space? Not without removing a lot of the walking, shooting and exploring that are fun to play but would be dull to watch. Extraction, however, might as well be a movie, as it is paced like a relentless thriller.

The Echoes Of The First Game: Curious business decision that it is, this Wii game was made for people who have played the 360/PS3 original. Though it is a prequel that just barely bumps into the events of the first Dead Space, the game is full of narrative references to the 2008 adventure, overlapping much of the same terrain often in interestingly distinct ways. It manages more than a few winks that expose or twist the facts players of the first game may have thought they knew. The developers even had the guts to pull a Super Metroid and begin this game in the location where its well-known predecessor left off, but with the added challenge of doing that on a weaker system. Which brings me to my next point...

The Fearlessness of the Developers: It's amazing enough to play a Wii for which the developers appear to have been given the time, budget and talent to make the graphics and sound top-flight. It's all the more extraordinary that the creators of Dead Space Extraction had the will and the chops to render many of the same environments on Aegis VII and aboard the spaceship Ishimura that were produced in much higher detail on much more powerful consoles last year. That Extraction's environments look as good as they do — dark, high-tech, detailed, moody — is both a triumph of technical juice-squeezing and a testament to the value of art design over raw processing power. Don't trust the many underwhelming screenshots out there of this game; it's a visual stunner. Many of the set-piece rooms that dropped jaws on the PS3/360 will drop jaws when people encounter them in this game as well.

But why stop at the graphics? The soundscape in Extraction is in the league of the original's, providing ample intercom-voice and gun sounds through the Wii remote's speaker as well as a stirring mix of sound effects, whispers, growls and other frightful sounds from the main audio channels. As good as all that is, however, the best sights and sounds might be the convincing acting of the fellow survivors in the game who emote with voice, facial expressions and body language in believable ways.

Motion Controls Worth Handling :Shooting and circuit-board-soldering is, unsurprisingly, handled with a point of the Wii remote. Twisting the remote to activate a gun's alternate firing modes is inspired. Meleeing with shakes of the nunchuk isn't as good, until late in the game when it is used for an extraordinary use I won't spoil. I was skeptical about needing to shake the Wii remote to illuminate darkened passageways with a glow-stick, but I was won over by the wisdom of mapping that to the Remote in such a way that forced me between having to decide whether to shoot in darkness or stop shooting so I could shake more light onto the scene. (For the record, you can also activate a slowdown power and the much-needed telekinesis grappling beam, both of which are triggered by buttons.)

Hated
The Brevity: The game could have stood to have been a little longer, ending abruptly and offering little reason to go back other than for those who want to get better scores in its levels. I know that light-gun games are short, but since this game feels more like a third-person adventure a la the first Dead Space, it's disappointing to see it done with so swiftly.

Boss Fussiness: Some of the game's few bosses are best beaten with a narrow selection of weapons. Pity the player who encounters them with the wrong load-out and then has to re-play the whole level to make sure they approach the encounter with the right set. Always keep that Pulse Rifle handy!

Lack of Online Leaderboards: One of the few extras contained on the disc is the score-based challenge maps, all unlockable as you play the campaign. These maps require the player to face waves of monsters, racking up kills for high scores. If only the player wasn't going up against just the high scores saved on the disc.

Dead Space Extraction is not just a light-gun shooter. It's not just an on-rails game. It's an adventure as exciting as anything I've played in a while. If players can stand the brevity and don't mind something else controlling their hero's legs, it's well worth playing.

The game presents a model, like tennis in Wii Sports, of how to get a whole lot more out of a simplified user set-up. I can imagine some gamers — and some potential gamers — who wouldn't have the skills to have a fun time in the original Dead Space. They'd have ample skill to get through Extraction and might even have a better experience doing so.

Dead Space Extraction was developed by EA's Visceral Games and Eurocom and published by EA for the Wii on September 29. Retails for $49.99 USD. Played through the campaign on "hard" using Wii Remote and Nunchuk (Zapper mode also available). Tried Remote-only second-player co-op. Played a challenge level.

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About a week ago, give or take a jet-lag-lost half-day I was at an EA event in Tokyo participating in such ancient Japanese traditions as playing Dante's Inferno and killing some virtual undead, while McWhertor searched for a chainsaw.

