Dead Space 3 (general and co-op)

I'll start by warning you that this is less a review, more a list of complaints. If you want some kind of objective overview of this game you need to look somewhere else, as I did not enjoy this game enough to be able to write anything objectively.

I did not play the previous Dead Space games and I did not read reviews of this game prior to playing it. I'm just picking this apart from the point of view of someone who enjoys, to put it simply, good games, and someone who enjoys the horror genre generally.

I may seem overly harsh, but I think that AAA titles with $$$ price tags deserve far more scrutiny.


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Upon initially starting Dead Space 3 I was immediately impressed by the graphics and optimisation. I'm not an absolute graphics whore so these may not actually be the best on the market, but I was impressed. The game ran cool at highest settings with a solid 60fps at 2560x1440 (Bootcamp on late 2012 iMac, Intel Core i7-3770, NVIDIA GTX 680MX 2GB, 8GB RAM).
So yeah, there's that I guess.

That being said, great graphics do not necessarily an enjoyable game make. So here's my take on everything other than the bells and whistles. If you haven't played the game and you want 0 spoilers stop reading, although I probably won't be giving much of the plot away, mainly because it's not very memorable and thus, I don't remember much.

At the beginning of the game the first enemies we encounter are humans, who, even on Hard, are particularly easy to dispatch throughout the game. The cover system isn't really worth mentioning as you'll only use it against the human enemies, if you have time, as they simply can't wait to just explode into a pile of limbs for you.
On a combat-related note: the melee attack was useless, in my opinion.

So, here we are and I get my first introduction to one part of the game's design that I do like: the UI, or lack thereof; your health is displayed as a coloured bar built into the back of your suit along with your Stasis gauge, and the ammo for your weapons is displayed as a little projection on your gun when you're aiming.
Your menu (and any information regarding objectives etc.) is projected in front of your character which is a nice idea, but is spoiled by the fact that you can't see it in enclosed spaces like lifts. And this game of course, apparently being within the horror genre (more on that later), loves lifts.
They seem like obvious places to screw around with your inventory, but no, sorry, apparently futuristic augmented reality devices won't implement design features allowing for compatibility with that other cutting edge piece of technology: the wall.
Personally I find this lift+menu oversight unforgivable. If it is not in fact an oversight but a conscious decision, then... sorry, wrong decision; the lifts offer brief moments of sanctuary throughout the busier parts of the game and you can't even have a nice relaxing pause for a second to take a look at how much ammo you don't have.

Speaking of irritating: if the UI and menu are designed to be so fluid and unobtrusive, then why, why oh why oh why, do we have to watch unnecessary time-consuming animations when navigating between sub-menus at the Bench?

The Bench is where you can craft weapons and items. The weapon crafting system is kind of interesting but the clunkiness of the Bench interface really ruins how much fun a crafting system within a game can be.

When you go up and "lock" your character to the bench - you get an animation; when you exit the weapon crafting submenu at the Bench - you get an animation; when you exit the Bench - no anim-- no sorry, my mistake - you get an animation. This same infuriating interface applies to the Suit Kiosk, where you can change and upgrade your suit.
To me this wouldn't even be acceptable if they were interesting animations, but they only consist of the character moving his hands around a bit. Why not just have a menu that pops up in front of you like everything else? Why do I have to step into this invisible unescapable crafting chamber, navigate a menu, then watch another couple of animations before I can get out? This pointless waste of time led to both my co-op partner and I to semi give up on it. All I can say is that they managed to make what can be a very fun aspect of a game totally unenjoyable.

Now by this point there's been a lot of negativity, I'm sorry, let's change that:

The added co-op side missions aren't in the single player game, they expand the second player's back story.

There we go.

Overall, the side missions other than the specific co-op ones didn't grab our interest enough for us to commit to all of them, especially after we noticed what looked suspiciously like copy-pasted environments.

The horror aspect of this game is fleeting. It relies primarily on shock scares and doesn't try nearly as hard as it should to use its naturally unnerving atmosphere and environments to their full potential. There is no building of tension, there is simply no attempt to scare you in any way other than the most obvious, loud, and vulgar ways. To me, horror is not simply filling your game with spiky monsters that go "BOO!" every time the character goes around a corner or opens a door.

By this point, about 50% through the game, we were beginning to feel very let down and the rest of the game was played almost out of an obsessive duty to finish something we'd started. We soldiered on. We did all of the tedious after-thought climbing and abseiling... We took part in the mandatory mini-games. Mini-games and puzzles that are so simple you wonder why, in such a hostile environment, all of the doors have locks designed to be bypassed by children, with the only difficulty involved being the few times the game decides to throw waves of necromorphs at you as you're puzzle-solving to hide a lack of imagination in design.
That is not challenging, that is frustrating.

... we finished it.

As a couple of guys in our mid-twenties we found it hard to comprehend how a game studio couldn't see the flaws of this game as we could and see the wasted potential as I'm sure so many others do.

To hastily conclude: I'm sorry if you paid full price for this game, because if you're like me or my co-op partner then you're probably still feeling sorry for yourself; I got Dead Space 3 as part of the Origin Humble Bundle, so can you imagine how disappointed I must be in this game to make the effort to write this? The game itself was essentially free because the money I paid went to charity, and still, still I feel robbed of an experience I believe is easily within reach.

Dear EA and Visceral Games,

I'm not going to apologise for how happy I am about only buying your game because I knew you weren't getting the money.

Cheers,

L