Cut Off Their Limbs!

Ah Dead Space, a not quite original idea with original gameplay. It was one of the first 360 games I played and I still regard it as one of the best. The gameplay was finicky sometimes but it was effective and I managed to not only beat it on Impossible but also unlock the full gamerscore. Dead Space 2 completely blew me away and to this day I think it is a great template for what makes a decent sequel; tweaks to the gameplay, a competent story, extra features, a refining of what worked and solid world building.

So where did Dead Space 3 go wrong? Quite simply, it didn't. Read on.

The Best Trilogies Come In Threes

If Dead Space 2 was a refined version of Dead Space then Dead Space 3 is a attempt at reinvigoration. The gameplay is slightly tweaked, the world building is extended as Isaac Clarke once again find himself as an unlikely hero and there are cinematics. Despite the cinematics, Dead Space 3 still puts you behind Isaac as the story develops in core moments.

The main changes comes to the weapon system. Gone are the weapons you could buy, now you find yourself scrambling to find parts which can be used to make weapons. I am not a huge fan of this type of agency and so I stuck with the classic plasma cutter on my several play-throughs but I did experiment several times. This was the main selling point of Dead Space 3; the crafting system.

Craft A Killer

The system is solid, reliable and it is possible to create weapons that can rip through necromorphs effortlessly. There is freedom in the system and it is incredibly rewarding to experiment and find a weapon that feels right. Circuits can also be found as you explore ships, bunkers and the icy planet of Tau Volantis creating buffs to your weapons which help keep them relevant as the enemies get tougher. There's nothing wrong with the system, it's tight, cohesive and rewards the curious as you find parts and test them out. I wasn't a huge fan of the addition but it isn't an overbearing addition and can be overlooked if its not your thing as well. If you're in to experimenting with weapons, the addition is a great tweak to Dead Space.

Make it A Double

One addition I didn't care for in the game was the addition of co-op. This is where Dead Space feels as if it moves away from Dead Space. The game is still creepy and disturbing in places but the co-op takes away the fear and claustrophobic nature of past games. Adding in the rolling mechanic and it feels like Gears of War. Having said that however, the rolling is an important mechanic that can allow you to escape necromorphs and avoid damage if you time it properly and co-op can be fun with the right partner. As mentioned before, it comes down to personal taste but the flavour of Dead Space is slightly tainted. Some missions are locked due to being co-op only which can be a little infuriating.

So What's Good?

The world building is great in this game. We learn more than ever about the Dead Space universe and the voice acting is top-notch. Missions come and go as you play and it feels incredibly organic. Nothing is stale, you rarely backtrack unless it is necessary and the characters all have real characteristics and morals that play off each other. It can be immersive throughout the entire game and it's incredible. Side missions exist with real rewards and the story is solid. Enemies are more diverse and keep you on your toes as Dead Space 3 sticks to its new action genre. The game also looks incredibly good. It's hard to fault it in a lot of areas.

Final Thoughts

Dead Space 3 is a solid game and a decent sequel, however despite the fun I've had with it and my opinion that it is a clean game free from bad story and gameplay it doesn't feel like Dead Space. Evolution is a natural part of the world and games are not exception however, Dead Space 2 ended perfectly enough that it feels like Dead Space 3 was a reflex to tie up the franchise as a trilogy. Some additions feel shoe-horned in, others feel right at home in this game. It does close out the trilogy well despite requiring the DLC to actually do so but I'll always feel it didn't have to.

Dead Space 3 is a solid game with a questionable existence.

I'm probably going against the grain here, but I just finished Dead Space 3 and I loved it. I played the first two games when they originally released and I absolutely loved the loneliness of space, the liberal darkness and the scarcity of resources that truly amped up the survival horror. This game pretty much strips away the survival horror aspect and makes the game into an action shooter, which, in my mind, makes complete sense. As opposed to previous games, the story moves in a direction that just feels like it would take more than just Isaac to get the job done. Without revealing any spoilers, I didn't fault Visceral for going in the direction they chose. Eventually, a situation becomes too big for just one man to handle.

If Marcus Fenix and Isaac Clarke had a baby

Maybe part of my love for this game is the parallels to one of my most favorite franchises. The epic sized bosses and some of the necromorphs felt like Gears of War transplants. Monsters with tentacles that require you to shoot the glowy bits? Hello, lambent anyone? I mean, the Formers that Delta encountered in the town of Mercy could have easily been transplanted on Tau Volantis as the Feeders. Obviously, there are game mechanics, such as limb removal and statis that make it a different experience, but I couldn't help but get warm nostalgic feeling of fighting lambent on Sera or the Flood on one of the Halo Rings.

