Game Spotlight: Dead Space 3

This entry has sat in my drafts folder for a VERY long time now because… well… because I TOTALLY forgot about it! But, now that I’ve noticed it, I’ve finally taken the time to finish this entry and post it up… *looks around*

The first Dead Space is an excellent start to the series and brought with it, a wonderful new IP that showed much promise. Dead Space 2 continued to dazzle and blew me away by taking the first games obvious “Resident Evil 4 in space” start and then making a sequel that stood on its own feet. So how does Dead Space 3 compare to the first two games? Had I posted this entry a couple of weeks after playing Dead Space 3 at launch like I had planned, my assessment would’ve been more… timely. However, since I’m late as hell with this, we all know that Dead Space 3 didn’t live up to the first two games and is deeply flawed in many ways, leaving people wanting more and others swearing off Dead Space all together.

This game went wrong in many places, but there are some things it did right. While I definitely don’t think this game comes close to the first two games, with Dead Space 2 being my favourite of the three, I can still appreciate some things in Dead Space 3… even if most others don’t.

Story

Oh boy, shit certainly gets real in this game and takes us places where many didn’t want to go, it seems. With each game, more and more characters seem to be added to the cast, the first game had a few people along with Isaac who appeared infrequently and mostly talked to Isaac over the comm, the second fleshed out Isaac himself, gave him a voice that wasn’t him screaming/grunting and had him interacting with a number of people.

Dead Space 3 introduced a number of people who play larger roles to drive the story forward and add a lot more background chatter… and that’s the first problem with Dead Space 3, too many characters who talk too much. While Dead Space 2 introduced a number of characters, it did give you some time to yourself as well, there was a balance that Dead Space 2 was able to achieve that Dead Space 3 just does not have.

Of course, despite the extra character interactions, the game does have its moments in the story department, if one were to overlook its many shortcomings, Dead Space 3 does have an interesting mystery that is established right from the very start. I know, I know, it turns out, in the end, the mystery is pretty simple (and stupid), but I’m talking about the way the game takes you from that introduction through to the rest of the story as the characters try to figure shit out.

The game also has a few moments where the atmosphere is just right and just creepy enough, especially when facing against those alien necromorphs in the later game. I loved the way you could hear them thudding their heavy feet on their floor long before you saw them, and when you did finally catch sight of one, it was coming out from the shadows.

As much as people complain about it, Dead Space 3 did take us to some very interesting places and transitioned between them very well. Sure, I would have loved to have stayed up in orbit among the wrecked ships since that was the most suspenseful and “classic” feeling part of the game, but the change of locations to the planet surface and then to the underground city was done really well and at just the right moments so you didn’t get too sick of the locations.

In terms of pacing, while it wasn’t as good as Dead Space 2 in terms of overall pacing, it was still fine and the changing environments as well as the way they transitioned between them were done well enough. Of course, Dead Space 1 is still the winner in terms of using the environment to its maximum creepiness without it getting old despite being stuck on the Ishimura of most of the game.

Then came the end of the game and you realise the last boss is a moon encrustation looking kinda thing with three eyes. To be perfectly honest, I love the idea of the Brethren Moons in Dead Space 3… but I agree that the execution was… terrible. It could’ve been something so much cooler instead of well, whatever that thing was that was inside the broken moon orbiting Tau Volantis. Visceral could have gone in a much freakier direction with the entire concept, but instead, what we got was way too… boring.

Personally, I would’ve loved to see the entire interior of the moon covered with necromorphs like one of those lost soul walls where they’re all mashed together and are endlessly screaming and grabbing toward you to pull you down and make you join them. Then have the last boss just form out of an endless supply of these bodies… a creature made of thousands of necromorph bodies in an orgy of… stuff. Then have Isaac (and Carver) be affected by some psychological attack from the creature along with physical attacks as they reprogram the device to make it implode the moon or something.

I know it’s bullshit fan fiction, but it’s so much more interesting than just blasting markers at a giant three eyed hermit crab. Also, how the FUCK did Ellie survive?

Gameplay

This is where the game really fucks up, and it all stems from one thing: the weapon crafting system that is TOO good. Okay, the other thing that ruins it is the micro-transaction bullshit, but if you’re not an idiot, you can avoid that by not buying into it in the first place.

I both love and hate the weapon system in this game because it’s fun to make your own weapons and slap on a bunch of cool things together that you couldn’t do in previous games, but it in turn gives you WAY too much power. In the first Dead Space, there was an achievement for going through the entire game with nothing but the Plasma Cutter, and I remember, the first time I went through Dead Space 1, I used NOTHING but that Plasma Cutter. It was great, it proved that even with a single weapon, the game worked and was really cool with just that one weapon that had only the ability to change the angle of its cutting mechanism.

In Dead Space 3, you’re introduced to a plethora of weapons that do a tonne of different things and you can combine them in any possible configuration you want. At first, the types of weapons you can make aren’t all that great, but it doesn’t take very long until you get a combination of crafting items you can throw together to create something totally devastating to the point where enemies are no longer a threat.

The biggest culprit is the rocket launcher combined with the splash damage protection modification that can turn all tense situations into a small bump in the road you hardly noticed. Take those necromorph aliens I mentioned before. They’re huge hulking behemoths that would normally turn any situation into a “holy shit, not you!!” moments, but instead, it just takes a couple of rockets and the threat is gone.

