I’ve finally done it. I finally beat Dead Space 3 and Awakened. After 2 years of procrastination.
In fact, the only Dead Space game I ever played that I did beat in a reasonable time frame was Dead Space 2. Dead Space 1 and Dead Space 3 took me extended periods of time, for axiomatically different reasons that serve to emphasize what types of games they are. Whereas I put Dead Space down after chapter 2 and didn’t pick it up for nearly a year afterwards because I was frightened to find out what was behind that med bay door, I put Dead Space 3 down for a year because I knew what was behind the next door, and I simply did not care.
Dead Space 3’s failure as a Dead Space game, and as a survival horror game, can not be simplified any further than that sentence because after the first chapter, you will know almost exactly what to expect for the next 18. Fortunately it seems to be widely agreed that the game was a misstep, so it doesn’t need to be made any clearer than a simple sentence.
Let me take a step back and provide some clarification. I am not a little girl. I don’t scream in fright at any game – horror or not. You can rest assured I’ll yell some words, but they’ll be expletives, and not girlish cries. So Dead Space was never shit your pants scary, no. In spite of that, Visceral employed a great mixture of pacing and environmental design that allowed common gameplay tropes to pay off, while still creating a brilliant haunted carnival fun-house that was one of the most memorable and enjoyable horror experiences in video game history.
Isaac was vulnerable, he was essentially alone, and he was afraid, as well as slowly going insane throughout the course of the game thanks to the red marker. Most importantly, he didn’t say a damn word for 99% of the game. It was just you, silence, your gun, and a haunted (basically) ship full of alien monsters trying to kill you. On top of that, innocuous heavy machinery would kill you too. Broken doors would slice you up, wonky gravity plating would slam you into a wall and rip you apart, gyroscopic stabilizers would cut you in half, and most of the ship would try to suck you out into space.
Dead Space 2 removed this vulnerability and feeling of isolation, but still managed to deliver a tense roller-coaster ride through a different haunted house with some slightly different tricks. Isaac could move more fluidly, guns seemed to be more effective, kinesis powers were more effective and he could use random objects to destroy enemies. He also talked a lot and often met up with living human beings, which made it feel like he wasn’t alone and thus like you weren’t alone. To make up for this, the game featured new enemies who were faster and harder to kill, and the first 6 chapters were basically a gauntlet of brutality for the player to survive. To be fair, you start the game in a straight jacket and the first living human being you meet dies a gruesome death within 20 seconds, and you don’t even get a gun until just before the first boss. The number of enemies also increased to compensate for Isaac suddenly being a badass. It seems his years in a straight-jacket somehow magically turned him into a combat engineer, not just a systems engineer.
So what did Dead Space 3 do wrong? What did it do right? Well, as it turns out, a lot of things in both columns. First, what it did right. The overall art design and sound design is still brilliant. This stands out more in the latter half of the game when you get to see vistas on Tau Volantis like the first approach to the research base, or when you reach the alien city and are introduced to their physical appearance as well as their architecture. Before this, though, you do get to see a lot of the flotilla in orbit of the planet and there are some cool shots like this one. The only negative thing I can say about the art design is that the death animations, while still varied, almost all seem to be too fast and result in the same thing – your body chopped into at least 2 pieces. Where Dead Space 1 and 2 took time to show you yourself being murdered, Dead Space 3 just blows you up every 5 minutes and doesn’t even have the courtesy to show you.
On that note, the graphics are also much improved over the first two games. More-so the first than the second, as Dead Space 2 came out this decade, but the graphics are better. Down to the fur and cloth on some of the outfits blowing in the wind of the frozen wasteland. Animations and character textures have been improved as well and overall the engine used for this game seems to have been tweaked with some more modern capabilities, especially when it comes to post-processing, and the particle effects when you are on Tau Volantis at least make it seem like you're actually in a frozen over, snowy wasteland where you might die from the cold.
On that note, though, it's unfortunate that they didn't do more with making the environment an obstacle that you have to overcome. There are plenty of survival genre games that do this successfully - to different extents - like Don't Starve or Firewatch or Frozen State or plenty of others. In DS3, they make it seem at first like you are going to freeze to death, if you don't find a heat source. After reaching the first heat source though you almost immediately fall in to a pattern of running from one generator or flaming piece of wreckage to the next, with no concern whatsoever. Compounding the ease of the situation is that you only ever get attacked maybe one time by a necromorph out in the freezing cold, before you get the environmental protection suit.