There wasn't much that identified this EA showcase I attended at a Tokyo art museum as a Japanese event, other than the presence of an interesting DS game called Tsumuji and of a man named Rex Ishibashi. Rex runs EA Japan. I needed to find out what that's about.

Western games aren't big in Japan. Activision's not even there. But EA does have half of the market of Western games in the country, Ishibashi told me shortly after we sat down to chat. "We're looking to grow Western penetration of content in this marketplace from single-digit to double-digit," Ishibashi said.

Part of the push will be games like Dante's Inferno, if it can clear the ratings board, and Dead Space Extraction for the Wii, which has (That's concept art of DSE atop this post, by the way). The first Dead Space didn't make it to Japan. Why not? "To oversimplify, dismemberment [in video games] is a big issue in Japan," Ishibashi said. "The levels of innards and gore that you see is an issue, and killed bodies is an issue. There's a clear distinction between what happens to humans and what happens to aliens, even when the aliens look human. It's a, frankly, tricky landscape."

Dead Space Extraction got EA's backing in Japan in part because some of the Japanese developers working with the EA's Partners program liked the original. "Guys like [Grasshopper Manufacture's Goichi] Suda, [Ex-Capcom developer Shinji] Mikami and others were just raving about the game," Ishibashi said. EA Japan worked with the rest of the company to ensure that the new game would meet the standards needed for a Japanese release, touching on the aforementioned sensitive issues.

Dead Space for Wii will make it. Brutal Legend, despite the proliferation of young Japanese people in the shopping district of Shibuya sporting hair metal outfits, won't. "We're not releasing Brutal Legend in Japan," Ishibashi said. "It's too western. It has much more to do with the game fiction and the characters... No slight on him, because I'm a huge fan — but if you ask most of the Japanese people in this room about Jack Black, they'd say 'Who?' [As for] the heavy metal-connected humor and storyline, while there is a niche and you may see people dressing like that, it's not broad. It's pretty narrow."

Aside from bringing games over from the U.S. and Europe, EA Japan has tried to cultivate some projects locally. EA used to have a studio in the country and used it to develop Sim City on the DS. It's since been shut down, for reasons Ishibashi didn't explain. The new approach, Ishibashi said, is to tap into what he sees is a new-found entrepreneurial spirit in the Japanese development community, a spirit that has motivated Japanese industry veterans to branch off to start their own smaller studios.

Ishisbashi said the relatively recent rise of Softbank in Japan — the rare big company in Japan started by a hotshot entrepreneur — helped inspire workers to break away from their big companies. He said the spirit he's seeing now is from people saying, "I don't want to wear a suit and work for a big company. I'd rather be small, independent, nimble, make my own decisions, maybe manage one or two small projects — maybe something I feel i can control — rather than be a cog in a big machine."

In Japan, the pitch is that EA isn't the big machine. It could be the right partner for the little guy to hook up with. "It's not to take anything away from the big companies," Ishibashi said. "They do it very well. But Grasshopper Manufacture probably wouldn't have existed 15 years ago. You would have never gotten funded or maybe [Suda] would have been afraid to make that leap. We have this whole vibrant class of entrepreneurial developers we can tap into that don't just want to do projects for Sony or Square-Enix or whoever. "

The results of this new approach are games like Tsumuji, which EA Japan's small management team is helping to create in conjunction with the Osaka-based start-up Neuron Age. EA Japan is also assisting in managing the development of Suda and Mikami's EA Partners project.

In Japan, EA is the little guy marketing those oh-so-exotic games much of the rest of the gaming world considers the mainstream. And they're also another connection for Japanese game creators to the Western market. The company still has much to achieve in the one gaming-crazy territory where it is not yet a giant. They're trying.

Thanks to Dead Space: Extraction hitting the streets in Australia a whole week earlier than here in the US, we've got nothing better to do than watch an Australian gamer play through the first fifteen minutes.

I know it's an on rails shooter a "guided first person experience" and I usually hate being told what to do — but based on this footage, I'm pleased with how Extraction turned out. We'll see how the whole game goes when I buy it next week.

Video: Dead Space Extraction - The first 15 minutes [Vooks]

In this latest developer diary for the title, we're told all about the things the team did to ensure the original Dead Space experience wouldn't be watered down.