Customizing Your Kills

Once I understood how to use the benches and the resource collectors, this part of the game became highly enjoyable for me. I love being able to craft new weapons and customize everything to my play style. It was like the devs said "Here, we'll give you the components and you can figure out how you want to blow stuff up." I loved crafting things, finding new components and spending time at the bench balancing the four main stats. When I picked up new items, I went to the bench and added them to see how my weapons performed differently. I applaud the devs for having the forethought to give us a good amount of freedom. By the time I reached the end of the game, I had a very strong weapon that splattered enemies at close range and a very effective crowd control tool as a back up. I didn't mind that I was OP. I never grew tired of watching Necromorphs break into pieces with each power blast or how burning enemies danced around until they collapsed.

Wishing for More

All in all, I really enjoyed this experience and I don't mind that it transitioned genres. I don't really understand why people think a franchise needs to deliver the same experience every single time. If that was the case, Final Fantasy would have died long ago. I know Visceral is gone and the team is broken up and the franchise is in limbo at this point, but if there's ever a chance that another installment is made, I'd buy it.

This will be a long one. Feel free to skip to the end if you just want the nutshell version.

Although nowhere near as good as the original, Aliens is a sequel I really like for several reasons. I remember watching a teaser for the movie before it came out, which was essentially the title sequence, where the letters are slowly revealed onscreen. When I saw the ’s’ on Aliens, my heart started pumping like crazy. I was a young kid, and it had only been 6 months or so since I’d seen Alien and got traumatised in that amazing way only a great old-school horror movie could traumatise a kid back then. In my child’s brain, it was almost almost inconceivable to imagine how anyone could survive a fight like that, considering the nightmare a single creature was able to create in the first movie. How could anyone hope to live if there’s more than one? This illusion got shattered in a scene I’ll never forget, which is the one where the turrets are unleashing a barrage of bullets on a bunch of xenomorphs until they eventually stop coming. I remember my infant brain thinking ‘what? This makes no sense! One alien was an almost unbeatable monster in Nostromo, how could a group of marines with guns be a match for these many aliens?! The small me didn’t know it at the time, but that was the moment when I became aware of how a more minimalistic, understated, almost suggestive approach to horror can be overwhelmingly scarier than an intense, action-packed one. Despite this, I still truly enjoyed the film and thought it was quite a ride. Just a very different one.

I preface with all of this to explain that, to me, and unlike what so many seem to think, Dead Space 3, and not 2, is the Aliens of the DS franchise. The sequel may be less claustrophobic and wider in scope, which removes some of its intensity, but for all intents and purposes it stays very true to the original in most respects (much like, for example, Bioshock and Bioshock 2 relate). DS3 does away with so much of what was present in its predecessors that it feels like a completely different game, and yes, an action game rather than a horror one that thinks throwing a bunch of enemies at you at all times is how you ramp up the tension. And I guess I came out of it in a similar way I came out of Aliens, all those years ago. It was a very different ride, but to my surprise I still enjoyed it.

I thought I was going to hate the DS3, I really did. I heard nothing but terrible things about it and truth be told, I only decided to play it because I seem to be pathologically unable to start a franchise and not play every game in it (Wolfenstein’s Youngblood being the exception so far). Perhaps the fact that my expectations were so low going in made me appreciate the good things about the game more than most. I really wasn’t expecting a horror experience, so not getting one didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was that I was expecting a pathetic action experience, yet ended up getting a pretty entertaining one instead.

There’s no getting around the game’s problems - almost all of which were likely caused by EA -, and there are several serious ones: 1) microtransactions are and will always be scummy even if, like in DS3, you don’t really need them; 2) the multiplayer component of this game is worse than a ridiculous afterthought, in the sense that it actually and directly turned the single player campaign into an inferior version of what it could’ve been without it; 3) the new crafting system feels very convoluted and mostly unnecessary (though very flexible and surely a plus for certain types of player); 4) there were so many in-game cutscenes in the early stages of the game that it almost felt like a weird, crappy Uncharted in Space at times (fortunately this gets massively toned down as the game goes on); 5) unimaginative new enemies, certainly nothing on the level of the stalkers that came with DS2; 6) the survival aspect is simply gone - you get more health and ammo than you know what to do with it, O2 is never, ever a problem, so there’s essentially no reason for it to be in the game, and having universal ammo is really weird.

