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Dead Space 3 is the third installment of a series of survival horror
third-person shooters developed by Visceral Games and published by EA.
The original Dead Space was actually innovative for its time
being among the first AAA games to completely do away with concept of a HUD
and contain all necessary information within the game world via things like
health and stasis indicators on Isaac's RIG,
ammunition indicators on weapons,
and a personal hologram device for inventory management
which meant no pausing while fiddling with inventory.
It also introduced the concept of dismemberment meaning that rather than
depleting health,
players had to remove the limbs of enemies in order to defeat them.
this literally meant that enemies could eat entire magazines of ammunition
if the player is not appropriately aiming for the limbs.
The game recieved universal acclaim for combining these aspects and more to create
a unique sense of tension and demand the players focus from start to finish.
The sequel,
Dead Space 2, maintained the general feel of the original while making Isaac's
movements a bit less clunky
and balancing the weapons and abilities more effectively.
While Dead Space 2 wasn't as stringent in terms of the dismemberment rule,
players were still heavily penalized for not placing their shots perfectly.
This game also marks the point where Isaac shifted away from being a silent
protagonist.
In addition to the grunts and moans of Dead Space 1,
Isaac has tons of well scripted voice acting all throughout the game.
...and then we have Dead Space 3...
Coming out only two years after the second game as opposed to the three year
gap between the first two,
Dead Space 3 is the first game in the series to feature cooperative play
and the first to have an Origin-exclusive exclusive PC release as well as a weapon crafting
system, universal ammunition, day one DLC, etcetera, etcetera...
Let me say this outright--
While Dead Space 3 is a perfectly passable game on its own, it is inherently
broken, lazy, and a complete bastardization of the Dead Space franchise as established
by the previous two titles.
While the majority of flaws in Dead Space 3 are minor,
they are all problems that were non-existent in the previous two games, and they all served to
completely strip the game from the same sense of tension and immersion that
the previous two games revolved around.
"Alright let me sell some of these medpacks
cause I have way too f*cking many"
"I have so many, I just sell my small ones right off the bat just because I've got so many mediums."
The first issue that becomes readily apparent when playing Dead Space 3 is the
overabundance of items.
Even on impossible difficulty, the only thing that's actually impossible is running
out of ammunition or health packs due to the insanely high rate which they drop.
at multiple points players will find themselves dropping small health packs
to pick up medium ones
or selling clips of ammunition
which were invaluable in the previous two games
to free up inventory space.
the only game mode that even somewhat remedies this glaring issue is the
Pure Survival mode
which brings me to the next point.
Dead Space 3 offers a few unique game modes such Classic mode,
which fixes the difficulty to hard,
forces the game to be played in single-player only,
and restricts Isaac to only using weapons from the previous two games,
and Pure Survival mode,
which also fixes the difficulty to hard and alters the drop rates so that enemies and
boxes
only ever drop resources and never health, ammunition, or stasis packs.
Pure Survival mode forces the player to use the bench to craft ammunition
and health
and conserve them until reaching the next bench.
In this mode,
overusing ammunition means falling behind on weapon upgrades, overusing
stasis packs means falling behind on suit upgrades,
and health packs are finite,
depending on how much somatic gel the player has managed to scavenge.
This greatly increases the difficulty in a fair way and improves the overall balance
of the game.
What's the problem?
These modes are locked and unplayable until the game has been beaten at least once
already.
This is such an antiquated design practice.
There's absolutely no reason to play keep away with these modes other than to
artificially elongate the game by forcing some players to trudge through
the standard campaign
before they can play the more they really wanted.
Of course,
most players will be so done with the game after the first playthrough that they
won't even want to try out the extra modes.
There is one caveat to playing on Pure Survival mode, however.
The fact that it emphasizes scavenging for resources also means the player can't
neglect using... those...
"Hey, I found another f*cking scavenger bot!"
"Well how do ya like that?"
"Okay, the more we get of these, the more pissed off I get."
"Like, I thought that we would only get one the whole f*cking game."
"Same, and the game would be so much more enjoyable if we only got one."
F*cking. Scavenger bots.
As if one isn't bad enough, the player gets three of them towards the end of
the game.
It's such a sigh of relief just to drop the last one on the ground knowing that I
won't have to mouse wheel through it when trying to change weapons for a brief
period of time.
The only reason these things were put into the game was so that they could serve as a means
for in-game micro-transactions that increase the effectiveness of the little ***.
There's even a five dollar unlock to make them talk.
Constantly taking the time out to pull out the scavenger bots
and search for just the right spot to place them--which sometimes end up being
behind impassable walls
or in large out of the way alcoves that contain nothing else--
then picking them up from each bench over and over breaks up the gameplay so much
that ignoring the things can shave hours off the total gametime
which would be ok if not for the arbitrarily rare resource tungsten
which is the single most useful resource in the game
and can only be obtained in large quantities by using the scavenger bots
effectively.
Well, that's not entirely true...
"Oh, ***!"
"For some reason, we can build every single one of the upgrade circuits right now."
"Um, I can't--hold on, wait."
"Hold on, are you sure you loaded the right save file?"
"I can't build all of them." "Really?" "Really."
"It's just letting me build every one of 'em."
"I definitely can't do that ***."