It also doesn’t help that this weapon customisation system also came with a universal ammunition system, I can see why they did it, but it really didn’t fit with what people expected Dead Space to do. You’re meant to run out of ammo at some point and have more powerful weapons have so little ammo that you only use them in the most clutch moments. Again, all the tension that you could have had with a limited ammo system is ruined.

Like I said, it’s a great system that works really well, but damn… it certainly does ruin the mood of the game.

Same goes for the small changes to accommodate fighting human enemies. I don’t really want to be ducking/crouching behind cover in Dead Space and I certainly DO NOT want to be rolling in this game. The human enemy encounters was the worst part of Dead Space 3, so bad that I can’t really remember which parts of the game they were in, but I know they were there because I remember hating them.

Co-op

I know a lot of people hate it, but I actually quite like the co-op in Dead Space 3, I like it a lot actually because it does several things right. The first thing it does right and I have to give Visceral Games full credit for, is the way the game adapts between single player mode and cooperative mode.

When playing the game by yourself, Isaac goes through the game alone, with the only interactions between other characters happening during story events. While in co-op mode, Isaac is constantly teamed up with newcomer John Carver… and the story in the game changes depending on whether you’ve teamed up with someone else or are playing alone so that things make sense. Even the introduction scene is changed accordingly with additional and changed dialogue that surprised the hell out of me the first time I experienced it.

I absolutely love how much effort was put into making the two modes distinctly different from each other. Visceral made an effort to retain (unsuccessfully) the feeling of isolation in the single player version of the game while doing something new that added extra content and a much different experience when playing it with a friend. Co-op wasn’t just the same game with a cloned second player, it was a whole extra mode that changed the way the story was driven.

The way I like to explain it is that it’s kind of like New Game+ where you play it the second time and things in the story and gameplay change in certain ways to keep things exciting. Sure, when playing in co-op, the entire game devolves into a 100% action-shooter, but it was a VERY WELL DONE action-shooter even if it didn’t belong in Dead Space. I would like to see Visceral or another developer do a co-op mode for a new IP or an existing IP that does what Dead Space 3 did with its co-op mode.

Of course, there are downsides to the addition of co-op too, aside from the obvious fact that no one wanted it, the true biggest downside is the total destruction of the save system found in Dead Space 1 and 2. Okay, Dead Space 2 had checkpoints as well, which sucked, but it still kept the save terminals intact while Dead Space 3 does away with them entirely due to the drop-in/drop-out nature of the co-op mode built into the game.

Many people would rather that co-op didn’t exist and that they could get their save terminals back, and I don’t blame them. It’s a tough compromise to make, one that further destroys the atmosphere and sense of danger in the game… but I also don’t blame Visceral for including co-op in the game, because it works well… and is fun… it’s just not… appropriate, at least not for this game.

Dead Space: Awakened

Finally, the end… or the end after the end, which we thought was the end, but it turns out it’s not. But more importantly, HOW THE HELL DID ISAAC AND CARVER SURVIVE?! Seriously, was this all a dream that Isaac was having? Does this game even count cause I can’t tell what’s going on any more.

As much as I wanted more Dead Space, the Awakened DLC confused me and everyone else out there as to what the hell is actually going on in Dead Space 3. Because as much as the ending didn’t make sense, Awakening made that ending make even LESS sense to the point where we’re all wondering if Visceral just totally wants to drop the series, move on to other things and not go back. I still expect Dead Space 4 some time in the future, I just have NO BLOODY IDEA where they’re going to take us with the next game, cause the end (double end) of this game… I just have no idea.

That said, Awakened was pretty entertaining, at least… I mean, it wasn’t very long, but for a moment, I was interested in this cult that was started by those Unitologists up in the spaceship graveyard. That concept, at least, was pretty cool… but as we all know, it took us into a totally different direction at the end. Of course, that “surprise” ending can easily be explained away by Isaac and Carver hallucinating like the ending of Dead Space 1, but then what of the rest of Awakened? The question remains… HOW THE HELL DID ISAAC AND CARVER SURVIVE?

Sure, it does leave us with a lot of questions which a lot of Dead Space fans desperately want answers to, but it’s done in such a cheap way… which, I guess is the calling card of Dead Space 3.

The End?

Dead Space 3 is the last game to be released in the series and since then, Visceral has moved on to other projects. The next game to be released by Visceral Games is Battlefield Hardline, which I have absolutely NO interest in playing. After that will most likely come Visceral’s supposed Star Wars game they’re rumoured to be making, which I am EXTREMELY interested to play. But the big question remains, will there be a Dead Space 4? I would like to think so, but it’s going to be a hell of a long wait until we get it… IF we get it. I honestly hope that we do get another Dead Space game because I don’t want this series to end on 3, it deserves better.

If there does turn out to be a Dead Space 4, after I do a happy dance and scream in delight, I will be hoping that Visceral has learned from everything that has happened with Dead Space 3 and makes a much better game along the lines of the first two games, avoiding all the unnecessary and totally inappropriate elements that were put into 3. It may have been a well made game, but it didn’t have the atmosphere and type of storytelling that fans of Dead Space wanted out of the game.

With that last thought… it’s time for me to find other entries I may have forgotten about and get those posted up too.