A great horror prequel to the series with a good arcade twist
The whole game is set before the events of Dead Space 1; it takes place alongside the pre-release digital comics and animated film Dead Space: Downfall. It starts off on the Aegis VII colony with the extraction of the Red Marker (hence the title) to where all the problems begin to the attack on the Ishimura where the problems get worse for the main characters, the game ends literally where when Dead Space 1 starts.
The story is the simple survival horror affair (just escape and survive), but it does add a little back story about the marker and how some of the events of Dead Space 1 come into play. It does jump around to different characters and their own perspective of the events, but they all tie into each other pretty well and add a refreshing variety to the game. The characters are not massively developed but they are real enough to care about them throughout the story and to be shocked by events of the story
You do get to see a few new areas of the ship and most of the areas from Dead Space 1; you also get to see new areas of the colony at the start of the game which tie into the digital comics, if you read the comics you'll recognise a few of the events from the comics on the colony levels. The events on the ship reference a little to the film, mainly how the Necromorphs got onboard the Ishimura and how quickly they spread. The events on ship mostly set up most of the obstacles you come across in Dead Space 1.
The gameplay is very simple being a rail shooter you look through the eyes of the character as they move, at certain moments you'll have the chance to look around and collect ammo, weapons or logs to fill out the back story. The main chunk of the game is a scripted progress of the story with shooting sections (think Time Crisis). The shooting mechanics work well as the tactic of dismemberment is still strong in Dead Space Extraction. You get a decent array of weaponry to wreck havoc on them. Most weapons are from Dead Space 1 like the Line Gun, Welding Torch, Pulse Rifle, Plasma Cutter etc. You do get some new weapons like the Rivet Gun and the PSEC Pistol to add to your arsenal. The weapons are automatically upgraded as you progress, depending on how well you did on past levels, (you are given a score and this score determines the upgrades) you can also upgrade your weapons as you find more of them in the game
I didn't play it with the Move controller but it worked well enough on a normal controller (had to turn up the sensitivity though) the integration of the motion controller is good and I can imagine this game would play really well on a move controller
The visual style is very good, like Dead Space 1 it's very dark and cramped and adds to the tension and even though you have no control over the movement of the characters you still feel a sense of tension and unease when going through dark corridors or air vents especially the random hallucinations that are unexpected the sections in the dark are also very well done.
The porting of the game has been done very well; it's very smooth and stable on PS3 although while it has had some touch ups here and there from Wii to PS3 it's still obvious that it was a Wii game originally however visually it's decent.
Overall this game is a very decent horror rail shooter, it's probably not as scary as Dead Space 1 but it's still very creepy. It is also a bit short as i finished it in one sitting however it has an interesting perspective of the events that lead to the story of Dead Space 1 and certainly feels like part of the series.