Ooo, convenient. Running parallel to the events in the Dead Space comic book series and the animated feature, Dead Space Extraction takes a storytelling route as different as its on-rails shooter gameplay is from the original release. The game follows a group of individuals rather than just one man, telling the story of the events that led up to Dead Space proper through their eyes. It seems like the team is crafting a game that is a must-have for multi-platform owning fans who want the full Dead Space story.

I bet you anything the ending isn't happy.

Half a dozen comics and two new cartoons based on video games were announced at the show and plenty of comic books were unveiled as video games. The convention itself was host to more than 40 panels about video games.

Often these crossovers serve as a sort of table setter for an upcoming game, helping to set the stage, build up the characters and explore the world of a video game before it gets into the hands of gamers.

Before the original Sci-Fi role-playing game Mass Effect hit two years ago, Del Rey published the novel Mass Effect: Revelation. The prequel, penned by the game developer's head writer, took place 35 years before the game.

This time around, the next Mass Effect game will be heralded by a comic book, not a novel. Mass Effect: Redemption is being written by Mac Walters, the person responsible for Mass Effect 2 script, and Walters promises it will change the way gamers look at the upcoming Xbox 360 sequel.

Upcoming Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 game Singularity is also getting a prequel in the form of a graphic novel. And long-lived franchise Prince of Persia is getting a graphic novel prequel for the upcoming movie based on the video games.

The shift from books to comic books to tell a story set in a video game universe shouldn't be that surprising. Comic books, like video games, use both narrative art and dialog to tell a story. The two also have a very similar audience which could explain the virtual explosion of crossover titles in recent months.

While Dead Space Extraction will explore the world of the upcoming Wii-exclusive, it won't be a prequel, according to Steve Papoutsis, executive producer of Dead Space Extraction.

"There is so much more to the Dead Space universe than we could ever fit into one game and we're excited to be working with Image Comics again to extend the story in Dead Space Extraction," he said. "(Illustrator) Ben (Templesmith) and (writer) Antony (Johnston) did such a tremendous job with the original comic, we can't wait for fans to get their hands on this special issue."

Other comic crossovers seem to be more about marketing than expanding the story. For instance, at last week's convention Capcom gave away copies of a Spyborgs comic to promote the upcoming Wii game. And Sony Computer Entertainment announced a comic based on their popular God of War franchise.

The six-issues series, set to be released on a monthly schedule leading into the release of God of War III, was announced alongside a novel based on the game and a collectible copy of the anti-hero's weapon: The Blades of Chaos.

Crossovers aren't relegated to the pages of comics either, there were also two new cartoons announced at the show.

Halo Legends will be a set of animated shorts based on Microsoft and Bungie's popular first-person shooter for the Xbox 360. The seven shorts will explore some of the fictional history of the game's universe.

Dante's Inferno, an action game based on the epic Italian poem, is also getting the cartoon treatment. The collection of six shorts, each created by a different studio and director, will show some of the untold moments of the video game on a DVD set to ship around the same time as the game.

Comic books and animated movies based on video games aren't a new phenomenon. Gears of War, Resident Evil, World of Warcraft, even Sonic, all have their own comic books. But the past 18 months or so has seen a surge of interest in the pop-culture crossovers.

Perhaps that's because of the increasingly mainstream role that comics and their offshoots are taking in pop culture. Once relegated to children, comics are now recognized as an important form of expression, something that can deal with big issues and reach a broad audience.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Image Comics and EA are teaming up to release a comic based on Dead Space Extraction.

The comic based on the Wii-exclusive, will team up illustrator Ben Templesmith and writer Antony Johnston following their partnership on last year's Dead Space comic.

The comic will hit shelves this September for $3, but a limited edition version of the comic featuring exclusive cover art will be available at the EA Comic-Con booth for $2. Better still, both Templesmith and Johnston will be on hand to sign the issues on Thursday from 3 to 4 p.m. and Friday through Sunday from 1 to 2 p.m.

The booth will also have other Dead Space merch including Isaac Clarke Unitology figurines, iPhone skins, and Dead Space art books.

"There is so much more to the Dead Space universe than we could ever fit into one game and we're excited to be working with Image Comics again to extend the story in Dead Space Extraction," said Steve Papoutsis, executive producer of Dead Space Extraction. "Ben and Antony did such a tremendous job with the original comic, we can't wait for fans to get their hands on this special issue."

EA has taken a bold step. The company is bringing a prequel to the graphically and aurally award-winning 2008 Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 space horror game Dead Space to a less capable but arguably more immersive game console this fall, the Wii.

