Dead Space 3
I remember liking the first Dead Space but feeling a bit concerned that it was taking the safe route – at this point I’m honestly not sure if it was actually a better game than the latter iterations or if I was just seeing traces of a pattern I hadn’t grown tired of yet. So in short, I don’t dislike Dead Space 3 but it feels like it lacks identity.
It’s less of a survival horror game and more of a 3rd-person shooter, which is the beginning of the issues since it’s not a very good 3rd-person shooter. You are shuffled along a rail, enter an area where enemies spawn continuously for a few minutes and then allow you to proceed. Most of them will charge you, occasionally one will spawn behind you but the end result is the same – you’re forced to watch a grizzly animation sequence that you’re either going to break out of or die in – it may have been shocking in the first game but now it’s just annoying. Annoying controls like healthpacks being bound to buttons that have other uses or always turning to face the wall when several enemies attack you do not help – I’m guessing at least some of the clumsiness is there to make you feel powerless but it only makes the game feel unfair.
The game is more linear than the first games but the featureset is broader – it feels a lot like Lost Planet at times with the climbing, giant arachnids and heat-based mechanics, all the mechanics of the previous games are back and the crafting has been greatly expanded on. It fails to invoke interest though – you can do a lot of different things, but there is very little reason to do it.
Dead Space 3 has some really good moments – floating around a long-abandoned spacecraft looking for a way in and running into zombies is still an eerie experience, and the steep mountains in some of the backgrounds are truly majestic. While it is far from the best 3rd-person shooter around, it is a competent one. But Dead Space has opted to remove focus from the things that made it unique and do a bunch of things other games already do better, which is rarely a good idea.