I’m 2 out of 4 playthroughs deep into my Dead Space 3 platinum journey and at this point am certain I won’t find any new critiques between now and the end of playthrough 4.
There’s nothing controversial about the idea that Dead Space 3 is a fall from grace, even in the eyes of Chuck Beaver, a writer and co-producer on the title who recently shared his opinions about the game a decade on. The story is a sloppy mess which halfway through devolves into a bizarre love triangle between Isaac, Ellie and a third character so unmemorable that I don’t remember his name. It doesn’t help that a bunch of important story beats are told through patchy intercom transmissions whilst you’re doing other things. A newly introduced co-op function allows you and a pal to tackle the entire experience together, and certainly adds some levity to an otherwise eventually dull endeavour; the story drags on too long and is full of so many questionable plot decisions and holes that none of it matters by about the half way point. Remove your co-op partner from the equation and the respective in-game character becomes an NPC that teleports from cutscene to cutscene whenever appropriate, never to be seen in any actual gameplay moments.
The atmosphere in the first third of the game whilst you’re exploring abandoned space vessels is still pretty strong, encouraging exploration outside of the predetermined path and rewarding you for doing so. Those rewards often present themselves in the form of weapon crafting parts and upgrades to be used in one the games more interest bullet points: gun customisation.
You can either build weapons from the ground up or work with blueprints that you find throughout the world, and experimentation is fun, although some weapons are clearly more interesting than others after just a single shot of the trigger.
Add in some of the least impressive visuals and artistic direction that the core trilogy has to offer, and it all becomes a bit of a middling experience, saved (…just!) by the innate pleasures of co-op and some spooky creature and world designs.
This is by no means a terrible game, but it is almost a bad Dead Space game, and given the lofty heights of the first two titles, that’s a damn shame.
There’s nothing controversial about the idea that Dead Space 3 is a fall from grace, even in the eyes of Chuck Beaver, a writer and co-producer on the title who recently shared his opinions about the game a decade on. The story is a sloppy mess which halfway through devolves into a bizarre love triangle between Isaac, Ellie and a third character so unmemorable that I don’t remember his name. It doesn’t help that a bunch of important story beats are told through patchy intercom transmissions whilst you’re doing other things. A newly introduced co-op function allows you and a pal to tackle the entire experience together, and certainly adds some levity to an otherwise eventually dull endeavour; the story drags on too long and is full of so many questionable plot decisions and holes that none of it matters by about the half way point. Remove your co-op partner from the equation and the respective in-game character becomes an NPC that teleports from cutscene to cutscene whenever appropriate, never to be seen in any actual gameplay moments.
The atmosphere in the first third of the game whilst you’re exploring abandoned space vessels is still pretty strong, encouraging exploration outside of the predetermined path and rewarding you for doing so. Those rewards often present themselves in the form of weapon crafting parts and upgrades to be used in one the games more interest bullet points: gun customisation.
You can either build weapons from the ground up or work with blueprints that you find throughout the world, and experimentation is fun, although some weapons are clearly more interesting than others after just a single shot of the trigger.
Add in some of the least impressive visuals and artistic direction that the core trilogy has to offer, and it all becomes a bit of a middling experience, saved (…just!) by the innate pleasures of co-op and some spooky creature and world designs.
This is by no means a terrible game, but it is almost a bad Dead Space game, and given the lofty heights of the first two titles, that’s a damn shame.