At a recent press event in New York City, the game's executive producer, Steve Papoutsis, let me get my hands on the thing and begin to determine whether EA made a wise move.

What Is It?
Dead Space Extraction is a Wii-exclusive prequel to Dead Space. It is slated for late September release in the U.S. Development studios Visceral Games' and Eurcom's on-rails first-person adventure tells the story of the infestation of the Ishimura, the mining ship upon which most of last year's game took place. the first game was after the catastrophe. This game is the catastrophe.

What We Saw
This was Kotaku's second hands-on with Extraction. Our first Dead Space Extraction preview was in May. This new opportunity focused on the game's seventh chapter and featured the Ishimura's chief botanist in battle with monsters. I played co-op, though that doesn't add an extra character to the narrative or gameplay.

How Far Along Is It?
The level I played felt complete, but the game has a little more development time before release.

What Needs Improvement?
The Graphical Callbacks: This is the risk. Dead Space Extraction may be one of the best-looking games on the Wii, but parts of the game take place in parts of the Ishimura already rendered on more advanced systems in the first game. Extraction's chapter seven version on the hydroponics area unavoidably looks inferior to what wowed me when I was there on my PS3. Extraction fares better with its enemies, whose gangly limbs animate as they did before and just beckon to be dismembered, as is the series' trademark act of violence. (There's your gore, Fangoria guy!)

What Should Stay The Same?
The Controls: In my brief time with the game, I didn't mind not being able to control my character's movement. I can't tell how much I'd mind on a re-play when I was experiencing the same guidance through the same levels all over again. After all, last year, I walked around the Ishimura freely. I learned that Extraction's co-op controls will work in a few ways: Supporting a pair of Remotes and Nunchuks, or a Nunchuk/Remote combo for player one and Remote-only for player two .... or a two-player, two-Zapper configuration. I played with Remote and Nunchuk and had a good time waving the Nunchuk for melee attacks and pushing my Remote toward and away from the screen in order to have the spinning sawblade of the weapon The Ripper slice through enemies. Here's the control config as a chart:

The Structure: I'm used to going through a Dead Space by the chapter. That returns here. I didn't see a fancy heads-up display hovering in front of my character's face, but cutscenes still suggested there's a lot of story interspersed with the game's action.

Bosses: I liked the first Dead Space's bosses, as conventional as some of them were. They never required a lot of re-fighting and had obvious weaknesses that were fun to exploit. During my time with Extraction, I watched two other people at my demo battle a hulking mini-boss in a blazing furnace room. They used a stasis power to hurl back projectiles and then blasted weak points, avoiding their enemies' rampages. It was simple, but in the dark, visually interesting world of Dead Space it looked fun and smartly attenuated.

The Constant Interactivity: Like any good on-rails shooter, there's lots of stuff to shoot in this game. Sometimes to kill. Sometimes to pick up. There's even stuff to blast in the cutscenes for those who don't feel like listening. Shoot the background to find your targets.

Final Thoughts
EA is making a game that will visually impress any Wii owners who want a darker shooter and have never played Dead Space. But the game can't shake the fact that it can't look like it's predecessor. Can a new game in the same universe have the interest in its prequel narrative and the strength of its gameplay trump graphical limitations?

That's a big gamble for EA. So far, it looks like things are going as well as can be expected.

Dead Space Extraction will be out September 29. As you watch, remember, EA calls this a "guided first-person experience." Different platform. Different style of game. Do you like what you see?

The company that's been riding high on its own Wii and DS successes has recently had some trouble convincing people that marquee games from publishers other than Nintendo can do well on Nintendo's machines.

Sega's hardcore-hyped MadWorld launched on the Wii with 66,000 copies sold in the U.S. in March, according to the NPD group.

Take Two's Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars — the best-reviewed game on the DS — launched that same month with fewer than 90,000 copies sold in the U.S.

"There is no magic number that says x = profitability," Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told Kotaku during our E3 interview last week, further clarifying earlier comments on the matter.

Two non-Nintendo games he expects to perform well are Sega's The Conduit and EA's Dead Space Extraction, both first-person games with a darker tone that Nintendo's standard. "I am really optimistic about The Conduit," he said. "I think it looks great, plays great. I think Dead Space Extraction is going to be fabulous given the early builds that I've seen. So, I do think that we will continue to see not only great titles, but great sales, on higher-rated M and T type of titles on our platforms."

