Dead Space 3 has been reduced to twitch gunplay and cheap jump scares.
I don't mean to say that action fans won't enjoy the game, but fans of the series thus far will most likely be a little disappointed by its new take on deep space horror. You'll be fighting the same old Necromorphs in the same old tight corridors, only this time they're harder to tell apart due to the games lack of focus on enemy design and concepts and intense focus on simple derivative shooting mechanics seen in countless third person action games.
I will be honest, I did expect the game to evolve, and, of course, be more of the same because it is the third game in a series. But what irked me the most was the painfully obvious publisher pressure on Visceral Games to create something for a wider audience, and abandon what they set out to do originally: to bring back survival horror. Instead, they drove it back into hiding much like the Resident Evil series has done.
Isaac Clark has at his disposal a plethora of weapons, items, and crafting combinations thanks to the games immense catalogue of guns that can be assembled and modded by finding parts, upgrades, and scavenge throughout the game. The problem is that you will never see more than two or three of them because, firstly, there is no need for all of them, and secondly, most of the guns are useless and less effective than the series failsafes like the Plasma Cutter and Line Gun. Sure, you could probably find a nifty combo that sounds cool and is effective, but the combat is so simple and frequent that you'll find yourself not really caring what you're shooting things with, but that they die as fast as possible so you can get on with the game. Enemies are roadblocks to be destroyed; there is no joy in the combat as there was in previous games because it's annoyingly straightforward and redundant this time around.
Of course, all this combat will be worth it for the riveting story, right? Wrong. You're Isaac, and some madman named Danik is ploying to use the markers to destroy the human race because he thinks that's what evolution intended before Isaac got in the way. Isaac kills madman Danik, loses another girlfriend, saves the world, and that's a wrap. That's it. The story is just there to keep you moving though the combat, which is just there to keep you moving through the story, which you'll eventually forget about anyway.
It really is disappointing because I loved the first and second Dead Space games because they played on one another and Dead Space 2 evolved to be a much more diverse and complex game, while retaining it's horror and atmospheric themes without overshadowing them with shallow, mindless combat. At least in the first two games, the enemies you fight have some place in the world they are in, and even a little backstory to go along with them. In Dead Space 3 they are just there. They have no place and don't fit in. Even when Isaac gets down to the ice planet, the enemies are the same. You would think that a new planet would have had some impact on the evolution and adaptiveness of the Necromorphs and the opportunity to create a whole new world inside a world was perfect. And yet, all that changed was that it snowed a little.
In a nutshell, the only real difference between the third game and the first two is the advanced weapon crafting system, and even that becomes tiresome, as once you have what you like, collecting scavenge and finding junk becomes pointless.
There are also new suits, but each suit is purely for cosmetic appeal. Your rig itself can be upgraded like in previous games, but it applies to all the suits. So by wearing a new suit, you are just changing what Isaac looks like, carrying over all rig upgrades. Everything is universal, even ammo is the same for every gun, so item management is virtually pointless. Health packs can be created, as well as ammo.
Dead Space 3 is not an awful game, it is simply boring and tiresome. Half way into the game I lost the urge to play further because nothing new was happening and there were no new surprises. There are only four boss fights, one of which is against a giant drill, two are against the same boss, and the final boss is extremely easy and can be beaten in less than 5 minutes on the normal difficulty setting.
If you are looking for a third person action shooter than Dead Space 3 is mildly entertaining and should pull you through a weekend with little fuss, but it's far from its predecessors and further from a survival horror experience, much like Resident Evil 5 was from its predecessors.