Dead Space: best guns and upgrades

The best guns in Dead Space

By Billy Givens January 31, 2023

If there’s one thing Dead Space is best known for, it’s got to be using its unique selection of mining tools and guns to dismember the disgusting mutated corpses roaming around the USG Ishimura. Luckily, the team at EA Motive has only improved upon this experience in its remake of the popular survival horror title, implementing a helping of updates to protagonist Isaac Clarke’s makeshift weaponry to ensure that even returning players may want to rethink their favorite loadout. Read on to see what we consider the best guns in Dead Space and where you should focus your upgrades.

Contents

Equip these guns
Store these guns

Equip these guns

These four guns tend to be useful in a variety of scenarios and are worth keeping equipped in a weapon slot throughout the entirety of the game.

Plasma Gun

The Plasma Gun is the first weapon you’ll come across in the game, and in many ways, it’s also the best. While some other guns may be better at specific things – especially in regards to crowd control or brute force – the fast firing rate and ability to rotate the Plasma Gun’s beam help to make it an immensely powerful all-arounder that is ideal for dismembering necromorphs. When upgrading this gun, focus on hitting nodes that increase your damage and capacity so that you can hit hard while reloading less often.

Pulse Rifle

The Pulse Rifle is another gun found fairly early, and it may initially seem like a weak option compared to the Plasma Gun, but it can be quite a beast once you’ve invested in some upgrades. Perhaps most exciting about this automatic gun is its secondary fire, though, which can unleash a proximity mine, allowing you to set up some dastardly traps for those nasty necromorphs. Your upgrades for this one should focus on moving directly upward on the track so that you can toss a node in the Kinect Autoloader (SP1) and greatly increase your fire rate.

Contact Beam

The Contact Beam is found in the first few hours and is the most powerful weapon in the game in terms of raw damage output, but it doesn’t do much for you in terms of dismemberment. Use it against enemies that you just need to burst down quickly with its overpowering beam, then make use of its secondary fire (a strong laser shot) to pummel bosses. In terms of upgrades, just prioritize capacity so that you can use it longer – though bear in mind that you’ll burn through ammo quickly, and buying it at the store can get pricey.

Line Gun

The Line Gun is somewhat similar to the Plasma Gun, but it’s much more focused on crowd control due to its wide attack. It’ll make quick work of the legs on a pack of standard necromorphs or take out all three of a Lurker’s projectile-firing tentacles with one shot, so once you get this weapon, you should keep it on you at all times. Due to needing it for handling groups of enemies, prioritize the upgrade path that grants it additional capacity and damage.

Store these guns

These three weapons have situational uses and can be fun to use, but they just aren’t as versatile as the choices above. You’re probably better off keeping them in your storage and only bringing them out on rare occasions, if at all.

Isaac Clarke holds the Contact Beam weapon.

Force Gun

The Force Gun can be immensely powerful at extremely close range, making it an okay choice if you’re just looking to explode one or two baddies. Unfortunately, if a larger group of enemies are close enough to you for that kind of situation, it’s often already too late. If you just really like the gun, though, it’s likely the best option on this list to swap out for one of the above weapons – and it can simply be a lot of fun to use. If you decide to upgrade it, pump up that damage as much as possible and get to exploding.

Flamethrower

While the Flamethrower makes quick work of Swarmers – the tiny little necromorphs that crawl on you and slow you down – it’s not really worth taking up a weapon slot for that alone when other weapons can handle them fine, too. If you do decide to wield the flamethrower, though, focus your attention on upgrading its capacity so that you can keep those gruesome aliens burning.

Ripper

The Ripper is found fairly early in the game, so it might come in handy during a few segments prior to obtaining better weapons. However, once you’ve bolstered your arsenal a bit, this gimmicky armament is probably better off in storage. It can certainly be fun slicing and dicing with a saw blade, and some upgrades to its damage can help make it viable when paired with stasis during close-range encounters, but there are simply better options that can achieve the same results without the limitations.