Dead Space Remake: All five difficulties explained, including Impossible

In the Dead Space Remake, there is a very good chance that you are going to play through the main story more than once. There are a couple reasons behind this. You might want to get your hands on New Game Plus which is only unlocked after you beat the game for the first time. You also may be looking to unlock some achievements by beating the game using only the Plasma Cutter. If this is the case, you are going to want to choose your difficulty level wisely.

Depending on what exactly you are going to try and accomplish will determine what difficulty setting you are going to want to use. Obviously, your first playthrough of the Dead Space Remake will most likely be a different difficulty setting than your second or third playthrough.

In total, there are five difficulty settings available to choose from. The five difficulties are Story, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Impossible. Story is the easiest difficulty and Impossible is the hardest difficulty. Each difficulty has their own conditions as to what makes them that easy or that hard.

Story Difficulty

Believe it or not, there is a difficulty easier than Easy difficulty and that would be Story difficulty. Story difficulty is a new addition in the Dead Space Remake as it wasn’t an option to choose from in the original Dead Space. As the name suggests, Story is going to allow gamers to focus primarily on the story and play through the story without many setbacks. Isaac will also be a lot more powerful and deal a lot more damage than usual and will take a lot less damage than usual. You will also have the privilege of healing automatically and starting with 2 minutes of oxygen on the oxygen tank. Oh, did I mention that it is easier to escape enemy grapples as well?

If you are trying to achieve the “One Gun” Achievement/Trophy by completing the game using only the Plasma Cutter, achieving on Story difficulty may be the best way to accomplish this. There is no rule on a set difficulty you need to play on. Work smarter, not harder.

Easy Difficulty

Easy difficulty is going to be very similar to how Easy was in the original Dead Space. This is also going to be a little harder than Story difficulty, but not by very much at all. Isaac is still going to deal more damage than the game was intended for, and he will also take less damage than he normally would on harder modes. Escaping enemy grapples are going to be a little harder to escape from then on Story, but still very easy to do so. You will also start with an added boost on Isaac’s oxygen tank, putting the total time to 100 seconds, instead of the standard 90 seconds.

Medium Difficulty

Medium difficulty is the way the default game was created. This would be your base experience when playing the Dead Space Remake. This is your “normal” or “default” difficulty. On Medium, both Isaac and enemies will take baseline damage and deal baseline damage. When EA Motive created this game, this is the base difficulty that the Dead Space Remake was designed to play on. This mode is just your standard mode and Isaac will start with 90 seconds in his oxygen tank. If this is your first time playing a Dead Space video game or the Dead Space Remake, this is a perfect difficulty to start your journey on with Isaac.

Hard Difficulty

Now things start to get progressively harder on Hard difficulty. This is where Isaac becomes a lot more weak and you will rely on many more upgrades to make Isaac stronger. On Hard, Isaac deals a lot less damage, but roughly takes a lot more damage from Necromorphs. Since Isaac will be doing a lot less damage to Necromorphs on Hard, even some upgrades won’t be as effective and will require you to really pump out as many upgrades as you can to try and even out your damage to enemy ratio.

Impossible Difficulty

The moment we have all be waiting for. A true test for any Dead Space Remake gamer. Impossible difficulty is really going to put your skills and heart rate to the test. Impossible difficulty is unlocked right away, which was one minor change that we saw different from the original Dead Space. When playing on Impossible, the same damage settings that you had on Hard mode are in effect. The major kicker here is that autosaves are disabled, you only have one save slot to save in, and you are only given one life.

If you die while playing on Impossible difficulty, you have one of two options. You either need to restart your entire playthrough or you need to continue from where you died on Hard the rest of your playthrough. The only way you can get through an entire Dead Space Remake playthrough successfully on Impossible difficulty would be to make it without dying once. In reality, you only get one life to complete this mode.

You may ask why someone may want to put themself through such a task. When you scroll over Impossible as if you were choosing it in the game, it states that this is “A special challenge mode. Completing it will earn a unique Suit and Weapon.” The Unique Suit and Weapon that you would be earning would be the Burnished Suit and the Hand Cannon. Not to mention that you will also unlock an Achievement/Trophy for completing the game on Impossible difficulty. So, there are really a variety of different reasons to take a shot at this mode.

All in all, there are tons of reasons to play each game mode. Whether you are Achievement/Trophy hunting, trying to acquire different collectibles, or just want a different added challenge to this iconic horror game, each of the five difficulty levels are here for your choosing.