Fils-Aime addressed the seeming struggles of some of those M-rated games on Wii and DS from earlier this year.

As other Nintendo reps have said before him, Fils-Aime thinks Chinatown Wars may have been counted out too soon by people focusing on its launch numbers. "In the handheld space, with Nintendo platforms specifically — whether it's Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS — the fact is that first month sales really don't matter," he said. "You have a title like Mario Kart, in its first month, a holiday month that did just over 200,000 copies. New Super Mario Brothers, which launched in the summer, did over 150,000 in its first month. Those are not huge numbers, yet both of those have gone on to sell more than four million units apiece and to be in the top 10 total industry titles for the last two years running. So, first month doesn't matter in the handheld space as long as it's a high-quality game, which Chinatown Wars is, has some continuous level of marketing support — whether its retail marketing, consumer marketing, online — as long as you keep the buzz going it will continue to sell millions and millions. And that's my expectation for Chinatown Wars. As long as the team at Take Two and Rockstar give it a long life, it will do very well."

Reggie said he would have liked to have seen higher sales for MadWorld but doesn't think its launch counts out other M-rated Wii games. "The challenge with home console is that for a 'gamer game' you need to have the buzz and the expectation early and you need to support the title for a number of months to drive the sales. On both of those fronts, I'm not sure MadWorld was able to do that."
It's not an M-rated Wii game, but EA Sports Active just had a blockbuster debut of supposedly more than 600,000 copies sold in its first two weeks, according to EA.

Those are the arguments. Don't count Wii and DS third-party games out for 2009 yet, Nintendo says. There will plenty of high profile games to test that.

The Conduit is out this month. Dead Space Extraction ships in September.

September 29th marks the date that Wii owners get shot of EA-flavored survival horror. Dead Space Extraction is an on-rails shooter that tells the story of what happened before the player shows up in Dead Space, so one can pretty much assume that things don't end too well.

"Our team is really excited to bring the intensity of the Dead Space universe to an entire new audience," said Executive Producer, Steve Papoutsis. "We are going to deliver the same high quality, cinematic experience we delivered in the original Dead Space, while also adding co-op, new enemies, weapons and taking advantage of all of the unique features the Wii has to offer."

I'm still getting a little bit of a Dead Rising: Chop Til Ya Drop vibe off of this one, but Crecente seems to think the Extraction team has done a fine job of working with the Wii's limitations, so who knows? I suppose we all will come September 29th.

With Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories both headed to the Wii, can Extraction set itself apart?

What Is It?
Dead Space: Extraction is a Wii-based prequel to PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 survival horror game Dead Space. The game takes place on a ship of colonists fighting off a strange infection. While the character's path through Extraction is controlled by the game, players can choose different routes.

What Did We See?
I played through a section of Extraction about a third of the way through the game.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is about 80 percent finished.

What Should Change?
Sound of Fury: The audio seemed off a bit when I played the game. Voices didn't exactly match up with people talking and things seemed slightly off during play. I'm sure this is more an issue of an early build than anything else, so I'm not too worried about it.

Confusing Display: When you have a developer sitting next to you explaining what the heads-up display means and you still get a bit confused, there's likely a design issue. The game's display needs to be a bit more informative and a bit less confusing.

What Should Stay the Same?
Controls: The game's controls, from looking around when you're not fighting to firing off shots into swaying appendages, are tight and intuitive. Dead Space: Extraction handles like a shooter should.

Thrills: The game does a good job of conveying a sense of foreboding which lays the groundwork for some startling moments.

Secondary Fire: Tilting your remote sideways changes the way the gun behaves. It's a neat way to handle alternative firing and adds a subtle level of tactics to the game.

Glow: As with many scary games, Dead Space: Extraction has a very dark setting, lots of dark rooms with broken lights. Over the years games have tried all sorts of ways to balance darkness with the need to see when you shoot. I think I like Extraction's method best. To light up a room you have to shake the remote until the side of the screen starts to glow a soft green. As you fight that glow gradually fades, leaving you in darkness until you recharge the light. The effect adds to the sense of panic already present in most fights in the game, but doesn't make lighting your targets a frustration.

Final Thoughts
Dead Space: Extraction appears to be headed down the right path. The developers understand the limitations of the Wii and are doing a solid job of delivering the best experience possible on the console without watering down the general concept.

