More action than horror
The main protagonist is still Isaac Clarke and the monsters are still being called necromorphs. So nothing much really as changed then?
The story includes the same old maniacs that wants to use the marker for all kinds of bad. But there is also a love triangle drama, albeit rather poorly done. As are the interaction with the rest of your crew. Every time the group will get to together, something is bound to blow up forcing our good Isaac to fall on his nose. It gets old rather fast and sometimes the story and other characters just feels like they are there to excuse another time around for some good old monster killing.
New to the game is how you upgrade your guns. You find parts scattered all over the battlefields to use in your creation. Sometimes you even find blueprints, even though it is more interesting creating your own guns. You will also find resources to use in creation of healthpacks, ammo and to upgrade your rig. Your suits of armour is more (and looks more) diversed than in earlier Dead Spaces. You can even unlock special suits (and maybe special guns?) by playing other EA games – like Mass Effect.
One thing with the game that bothered me was the save function. There is a save function that auto save your game with your game progress. Another is the "save and quit" function – who does not do just that. When you load you find yourself all but at the last place you saved and quit – so what is the point with that function? At one time this messed up for me when doing a side quest ( yes – Dead Space 3 has side quests) – and when I was to start again after save and quitting I lost all progress and had to do stuff all over again. A good thing with all the reloading is that resources this time randomly regenates every time you re-start the game – and inventory always is saved – so it is ridiculously easy to stack up on items this time around. You will also acquire a "little helper" to let you find even more stuff – so I can say that ammo and health will never get scarce in DS 3. Wich take away the "survival horror" feeling. But if that bothers you – play the game at a higher difficulty.
And a thing about difficulty. When choosing "Just Right", I would rather say that the difficulty is rather uneven. Large parts of the game you will mass murder everything the game throws at you (mostly due to the generous amount of ammo the game provides) – only to be brutalized at another moment when the game decides to throw every damn necromorph in the game at you. The bosses are much the same old run and shoot at the yellow glowing stuff as always. They are really not all that difficult, but at least the fights are fun. The most annoying creature you will encounter in this game are still the "Regenator". And this time around he has all his brothers with him – what yoy.
There are also some mini games and puzzles of diverse quality. One is a hacking game that is rather a pain to play with a PC keyboard. There are also moments when you are forced to climb or descent vertical parts in the game – moments I think there are to many of. Nothing in DS 3 warrants the use of a map so this time around the B-button (locator) will do all the work you need to find your way around.
The chock from playing the first game has faded away and left behind are a violent (but rather entertaining) alien dismember slaughterfeast. At the worsts moments DS 3 reminds me of modern Resident Evil games – with enemies that won´t die how much you even shoot them and the weak story and character interaction makes me remember Doom 3. But all in all – the game is fun to play and the side quest thing is an improvement.
Play if you can stomach all of the spewing entrails, especially Isaacs.