When EA and Visceral games first
revealed Dead Space 3 in the form of an action packed trailer, I won't lie, I
was a bit apprehensive; The Lost Planet-like enemies and environment; the fact
that the main character seems to have become quite the Nathan Drake of his
universe, the addition of co-op and most disappointingly, the fact that you
fight human enemies this time round; I knew all of this going into Dead Space
3 and I was expecting it to be nothing but an action packed romp through
another necromorph outbreak featuring our favourite grunting and head stomping
deep-space engineer, Isaac Clark. What I found however, was that Dead Space 3
had some genuinely tense moments and a very solid crafting system (but more on
these later).
First I'd like to set up the
story; After the events of Dead Space 2, Isaac Clarke has returned to earth to,
well, drink heavily and obsess about the Marker, a man made obelisk based on an
alien artefact found on earth. It's clear that after the Ishimura, and the
Sprawl, poor Isaac has not been in the best mental state, which is made worse by
his girlfriend, Ellie, leaving him due to his inability to re-integrate into
society. [Fair enough huh? - Si Tye]
It's not long after the game starts that you are thrust into even more
unfortunate events which lead you from Earth to a flotilla orbiting the planet
Tau Volantis, and eventually leading you down to the planet's surface. I won't
spoil any of the twists or main story beats here but the way the story deals
with some of the long standing questions of the franchise feels a bit convoluted
and a bit tacky, but then again, answers are never what you truly want from a
mystery. The human interaction between Isaac and the rest of his team is
serviceable for the position they are in. The conversations are usually “What
do we do now?” or “Isaac you need to go and do this thing for me” but every now
and then you get some down-time chatter, which I feel brings their situation
into a more human light. There is what might pass as a love triangle here, but
it's never the main focus and the way it eventually wraps up is predictable and
ultimately forgettable.
During the 15(ish) hour
experience you will spend your time in two main hubs, the flotilla and the
planet surface. The Flotilla is easily the highlight of the game featuring some
lovely, thick, Dead Space atmosphere and the ability to move between the ships
to venture for supplies or to just see what's around the next corner.
It was on
the flotilla that I had one of those awesome tense moments involving Isaac
re-building an engine and a legion of necromorphs that I could hear approaching
but they were always just out of view. Little did I know that at this point I
had just passed the half-way mark for scary scenes. I have to give it a mention
here; There is a space walking section during the flotilla which had me dropping
my jaw! The openness of space, the disorientation, looking around and seeing
nothing but dead, hulking ships all around you, left me feeling like they've
really nailed that stuff this time around. The second hub is on the planet's
surface, which, unfortunately, doesn't ever reach the same quality of atmosphere,
bar a few areas that reminded me a lot of The Descent, except instead of cave
diving I was sheepishly creeping through a not quite abandoned kitchen. There
was a cool section during your first 20 minutes or so on the planet where you
need to run from heat source to heat source to maintain body temperature, but
these sections do not last long and before you know it you're back to your usual
tricks of stomping heads and picking up strategically placed text logs.
Flying among the wreckage of the flotilla is pretty damn awesome.
The game play has undergone some changes since Dead Space 2: Isaac can now do a
side-roll by holding down a direction on the left analogue stick and hitting the
sprint button. Isaac can also crouch and hide behind cover by clicking in the
right analogue stick. Why does Isaac need the ability to roll and take cover
you ask? Well dear reader, you fight humans in Dead Space 3, which has to be
the absolute worst part of the game. The human enemy encounters usually come
down to sitting behind cover and shooting other guys in and out of cover.
Riveting stuff, I know, but it just made me question “Is this what I want from a
Dead Space game?”
The answer is no, by the way.
Human enemies aside, the
aiming controls are as tight as Dead space 2, and aside from the crafting system
nothing else has really changed. The dozen or so types of necromorphs you
encounter will feel largely familiar, even though some are brand new. You spend
a lot of time backing off from an approaching necromorph, blasting off his limbs
one by one until he's a pile of bones at your feet. As I really enjoyed the
combat in the previous games I felt right at home here. I did have several
annoying moments where I was being hit by one necro and before I could recover I
would be hit by another, which led to my cheap and untimely death too many times
during my play-through. Unlike previous games, Dead Space 3 has ridiculous
amounts of both ammo and health, even on hard difficulty. There were only 3 or
4 times during the later parts of the game where I found myself unable to heal
or reload. Though it should be noted that once you beat the game it does offer
some enhanced difficulty options where ammo and health are restricted to
crafting-only, which brings us to the crafting system.
Who wants a moustache ride?
In Dead Space 3 you can craft
both items and new weapons, as well as upgrade your current gear at Benches.
Throughout the game world you will find loose items that you can collect to
craft into new weapons. You also get access to a scavenger bot, which you can
deploy of pre-determined locations to collect scrap for you. Once you have
enough components collected you can bring up a list of pre-made weapon
blueprints that you can build with your materials. Alternatively you can dive
in head first and build a weapon from scratch by selecting a grip, then adding
upper tools, lower tools, and several attachments. The idea is that every
weapon component has different abilities, so you're making tools to be able to
deal with various necromorphs more efficiently. Do you want a buzz saw with a
shotgun under-sling for getting up-close and personal? Or perhaps a harpoon
launcher with a bayonet for a mix of medium to close range? The versatility of
your options and the joy of letting loose on space zombies with a weapon you
have designed and created was a large part of my enjoyment of Dead space 3, and
I perhaps spent too much time looking off the beaten path for resources and then
spending a good amount of time at the bench going over what I could do with all
this stuff. I won't go into it much here but EA have micro-transacted the hell
out of this system, but just know you DO NOT need to pay them for these guns,
you will collect enough to build whatever you want around half way through the
game.
Speaking of things I didn't want
to get into it: This game has co-op! Isaac can now team up with perhaps the most
dickish character in the game: Carver. I didn't play it that way personally but
from my single player experience I noticed only a few sections where co-op was
absolutely needed to progress (certain doors require co-op) the rest of co-op
sections are playable with just one person. For example there are consoles
scattered throughout the game with two control panels. Each person would
control half of the puzzle, and you would solve it as a team...Or just use both
of the analogue sticks if you're solving it. Overall the co-op seems bolted on,
especially during the cut scenes where Carver would have been right next to you
the entire time in co-op, he just randomly appears in single player. There is
at least one section late in the game where it would have been impossible for
Carver to be where Isaac was, but he just appears anyway.
sometimes the co-op can go to some strange places...
So Dead Space 3 is a well-made
game!
It features some very cool systems and really does have some tense
moments, but between the human combat, some very annoying level design
(disappearing path section, anyone? Ugh) and some half-assed features like
co-op, Dead Space 3 amounts to an often unfocused mixed bag. If you want a
rarely scary action shooter with an awesome crafting system then this is your
game! If you were looking for a game in the same vein as the Dead space 1 and
2, you may want to just give this a rent, or at least know what you're getting
into.
3/5 – OK!
