Dead Space 3 Review

 Dead Space 3 Review

I have always really enjoyed Dead Space. The first 2 games I played a lot during my teenage years and I beat them both twice after my first playthroughs. Both of them are probably some of my favourite 3rd person shooters despite them being mislabelled as "survival horror" games but that is for a different time. The 3rd game however is a different story, I beat the game back in 2013 around the time it came out and I don't remember it that well and didn't like it that much, and I have just beaten again for the 2nd time after almost 10 years since I played it and well...I remember why I wasn't big on it.

 

One more thing I want to address before I get started with the review are the reasons why Dead Space 3 is so derided. It often gets that because it made the series more of an "action game". A criticism the 2nd game also gets but not nearly as much. Basically, action gameplay is the average horror game fan's kryptonite and I always found that weird considering Dead Space as it's very heart is a 3rd person shooter to begin with. As bad as people use that criticism for the later Resident Evil games, with that series it *sort of* made sense considering that RE before RE4 was a game centered around puzzles, exploration and combat whether it'd be avoiding or shooting but Dead Space was always a shooter and I hear this almost every time DS3 gets talked about and I want to address this because I am not talking about it all in this review. Dead Space 3 to me is the very definition of a mediocre game, it's not terrible enough to be aggravating and it's not good enough to stand out in any way. It's a shame since the 1st 2 games were games I really enjoyed while with 3, I have a hard time really saying much positive on it.

 

I will address the game's biggest flaw: the game completely retools and changes everything about the combat and everything surrounding the gameplay for the worst. The biggest issues is that now, necromorphs take a lot less damage compared to the 1st 2 games. In Dead Space, the most interesting thing about the combat system is that enemies can bit hit in multiple areas and you had to dismember them in order to get the kill. The funny thing that this gameplay idea even holds true for Dead Space Extraction as well. In Dead Space 3, the necromorphs take so little damage to the point where shooting almost feels extremely mindless. Aiming for the limbs isn't nearly as encouraged and enemies will die really fast a lot of the time. Remember how some Halo fans bash Halo Reach because the Covenant took a lot less damage to defeat? It goes double for this game. Enemies don't really require much effort to actually defeat, you often have to shoot them in the arm or leg twice and they go down pretty fast. The game does add enemies mutating after death to compensate for this but it never happens often enough or is done in an interesting way to really stand out. Dead Space 2 at least had a lot of enemy variety and large numbers to make combat encounters really interesting. You had enemies that can slow you down when they hit you, enemies that lunged at you while clinging to walls, enemies that were small, agile, cling to walls and can shoot projectiles where it's weak spots you had to wait to see come out(these enemies only show a few times in this game), the Stalkers where they hide and run away and use cover to flank you(they show up a few times, and they are a joke due to how overpowered the weapons and little damage they take), babies that explode, enemies that can infect corpses, and many others that were often mixed up to make for interesting and dynamic combat encounters where you had to watch your surroundings. DS3 on the other hand, just shoves the same generic enemies at you constantly for 70% of the game with very little variation mix up. Often leading to the same boring enemy encounters where you just shoot mindlessly and they die very quickly. The game does try to add challenge by adding lots of enemies in cramped rooms but that makes the game frustrating due to how many times enemies grab you and how enemies can stunlock you at times. Now the game adds human enemies into the mix, and well, they are nothing to write home about. Their AI is very dumb and they often just run around like idiots, with hitscan weapons forcing you into cover which was something that made Dead Space 1 and 2 stand out from cover shooters at the time because the former avoided that. Rocket launcher enemies is a game of hope you can kill them fast before they take big chunks of your health.