"Oh, do you know what it is?"
"I went into one player mode,"
"and I f*cking went to the crafting tutorial thing,"
"and then I save and quit out of that and it just lets me craft everything now."
"So did you just glitch the game and now you can craft crazy ***?"
"I think so." "Holy hell."
Don't feel like grinding around and using scavenger bots to farm tungsten?
Don't worry, the game is chock full of bugs and exploits that allow unsuspecting
players to permanently unlock every item in the game by saving and quitting from the
weapon crafting arena
which gets unlocked after discovering the third bench in the game--
the first usable one when not playing on Pure Survival.
Players can also keep on farming the same items over and over
by collecting them,
then saving and reloading.
What's better is that EA officially announced that they had no interest in ever
patching these bugs.
Is it starting to become apparent why I referred to the game as 'broken'? If not,
then take a look at exhibit D...
"You see this shotgun? This shotgun is the epitome of everything that is wrong with this game,"
"and the way that you're supposed to play it to enjoy it the most. You're supposed to not try."
"Yeah, you're supposed to not try..."
"...supposed to give zero f*cks..."
"...yeah, and use shotguns."
"Double. Shotgun."
"That's all I gotta say."
There is only one truly effective weapon in Dead Space 3
and while the game refers to it as a "shotgun,"
it is more akin to a long-range double-barreled sniper rifle with knockback.
God forbid you got the game within the first few weeks of release,
in which case you immediately have access to the "Evangelizer" shotgun,
which is a rapid-fire long-range double-barreled sniper rifle with knockback with
roughly three less shots per magazine.
Players can experiment with the crafting system to their hearts' content,
but there is no more effective weapon in the game.
Why not? Because dismemberment is no longer important in Dead Space 3.
The way the game works this time around
is that enemies have health,
and that the player can simply shoot them until they die.
Sure, aiming for the limbs deals extra damage, but since the game exudes ammunition
faster than the player can possibly use it,
it becomes faster,
safer, and more effective to simply
pump as much firepower into enemies as fast as possible in order to kill them.
The only other factor that is of any importance is knockback--
which the shotgun has plenty of,
instantly downing the vast majority of enemies with one shot. A feat not even the rocket
launcher can accomplish for some inexplicable reason.
Making those speedy necromorphs flinch before they can reach you is the key
to success.
And while we're on the topic of flinching...
"Oh man, they're coming out the f*cking woodwork!"
"Oh damn, that dude almost killed me. Oh ***!"
"He *did* kill me!"
"What the hell? How'd I f*cking die?"
Isaac and John Carver never. flinch.
It is entirely possible to have an off-screen necromorph whittle away at
Isaac's ankles and deplete all of his health without the player ever noticing.
This is part of an effort to make the movement and interaction in Dead Space 3
more fluid and less clunky than the previous two titles, but the problem lies in the fact that the clunkiness of
the previous games was by no means poorly designed.
Making Isaac stop in his tracks every time he's attacked provides an adequate
consequence for engaging necromorphs recklessly.
Not only does it momentarily render Isaac powerless,
but it also gives the necromorphs time to surround him and, more importantly, it
conditions the player into the mindset that getting hit is *bad*
and that it should be avoided at all costs.
It's the modern equivalent to the old Resident Evil games
where the goal wasn't to kill zombies,
but to avoid getting attacked by them.
Dead Space 1 and 2 manage to preserve the spirit of those games
without having to resort to the
outdated tank control scheme it was associated with.
Unfortunately,
while trying to make a game more fluid,
Visceral Games inadvertently stripped it of it single most visceral aspect.
The end result of all of these issues is a complete lack of the sense of immersion
and tension that the previous two games evoked.
The game can be played completely absent-mindedly
which is a serious problem that did not exist in the first and second games.
What makes it even worse
is that they're all issues that could've easily been remedied by paying attention
to the success of the previous iterations.
But it's quite apparent that the game was lazily hobbled together as a killing cash
grab on a successful IP.
The fact that the game was lazily designed is apparent in one glaring flaw that becomes
more and more apparent
the longer one plays the game.
"I don't think these lockers were here, I don't remember these lockers being here,"
"but it's the exact same layout."
"The exact same."
"You're right, you're right. I think we've actually been a room like this multiple times before that, too."
"Haven't I been here before?"
This is a question players will ask themselves time and time again all
throughout the game since,
with the exception of the first and last couples of chapters,
the vast majority of the rooms in Dead Space 3 are literally copied and
pasted and reused over and over again
save for a few lockers added or removed here and there.
This is also why the game contains such an absurd amount of elevators.
All those elevators simply serve as seamless transitions between the same
copied and pasted rooms.
Doing all the optional missions makes it especially transparent how blatant the
re-use of assets is.
While all of the other flaws in Dead Space 3 can be shrugged off as honest mistakes,
this is irrefutable evidence that Visceral Games were really phoning this one in.
For anyone on the fence about purchasing Dead Space 3,
if you're looking for a decent cooperative third-person shooter in the same vein
as Resident Evil 5,
Dead Space 3 is the game for you.
If not, give this one a pass.
Either way, go back and play the previous two games if you haven't already, as they're
both masterpieces in their own respect.
I'm Yama, and this has been a Try2 Review.