The movie itself attempts to explain some of the back story of the game, as it reveals the events that lead up to the game's beginning. We are not giving anything away by saying the final scene in Downfall shows the ship carrying the lead character of the game approaching the massive planet mining ship USG Ishimura.

If you want to buy Dead Space and want to be surprised by some of the game's story revelations then you would want to stay away from Downfall anyway as it does have some pretty major spoilers for what happened to the USG Ishimura and its crew. But even if you finish the game and wanted to watch Downfall to see what lead up to the game's events, it's pretty much a waste of time.

The main problem with Downfall is that Film Roman, the animation company that created the DVD, looks like it made the film in about a week. The animation is completely sub-par for the most part. We thought at times it looked like a 1980s TV episode of G.I. Joe. Sure there's a lot of blood and gore in the movie but the Saturday morning-look of the film really detracts from generating any scares or thrills.
The storyline itself (which again we won't go into detail here) isn't any great shakes either. Just imagine Alien or John Carpenter's version of The Thing but on a somewhat larger scale and you get the picture. The movie's characters are all two-dimensional; you don't care for any of them, even when they get killed by Dead Space's creatures. There's an attempt to put in a kind of fight between science and religion in the movie but it also feels like it's bolted to the film's main plot as a way to create some conflict in the crew itself in addition to fighting the creatures.

The voice acting is actually the best part of Downfall. There are attempts by folks like Kelly Hu and Bruce Boxleitner to put some reality into their parts but as we said they are sabotaged by the poor animation and storyline.

The DVD comes with a handful of minor extras, including a "deleted scene" that's basically a storyboard with some voice work, some concept art from the game and film and trailers for both Downfall and the game itself. We didn't review the Blu-Ray version of Downfall which has another extra; a Digital Copy of Downfall that you can (legally) transfer to your PC or portable media device.

EA clearly wanted Dead Space to feel more like a big Hollywood movie in terms of marketing. Dead Space as a game is really well done but the publisher should have really stopped there. Downfall actually cheapens the property and if people buy this (or see it on the Encore Action movie channel) before they see the game they may actually stay away. We don't think that was their general idea.