The coming year for the Wii is shaping up to be a pretty exciting one with Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Dead Space: Extraction all working to deliver solid survival horror to a console much in need of the genre.

In case you can't be arsed to go back and read through the EA Spring Break Event impressions, here's a couple of highlights:

1) The Wii Remote functions as your glow stick that you have to keep shaking to light up dark rooms (hence the pun in that headline).
2) There will be single-screen local co-op.
3) Lexine's chances of survival look pretty low.

These new screens still don't show any of the promised new enemies or weapons — and really, you torch one slasher, you've torched ‘em all — but what there is to see certainly is… shocking.

Sorry, had to do it. Between inFamous news and TASER lawsuits, we're going to be getting a lot of electricity jokes.

Dead Space: Extraction is due out late 2009.

Previously, we've seen the Infector (gigantic manta-ray bats) Necromorph and not much else besides Slashers. Executive Producer Steve Papoutsis has promised that there will be new enemies for the Wii exclusive prequel to EA's flagship horror title — but he said players won't see the new Necromorphs 'til "later on in the game," which may be why we don't get to see them in these new screens:

For a handy list of the different types of Necromorph in Dead Space, check out this user-made list.

To executive producer Steve Papoutsis, it means that gameplay in the Dead Space prequel is not a straight line through an alien-infested ship. Players will have the opportunity to choose diverging paths and pan the camera under certain conditions for what the developer calls a "managed horror experience."

To me, this means that the Wii exclusive is an on-rails shooter – but with layers of complexity added on to increase the scare factor.

Take for example, the level demoed at EA's Spring Break press event. This was chapter four of the game; our hero character and his three buddies had barely escaped a Necromorph encounter only to find that their whole ship has been trashed by the mutated baddies. The main character – who we don't know much about besides the fact that he's not Isaac Clark from the original Dead Space – breaks off from the group to find clues about what happened and restore power to that part of the ship.

While moving along the on-rails path, an icon appeared onscreen, indicating that the player could move the camera around with the analog stick on the nunchuck. Doing so allowed the main character to look up, down, left or right to scan for clues or take in vivid scenes that you might otherwise miss with a fixed camera.

Our demo master — Product Manager Matt Bendett — spotted a recording device on a nearby table and activated it to see a short video of some victim getting mauled by a Reaper. This is what passes for foreshadowing in Extraction – once Bendett rounded a corner and chose the left branch of a diverging path, he got jumped by three to five Reapers and Slashers, conveniently out of range of his buddies' weapons.

The main character died and we had to restart the demo from the beginning. This time, Bendett chose the other branch of the diverging path and – surprise, surprise – wound up in roughly the same place with similar shoot-the-alien conditions.

There are some new weapons in Extraction, but Bendett stuck to flamethrowers and the rivet gun. Like the original game, combat is all about strategic dismemberment and you can use the stasis gun to paralyze Necromorphs for a short time.

A new mechanic to combat in the Wii game is the glow stick. I got to see this in action when Bendett entered the room right after the first Reaper encounter to find a bunch of apparently-dead Slashers lying on the ground near the circuit box we wanted to get to. Three steps into the room, the lights when out and Bendett began shaking the Wii remote up and down. This generated a soft green light on the right side of the screen, illuminating the now-alive Slashers as they rushed toward our hero for the kill (I don't know how scary this "fooled you!" moment would be if you already played Dead Space…).

The glow stick flickered out after a few seconds, prompting Bendett to keep shaking if he wanted to keep an eye on his enemies. Of course, said Papoutsis, you could just stay in the dark and fire blindly – that would definitely add a layer of difficulty to Extraction that you can't get from the original.

Once the Slashers were dead, the lights magically came back on and the on-rails path guided the main character to the circuit box. Here's where I'm tempted to cry "tacked-on Wii mechanics": to repair the circuit box, the player has to use the Wii remote to draw a blue line from one point within the box past some red obstacles (called "hazards") in order to close the circuit. This is but one of many "puzzles" the game has to offer; but all of them will use the Wii motion controls in a similar manner (shake, point, draw, etc.).

What could be fun about these Wii controls, though, is using them in two-player co-op. According to Papoutsis, you will complete one half of the drawing puzzle while your partner completes the other. I can already picture friendships breaking over this game.

