Since I was very disappointed with Dead Space 2, this one really surprised me, since it was way better than the one before (and maybe even on-par to the first one).
In this one, the story actually evolves and more is found out about the Markers… The characters are a bit grating and one-dimensional; Isaac is particularly one-dimensional: “I won’t do it… Oh, the girl wants me to do it? That’s ok then!”… Love triangle in the middle of a gruesome horror infection story: nope, it doesn’t work, it’s not believable. Human beings are driven by their hormones, that’s true, but fear/terror overrides that, it’s just the way we’re wired from a biological standpoint!
Anyway, the game itself is more of the same: shoot infected monstrosities on the limbs, find out about the mystery-de-jour. They’ve added a “make-your-weapon” mechanic, but it’s so terribly implemented from a game design perspective that I just stuck with the initial weapon (modded with circuits), upgraded the body for the “Planetary”-something for more circuit slots, and after I got the probe-gun, I just used that…
Designing your own weapons might be nice, if it wasn’t so trial-and-error… I build a weapon (with very little information on the results along the way), then I tried, found out it was terrible, rinse-and-repeat, and in the process lost precious resources. So, I gave up on it after a bit, really… Seems like a system suited for the “pay-to-win” thing they have (which I don’t care much about, but didn’t spoil my fun).
Boss fights on this one were not as stupid as the last one from Dead Space 2, but they weren’t interesting… I feel like I’ve been fighting the same boss over and over again (and I think I was, the story was too broken for me to understand that).
Lastly, the terror component is not present since the first game… I understand it’s hard to keep the tension when you have to let people actually shoot stuff (instead of the solitary stalking on the first “Alien” movie), so it’s kind of a difficult position to be (making the 3rd game in a terror series). So, Dead Space became a new shooter, just a bit different because it’s not space marines…Maybe a cosmetic change, but a welcome one.
It might seem that I didn’t appreciate the game, but it was actually enjoyable (I’m just hyper-critic). It entertained me for 14 hours or so, although it’s a highly repetitive game (horror stories aren’t usually very complex, revolving around a mystery, so it’s hard to stretch them out, and without story, you’re just working as a errand-boy).
Although EA is just milking the franchise at this point, it hasn’t lost that much quality, so I guess that’s a win… This one is definitely better than the second one, and only worse than the first one because the terror isn’t there anymore. Isaac is now too much of a necromorph killing machine to actually feel scared, I’d say. 7/10
On the development news, give a jump onto the Spellcaster Studios blog… not much going on, but we’re still working!