Ignition proves that even great franchises can have crappy spin-offs associated with them.
The game is animated in the comic book style that has been used in the animated movies associated with the Dead Space universe. It is clean, well animated, and accompanies the story as well as it can. In between the animated scenes, you will have to perform tasks in the form of mini-games to complete job or escape from the pursuing necromorphs. Despite the mini-games looking like a lot of fun, looks prove they can be (and in this care are) deceiving.
The mini-games are repetitive and suffer from a terrible rubber band AI, often being too easy or far too difficult. The data feed game in particular is not only maddening, but at times seemed impossible to get past the final task at hand. The virus/hack game is easily completed by just randomly spamming the various commands and takes little to no strategy at all despite having a good concept. The final game requires Franco to complete a laser circuit, but Ignition never fully describes what all the "rules" are to the game. This all adds up to the experience being a horrendously tedious game of trial and error that sucks all the fun out of the concept.
These features appear to be attempts at adding "difficulty," but come off as lazy and unacceptable for the price paid for the game. Adding insult to injury, the games seem to follow a rotation that is oddly predictable. Regardless of what game you think should be associated with the situation Franco is in, the games rotate on a predetermined basis so you don't play two of the same mini-game in a row.
Conceptually, Ignition seems like a good idea. However, this is where the praise for the game ends. I was even excited about the prospect of a game to hold me over until Dead Space 2. However, after getting a free download code for pre-ordering Dead Space 2, I still manage to feel slighted by this game. Dead Space: Ignition STILL proves to be a waste of time and effort by the development team in my opinion.
Even getting a pretty cool unlock after completing the game (another suit) and the prologue for Dead Space 2, you can't help but feel like you have been robbed of 1-3 hours of your life. To make matters worse, you lost that time to a game that you would never touch if it didn't have the Dead Space franchise name attached to it and that is the greatest crime of all.