I want to get into the other game's other retooling of gameplay: the semi open world aspect, along with the weapons and resources. The game adds in RPG mechanics as well as sort of an open world which at times feels like a precursor to the open world games of the 8th gen. The open world doesn't really feel like anything I want to explore since I never felt there was any need to explore due to the issues I will now mention. The weapons and resources. Dead Space 1 and 2 and some great and creative weapons. They are up there with the Resistance series when it comes to creative weapons in a sci fi shooter. While I admit, that often used the Plasma Cutter, Line Launcher, Ripper, Pulse Rifle for both games, they all felt very satisfying to use and kept both game's balance in check. Now Dead Space 3 does away with set weapons to use and upgrade and now gives you a 2 weapon limit as well as letting you create your own weapons. While this is an interesting idea in theory, I feel the game isn't as experimental with weapon creating as it wants you to be because first you got the before mentioned enemy health, and lack of enemy mix up problem but now it adds all these pointless RPG systems that adds more clutter but doesn't add anything to the overall game. You don't need to be experimental because enemies are too easy to kill and some weapon combos are so broken that you don't need to aim for the limbs, all you need to do is just push the fire button and enemies can easily be killed. Now, the central pillar of DS combat is gone. You don't even want to be experimental because weapons creating is a huge hassle that you aren't even sure is worth it because some weapon combos are average to borderline broken. The resource management itself is just pointless clutter too. The game wants you to upgrade your Rig, and craft items as well as upgrade weapons, and you are often better off just crafting items since it's easier than saving resources to upgrade your Rig. The node and currency system from DS1 and 2 had much more decision making. With nodes you had to worry about upgrading your RIG and your weapons, and also you had special doors that gave you more loot if you were to use them but you risk losing a chance to upgrade weapons and your RIG. With the currency, you had to choose between ammo, health packs or possibly get a new weapon and you only had so much money. With DS3, it's just me pressing the x button to picking things to get resources I don't know anything about and there is no decision making. It's like Resident Evil 8 where you can hold everything and you don't have to worry about what you can or cannot carry.

Another reason why I didn't like this game that much at the time was because of how "long" it was and it isn't technically that long, it's only 10 hours. But the game feels padded. You spend the first chapters in space and not even on the planet where the plot takes place where Dead Space 1 had mystery to keep the player intrigued and whether or not the characters can survive the Ishimura and Dead Space 2 had you fight to survive in a necromorph outbreak, DS3 just takes a while to really get to the main setting and it's funny how the all of the space sections takes place in those first 7 chapters because it never pops up again. So upgrading air supple for the RIG is pointless once you crash land on the planet and the middle section of the game can be pretty dull too considering it's going through the same snowy areas and rooms constantly. Chapter 18 in particular felt like it went on longer than it needed to. I will give the game credit where in Chapter 8 when you crash land is quite tense section where you have to manage Isaac's body heat while also having no way point, so you had to rely on landmarks and piece together where you are and what do without freezing to death. It's easily the best part of the game, I wonder what could've been if the whole game did this.

I will talk about the story here and it's not terrible but not great either. The love triangle is really bad and Norton is a terrible character who acts like a dick a lot of the time and it's there to create conflict, and it's weird how DS2, Ellie and Isaac just hooked up and then a timeskip happens and Isaac has went through lots of problems since. I don't know what is it with games and these timeskips. Whenever the game would go into detail regarding the lore of the series, it's actually pretty interesting. I will also give the game credit for having the best villain in the series through Jacob Danik. He's not great and he makes classic villain mistakes like not killing the heroes himself when he clearly had the chance but Simon Templeman's performance does elevate him a lot. That and he's the only villain in the series that actively gets in Isaac's way and also acts more proactive where DS1 and 2's villains never really did anything to make the player and Isaac hate them. Danik taunts you and actively talks down to Isaac and he often gets the drop on Isaac too, he's more involved in the story compared to previous DS villains. Ellie's fake out was dumb and ruined any development Isaac could've had. Michael Carver while an interesting foil to Isaac on paper, don't interact with each other enough to have any real connection. Coop he is there more apparently but I have no idea if it fleshes out their relationship more.

In conclusion, Dead Space 3 is not terrible nor is it good. It's just "there" to me. It is pretty lame that the there couldn't be a great trilogy of 3rd person shooters through Dead Space but best 2 out of 3 is fine. I can also rank Extraction as a very good spin off. I will give DS3 credit that it doesn't really ruin the series in any way. It's not as bad as certain other reviled games in popular franchises but I can see why I never played this as much as 1 and 2.