I’ve been dreading revisiting Dead Space 3. Back when it first launched, I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t necessarily outright hate it, but I found it insufferably boring. Yet, I felt that this journey had to be completed and besides, I’ve never played the only story DLC this game had, which remains (and probably will remain) the very last bit of Dead Space ever. So I’ve taken this dive and… I think I like the game a little bit more? I mean it’s still terrible, but this time, I think I’ve found some appeal to it.
Unlike the previous numbered Dead Space titles, the third one isn’t survival action at all. I mean, it has lots of elements of it, but it looks, feels and plays like a straight third person shooter with just some adventure-ish elements to it. And you learn it almost immediately after getting to the main story after the short prologue with a false protagonist, when you find yourself sitting in cover and shooting human enemies with an automatic weapon. While the soundtrack is trying its hardest to sound like Inception close enough, while avoiding possible lawsuits. Yep, you read this right – you can take cover in this game by crouching and sitting behind objects. And yes, there are moments when you’re having shootouts with human enemies. And when you don’t, your typical shooter guns are still far more useful than they ever were in the Dead Space universe as even the necromorph forms you encounter are often human-like enough to be far more susceptible to body shots rather than the usual “cut off their limbs”.
If you’re already infuriated with what you’re reading – that’s how I felt when I first started playing the game. But I can promise – it does have a few redeeming points. I don’t think they’re worth it, but they are present. But let’s continue with changes.
The save points are gone, the game automatically saves progress at certain checkpoints and if you quit the game will save your inventory, but not your position on the map (unless you exit right after the checkpoint). Which does mean that if the game crashes or you need to leave before the next checkpoint but after lots of cutscenes, you will have to go through it all again when you launch the game. This was done to make it so you could play in co-op. And yes, you read this right too. This game is designed for co-op and its story is (kinda) written around that. There are also 3 “side missions” that can only be played in co-op and which have unique situations for both characters (most of the rest of the game is almost identical whenever you play solo or in co-op). Specialized ammo is gone too, now all weapons use the same ammo, like it’s Deus Ex: Invisible War again. Hm… what’s that noise I hear through the internet? Ah, it’s probably your blood boiling. That’s okay, I promise it’s not all bad.
I will go on with the bad, though. The story is an absolute joke. For whatever reason they decided to bring Isaac back even though he wants absolutely nothing to do with anything in this game. And to have him invested they bring back Ellie from the second game as well. And to keep it “interesting” there’s a love triangle. Which makes no sense, like the rest of the game’s story. Your coop partner is an asshole who barely gets any story. No story if you play solo (the game will still treat him like an important person by the end, though), and some primitive story if you play in co-op. And the main villain is the church of unitology, except now they’re a militant terrorist organization that somehow toppled the government and nobody noticed until it was too late, because this story was clearly rushed and makes no sense. But at least the big bad guy is voiced by Simon Templeman, whom you should know as Kain from Legacy of Kain, who also seems amused to be in this game and get ridiculous lines to say, so there’s some enjoyment to be had.
And did I mention how nobody seemingly gave a damn when writing the story? I mean, we have characters from cold 3 meters away from a generator that, if turned on, will turn on the heat. With said character previously being with 3 other people, any of whom could have done that. But at least they’re later really sad about his passing. Also you can occasionally enter a door that’s been locked for 200 years to find human enemies that have just arrived inside. Oof, this game…
So, what’s good? Well… What’s… I can’t say “good”, but what’s interesting is the crafting system. It makes more sense than the shops from the previous games, given that Isaac is an engineer. And it has some cool ideas in combining different weapon parts to build new weird but cool looking guns. Yet, it’s also a rather poorly thought out system that basically means that you build one gun that combines something fast shooting and average in damage and something explosive and high damage, and a gun (you can only carry 2 in this game) that’s a bit more precise for when you need to dismember, aka do the thing the series are known for. But that doesn’t happen too often. Then you just dump some upgrades on top and you have guns that you will use throughout the whole game, mindlessly shooting at hordes of enemies. Oh yeah, RIG changes are just cosmetic now too, the upgrades are applied to all of the and you can change them only if you want to look different, that’s all. At least they still look cool.
And at least the mindless shooting of enemies isn’t entirely terrible. This isn’t a good shooter, solo or co-op, but it works and it has some cool moments. And due to its survival action roots both enemies and weapons are quite unique for the third person shooting, so it’s not entirely without good flavour. If only the locations weren’t essentially exactly the same. But they are, with the “side missions” being reskins of the locations you’ve visited, with random loot given to you as a reward for finishing the dungeon. The game doesn’t really use the words I’m using here, but that’s exactly what it is.
Because this was the period when EA decided to push for a different greedy scheme. With Dead Space 1 and 2 it was all about supplemental materials and franchising. Before 3 only one novel (Catalyst) that was vaguely connected to the story and one graphic novel (Liberation) that expanded a bit on some characters from the game were released. Instead, all of the focus was on the content, that was made to be reusable and microtransactions: the “time savers” and related bollocks. And while it doesn’t destroy the game, it does damage its identity enough for it all to simply feel so generic and boring that you don’t really have any drive to play.
There are moments, as I’ve mentioned. Most curious ones are, actually, exclusive to co-op, where one of the players can be hallucinating, meaning that the players are seeing different things at certain moments. The story DLC Awakened expands on it as well in some cool little details. Though, even the DLC itself seems that the series are doomed to die as while the main game ends on a tragic but positive “this is over” note, the DLC just ends with everyone everywhere seemingly dying and the chapter name message (it’s a little thing all the games in the series do – first letter of each chapter name spells something) just being RIP.
Dead Space 3 isn’t terrible. It’s simply generic and boring, something that is completely opposite to what the original game was. It’s utterly unnecessary, it seems to not really wish to exist. It has terrible story that dumps all over any “lore” that the series had up until that point with blanket explanations to every question. It’s primitive and dumb and it actually often manages to look worse than the previous title, mostly due to how most of its locations are cut and pasted. It’s a real shame that Dead Space had to end on this and it’s a real shame that the studio was killed off in a similar fashion, never given a chance to do something good again. Playing this game is a waste of time at best, and a heartbreaking disappointment at worst.