Just like Dead Space 2, you start out the game with some living normal humans. And then immediately thereafter, the Church of Unitology shows up and kills the entire colony, turning people into necromorphs and I would think starting a convergence event. You are fighting necros and soldiers who shoot at you, in the streets and alleys and in shops. Whereas Dead Space 2 maintained an intentional pacing and didn’t give you the option of really looking around in the beginning, the sequel does not because there doesn’t seem to be any urgency after you clear an area of necromorphs. The only positive aspect of any of this is the fact that you got to see what “normal” human life might be like for a second. You didn’t really get to see it in Dead Space 2 because everything was dying and covered in blood by the time you saw it, but in 3 you at least get a brief glimpse. Which isn’t saying much, because it’s almost literally nothing. You see some cars, there’s a highway, and the Moon colony seems to be a pretty big settlement. Other than that and setting up the game’s villain, there is nothing notable to come from the first two chapters of the game.
Following that is your arrival in space around Tau Volantis, where you’ll spend the next 6 chapters, otherwise referred to as the Sovereign Colonies flotilla. This is the section of the game that seemed to be on the right track, and the section where the game shined. The ship corridors are tighter than most areas of Dead Space and Dead Space 2, and at most times it feels like a worthy tribute to Dead Space, though it admittedly doesn’t capture the same essence. You still have the vents and necromorphs coming out of them, and the creepy sounds, and the piece by piece backstory that you would expect, but the ships like the Roanoke or the Terra Nova just don’t feel the same. You don't get that same feeling from the original where this ship was very recently full of living people who called you for help, and now you are walking through the remnants of their horror story. What makes the flotilla cool regardless is that it has side-quests where you can go exploring and learn the story of these ships, all while still being hounded by regenerators and lots of necromorphs. In addition to that, DS3 improves upon the zero g mechanics and takes them to a whole new level. Basically every zero g sequence is the cover of the game Dark Void, and it’s liberating to finally be able to move whatever direction you want in zero g. You could do it in Dead Space 2, but there wasn't really anywhere to go.
Unfortunately that all comes to an end somewhat quickly, depending on how you play and whether or not you do side quests at all. After that, it’s on to the surface of Tau Volantis, which is its own rollercoaster ride, but it’s just pure action and is downright annoying. The only good trick Dead Space 3 has left at this point is to employ some old-school survival horror where you’re better off running away than fighting enemies, because it simply spawns too many of them on your face. Unless you have a ridiculously overpowered gun, which you won’t have until after multiple playthroughs, you are better off running.
Speaking of ridiculously overpowered guns, the entire fiasco with this game regarding micro-transactions never made any sense to me, and so neither do any of the comments about it. You do not need the microtransactions. You simply don't. Before I beat the game the first time, I had a rocket launcher upper and assault rifle lower that essentially destroyed everything in existence, with so many stacks of ammo it was absurd. The gun was fully modded with chips. I also had Thor's hammer (named Mjolnir in the game as it should be) and many other guns like chain lightning guns, etc. All of this before I ever even beat the game once - mostly due to DS3's god awful auto-save system which put me back in the exact same spot running away from the two Regenerators at least 13 or 14 different times before I finally found a co-op partner to finish the game with.
Fortunately, Visceral seems to have been allowed to actually apply some creativity to this franchise again by making the Awakened DLC. It introduces another psychological aspect to the horror that had been floating around as a suggestion for Dead Space 4, and it's certainly more difficult than the vanilla game. The story clears up one cliffhanger from the end of the game, and of course, ends the franchise (currently) at an even worse, more gigantic cliffhanger.
It’s quite clear that EA tried to please too many audiences at once while really aiming this title at a different group of people than the group that wanted it. You simply can’t do that in a sequel, much less at the end of a trilogy. The third game in a series, where all the games are directly connected and still telling the same story, is not the appropriate time to try to remarket a franchise towards casuals.
Especially when that game only exists because the core gamers bought and supported the first two entries.