Developer: Visceral Games
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: PC, PS3, 360
Dead Space 3 – Review
I hadn’t anticipated this game. I was aware it was going to be out some time during 2013, having seen a trailer for it during 2012. On my list of ‘want/to do’ list, this one fell off the radar. I have to say I was completely surprised when I heard it was out. I was stoked nonetheless. I finished the game twice and started up a third bout, to own everything that moves with my overpowered upgraded weaponry. The story was thrilling and suspenseful. So, everything a good game needs. Did it deliver? I can wholeheartedly say: YES!
Story:
If you haven’t played a previous title and are frightened that you’ll not understand what is going on, then the prologue will tell you just what you need to know. The story spans over 300 years. It’s basically the discovery of ‘The Markers’, a extremely seemingly limitless power source. As the years went by, humanity realized something was off with them. Though some part of humanity chooses to believe ‘The Markers’ have the potential of uniting humanity. Sharing the same body, same mind, same soul. These Unitologists, are after Clarke’s hide with a fervor. So the threat is not only the Necromorph. Somewhere in the game, you’ll get a clue that leads to a trail, to a machine which has the power to stop the ‘Marker’ threat in its tracks. So Clarke and his crew hurtle through space, risking life and limb to stop the impending doom.
Graphics:
When we are talking Dead Space 3, we are talking gore, one of the selling points of the first game in the franchise. With the different death animations Clarke was submitted to. Those are still in the running. You’ll get impaled, pushed to a pulp, cut into bits by a spinning blade… The list goes on, all of them equally brutal. The Necromorph have had a makeover too. The clay blobs which clung onto you in the first game. The ones draining your health, have been replaced by cockroach-like creatures. Early on in the game, you’ll see Necromorph hanging from the ceiling in a meditational pose. As you approach, they’ll start trembling, they’ll react to your proximity. The trembling will turn to shaking until they awaken, and fall down in a cloud of spores and green dust. As they race up to you, with crazy shining vivid eyes, they’ll secrete more green pollen. It has to be said the flow between cut scene and gameplay couldn’t be more fluent.
Sound:
This makes, or breaks a horror survival game, although the game deviates from the ‘survival’ part, it’s still a battle. The screeching sound as you pass a ventilation duct makes you jump. You’ll think it’s about to burst through, aiming your gun to blast the thing about to jump you, to oblivion. But nothing comes. It’s this kind of tense play with sound that makes it spine tingling. Jump scares don’t always mean there’s an immediate form of threat. Sometimes you’ll walk through the hallways, hearing the soft whispering of the infected. Listening closely to understand what they are murmuring, a realization dawns: they might be too close for comfort and when you’ve finished off every enemy in sight, there’s where the gore pops back up. You have the power to stomp the remaining parts of the enemy into mulch. The cracking of bones and the splattering of blood is a little distressing, yet it’s strangely satisfying.
Sometimes you’ll float in zero gravity; with only your thrusters breaking the silence. The feeling of loneliness is palpable. There’s your crew, but they are at a different part of the ship/planet, so you’ll wander the corridors alone, your footsteps the only sound feeding this solitude.
Gameplay:
There’s a couple of new things in this installment. One of them being: Multiplayer Co-op. You’ll take on the Necromorph with a friend. Shooting off limbs, heads and body parts as you travel through space. This takes a little away from the whole horror survival. Jump scares won’t as frequent. The A.I. even heals you for the heck of it and wastes ammo. When you play Solo, you’ll be alone on your journey. The Co-op is drop in drop out, so you’ll be able to mangle Necromorph any place any time.
The weapon system has had an overhaul too. You’ll be able to craft complete weapons and replace EVERY part on a weapon. The handle, the iron sights, the clip, the extra’s… You want a weapon which picks up ammo on the fly? Done, want a weapon which auto reloads? Done. You just need the parts. This brings me to the next part: the previous titles used ‘nodes’ to upgrade the weapons. This game makes you pick up scrap metal and parts, so you can build your weapons from scratch. Don’t like the fact every weapon has a ‘fixed’ kind of upgrade? Well they’ve changed that too. You build the upgrades with spare parts, and you equip the weapons as you wish. Want a weapon which reloads extremely fast? Just uses the right upgrades? Like a weapon which takes on several Necromorph with one bullet? There’s an upgrade for that… The list goes on, and if you want to test out the weapons, there’s always the ‘Arena’ part of the game. Here you can test all the weapons, and find out just which one suits your gamestyle. In case you don’t want to take the time to pick up the parts to build weapons, you can buy them with money. Saves time, unless you oppose the whole ‘micro transaction’ thing.
Waiting for the train to come in, has never been so intense. 3 hours in the game, you’ll encounter your first immortal Necromorph. It’ll chase you through the hallways. When you get to the train station, you’ll press a button and the following moments are extremely nerve wrecking: more Necromorphs show up and you’ll have to fend them off as best you can. Here’s where the camera irked me, it got stuck between me and a wall, and with 2 undead Necromorph hunting me, and 2 more Necromorph nibbling at my shins, I could do without a dodgy camera. Maybe a fixed camera could have been a better solution. A single press of a button; changes the angle of the camera. 2 chambers earlier, I encountered a ‘Bench’, somewhere you can upgrade your weapons and outfit yourself with them. But before I had even made my choice, I had 2 sharp claws ripping me in shreds.
Eventually I got past them with barely any ammo and being completely red barred. The health is shown as a bar on your back. The feeling of relief was overwhelming. I just waited for the the game to auto save. These moments are pure adrenaline pumping and heart pounding. Is it true ‘horror’? Not really, is it survival, hell yes!
Conclusion:
I have to say, when I finished the second game, I was glad a third installment was coming in. For it to have come as a surprise was even better. It might take away from the whole ‘horror survival’ game, and might be more a high octane action shooter, but this evolution stops the game from being monotone and more of the same. It deserves a place in your game collection.
Dead Space 3 - Review,
Related Items
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] Space 3 was a mixed bag, for fans of the previous games who enjoyed its horror aspects the latest instalment all but […]