Circuit closed, doors opened and elevator activated, our hero was free to run back to his buddies and get on the elevator. But of course, because it's a survival horror "guided experience," nothing is ever straightforward (even though it's on-rails).

Nercomorphs started to come from everywhere, swarming the elevator before the doors could close. At this point, gameplay looked like one of those old shooting range arcade games: an alien would pop up, the targeting reticule would be centered on him and boom! Move to the next alien.

But the baddies were coming too fast, and Bendett got the main character killed again, forcing us to repeat the demo from the part where the circuit box was fixed. This checkpoint system concerns me because if the enemies always come in the same formation at the same time (and that's what happened both times during the demo when we died and had to start over), how scary can the game really be?

Third time's the charm – Bendett made it into the elevator unscathed and we were treated to a short cut scene where we got to see the well-animated the NPC facial features. Papoutsis explained that Extraction uses full facial and body motion capture from the voice actors for more effective dubbing and emotional expressions of "OMG – aliens!" I thought it looked pretty good, considering that this build is probably alpha or pre-alpha.

The last thing I saw in the game was the new female character, Lexine. She was sporting a bloody nose and said something like "I don't feel so good." Remember what I said about foreshadowing?

Other tidbits revealed at this demo event were the fact that there would be zero-gravity sections, co-op is going to be single-screen with two reticules and we "may" see some characters from Dead Space. Maybe Isaac's girlfriend and Lexine will bond over being surrounded by miners who are the silent type.

Predictable or not, though, Dead Space: Extraction doesn't look like a half-assed attempt at cramming a franchise onto the Wii. It may not be using Wii Motion Plus (Papoutsis said they don't need it), and some of those motion control mini games may seem silly (come on – one of the hazards was a pinball flipper). But to look at the screenshots and consider that they've made all new enemies and weapons for the game, I think it's fair to say that EA and Eurocom are using their whole ass to make Dead Space: Extraction a scary game that stands on its own as it guides you along.

That's not directly what was said to EA's Steve Papoutsis, but he seems to take its meaning as such. Check this response to a question whose premise is that Extraction is a "another" rail shooter.

Eurogamer: What did you make of House of the Dead: OVERKILL, another on-rails Wii shooter? How do you feel your two game compares?

Steve Papoutsis: Dead Space: Extraction is a guided first person experience - we have branching paths, areas of player controlled camera, zero-g, dismemberment, stasis, an array of unique weapons, TK, and a few other surprises that evolve the genre in many ways. Overkill was fun and, yes, it was a pure rail shooter. We have added so much to Extraction that comparisons to it should quickly fade away.

And the followup? They just blow off that "guided experience" thing and slap another "on rails" bumper sticker in EA's hair.

Eurogamer: HOTD was celebrated for its sense of humour, inventive level design and its replay value, which is often a problem for on-rails shooters. What were your main considerations in adapting Dead Space to Wii?

Steve Papoutsis: As I've mentioned, we have a diverse set of features and mechanics, co-op, a great new story, dismemberment and on and on. We took Dead Space's mechanics, added more, and evolved the genre just like the original Dead Space evolved the action/horror genre. Dead Space won over 60 awards worldwide and we are bringing that same design team, commitment to quality and some absolutely amazing visuals to Extraction. I assure you, this is no dumbed down version of Dead Space, this is a high quality, fantastic addition to the Dead Space Universe.

Not condescending enough? How about this one?

Eurogamer: Has anything been toned down to fit with the Wii's demographic, or are you sticking with the levels of gore and horror from the original?

Steve Papoutsis: No tone-downs here! Dead Space was about delivering on a terrifying experience complete with gore filled moments. Extraction will remain true to that goal as well.

Really, I'm not busting on Eurogamer here. In J-school they teach you to ask questions in plain language, and ask like you expect them answered. No one's using "guided first-person experience," other than EA, and it takes more than marketing copy to get people to accept that something's an entirely new genre.

Oh, btw, they gave us some concept art (at left) for Lexine, the female protagonist in Extraction. While she's reasonably proportioned and fully dressed, the designers couldn't resist giving her the garter-belt effect for her leggings.

Dead Space: Extraction Interview [Eurogamer via GoNintendo]

They're not doing a lot to convince me that I'm going to want to play this game. Maybe after I've seen a solid gameplay video I'll be better able to judge.