When all of this is taken into account, what remains is actually a solid skeleton of a competent game. The horror elements are basically non-existent, but the action set pieces present are, for the most part, quite fun and engaging. The formulaic nature of DS3 is similar to the other two, but here, you also get the inclusion of two interesting additions. The first one is side quests, which you can do to obtain more resources which will in turn help you craft better and more varied weapons. I enjoyed doing these and felt they offered a good balance between effort and reward. The second one is the navigation system. In DS3, you can use a small vessel to travel through the several hubs where the action takes place. It’s a cool way of addressing the need for Isaac to travel to different places for the sake of storytelling, and you can actually choose between a couple of spots depending on what you want to do next. Mechanically, there are a few new things as well. The roll dodge is in line with a more action oriented game, though I found I didn’t really have much use for it. Same with the half-assed cover system, which is basically there just for the human enemies but you never really need to use it. The scavenger bots, however, are a nice touch. You deploy them when your radar beeps in order to find additional resources which then get added to the Bench. They’re quite useful especially if you decide to focus on upgrades or building creative weapons. The different scenarios are appropriate for what is basically a fast-paced, intense action game spread across different ‘worlds’, and the snow levels in particular were pretty effective in my opinion, giving me some serious The Thing vibes. Finally, and this might be the most contentious topic, the story. Contrary to the generalised opinion (at least from what I’ve seen), and ludicrous adolescent love triangle aside, I actually thought it was pretty decent, even if a bit obtuse at times. I particularly became more interested as I got closer to the final stages, and the last part of the game, along with the outstanding, awe inducing visuals of the last few levels, was quite engaging. My main issue with this aspect is the post-credit moment where you hear Isaac’s voice. This was a ridiculous attempt to keep Isaac alive for the DLC that came after, one that removed all the emotional buildup created before that had culminated with the moment Isaac had supposedly died. This would’ve been perfect, as Isaac would’ve offered a true sacrifice in the end and finally found peace. As far as I’m concerned, the undoing of this moment alone was almost enough to undo everything good that came before it.

So these are my main takeaways after giving Dead Space 3 a fair shake. No doubt it’s by far the inferior game of the trilogy, at times so far removed from the other two that it almost feels like its own standalone thing. However, I’m going back to the Aliens analogy: in the same way I’ll always choose Alien over the sequel, I’ll always choose DS1 and 2 over 3, and I’d also swap the end product for the DS3 that the devs had in mind in a heartbeat. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. I rather enjoyed it. Perhaps because of how prepared I was to hate it, or perhaps with the benefit of distance, this game ended up being a blast to play through and one that, once I let go of the horror I loved and accepted the action I got, became quite engaging. 7.5/10.

Dead Space 3 is an example of a game where the concept gets a little old. While still a good game, the main idea of Dead Space is not really present anymore and it feels more like a standalone game, with tight bonds to the original. Don’t get me wrong, I can absolutely understand that three games on the USG Ishmura, with the same plot and environment will get old even faster, but in my opinion, Dead Space 3 was not necessary.

Still, after what I just said, the story of this game is fairly decent. After discovering the fate of the USG Ishimura in the first game, getting to know the Marker and its capabilities in the second game, you now search for the origins of the Marker on the frozen planet Tau Volantis in search of answers in Dead Space 3.

While searching for those answers, you must fight your way trough many Necromorphs but also, humans…. This was very disappointing for me. Like I said, I can understand that you don’t make the same game thrice and need some new ideas, but the introduction of regular human enemies in great numbers, kills of all the ties with Dead Space for me. And although I can still enjoy the game, I sometimes forgot that I was playing the horror survival game Dead Space instead of Call of Duty. I would have preferred some new, wicked and lost Necromorphs instead. We got some of those, yes, but the focus on the human enemies shifted a bit too much in my opinion.

Dead Space 3 offers some new game modes like Survival and Permadeath to add some challenge to the game. This is a nice addition.

I really like the graphics in Dead Space 3. The character and suit models are nicely polished and the Necromorphs look great. Because this game is set on a frozen planet, the snow, snowstorm and cold effects are really well done.

The sound design is a little less impressive than the other games and ambient music is now playing when walking towards your next goal.

In this game, you can also craft items from parts and scrap that you find lying around. I must say that this feature is nicely done and adds some more “survival” to the game.

The added DLC, Awakened, added a decent extra piece of content and story to the game. It goes back to the roots of Dead Space, with more focus on horror. This was a pleasant surprise for me.

The goal here is simple. Get to a ship to leave the planet Tau Volantis. You firstly escape to CMS Terra Nova, and need to find some missing parts to fix the ship so you can travel further to earth (and hopefully, to safety).

On your journey you constantly get confronted will all the horror and insanity that the Marker causes and what it does to the people, still living on the planet. There are some sick plot twists in this DLC that fixed most of the complains I had with the original Dead Space 3 in terms of enjoy-ability and story.

In the end, I had fun with Dead Space 3, although, it did not feel that special or glorious anymore. It was just all right and it added a nice piece of the story to the series.