Gory Line:
Hey, there's a lot of spoilers here so stop what you're reading now and skip on over to the next bit. So what's the story you ask? Or I'm assuming that you are, you are aren't you? I hope so... otherwise what am I doing with my life? The story begins with a recap, which I hate, to me recaps are for people with goldfish memories and a good story should be able to use reminders through the course of the game. Dead Space 3, however, seems to want to distance itself from the first two games as much as possible, while keeping the core concepts. The core concepts being necromorphs, markers, Unitology and humans being their general diabolical selves. The initial story is just terrible, I'm afraid. Issac has gotten over his dead girlfriend from the last two games, but has new girl troubles as his new girl Ellie has run off as Issac once more spiraled into hopelessness. He's suddenly confronted with two soldiers, in his apartment, who tell him he's humanity's last hope, and must come to a far off planet to kill the necromorphs, also Ellie happens to be there too, which is good incentive. There's also the problem of Unitology, which has since become the greatest religion in the universe, and has also overthrown the government and also want Clark dead because he's the only one who can stop convergence... even though everyone is fully aware of what that is, I assume, I mean the last game was... oh wait there was only two survivors and the government probably covered up the disappearance of millions of people, which is lucky. There's a slight struggle, then we're whisked off to the other side of the universe where Ellie happens to be, to find the source of the Marker signal and destroy it, plus save Ellie, and avoid convergence, if at all possible. At this point the story sort of dies, one of the soldiers turns out to be Ellie's boyfriend, and everything revolves around that little love-triangle for a while. The necromorphs and the end of all humanity takes a backseat to the fact that two guys love one girl, I suppose zombies, an alien race and a suicide cult just isn't as interesting as who gets to home with Ellie at the end of the day. There's also the 200 year old remnants of a confederate-like space army to navigate around... but who cares about that when Ellie's involved with some other man! Remember Nicole? No, Issac doesn't either. She isn't even mentioned in the game despite her necrotic soul stalking Issac for most of his damn life. In fact the whole psychological aspect of the necromorph is dropped, except for one Sauronesque moment. Meaning that there's no breakdown of the mental states of our friends, or enemies, which should have been the route for the imminent betrayal, but instead everyone was logical and normal to the bitter end, meaning all the stupid and evil things they did was of their own volition, only the 200 year old soldiers seemed to be effected by the psychological effects. This could possibly be explained by the fact there is no marker, but as we know the signal in this area is the 'source' of the marker's power so therefore the psychological effects should be at their greatest. Really the story just doesn't have that much effort in it, and it feels like the game is trying to make up for that in action, but the trouble there is that the action isn't even as compelling as it should be, which is a shame because I really like this franchise.

Maimplay:
The gameplay should be similar to the last two games, right? Wrong. You'd have thought they would have kept everything the way it's always been, but nope. Universal ammo makes a return, destroying the need to maintain your inventory, and weapons have been changed from standardised weaponry with mods to non-standard weapons that you create yourself, with mods. The trouble is that it's all experimental and there's a good chance that you'll end up making weapons that are terrible for the next situation, it's annoying really because you can only hold two weapons and sometimes the distances between benches is too far with inferior weapons. The weapons themselves aren't as strong as they claim to be, even high powered weapons will take their sweet time when it comes to chopping limbs and as a result they've lost some of that iconic Dead Space strategy and feeling. The other problem is the layout of the levels, someone clearly had a thing for cramped conditions and tight spaces, because there's not a single moment I can recall where I had a lot of room to move around, apart from one boss fight. I understand part of the excitement is quick thinking and fast reactions, but when every fight is in obscured hallways where's the challenge or the variation? The only possible point was the open areas of the ice fields but they ruined that chance by having the necromorphs burrow up towards you and then jump out at close range... I mean that's something new, but seems like a waste of all that space. The other annoying new gameplay aspect they've provided is things appearing out of nowhere, running up behind and stabbing you in the back. I mean I know the last two games didn't allow you to stand still in a room, but rooms were at least sometimes wide enough to give you a chance to move, and the weapons were useful for different situations. The third bad thing about the game is the loss of it's linear storyline for a somewhat sandboxesque part in the beginning and secondary missions. In the first two games you didn't have time to waste, you had to get to the next checkpoint or repair the next part because people were dying and you only had so much oxygen and the necromorphs were behind you and ammo is low! Deadspace 3 is more; 'Hey, I know humanity is dying, the government's been overthrown, a suicide cult is out to get us, there's zombie aliens everywhere, we only have so much time before all our enemies get to the Marker source but... would you mind going to this place we have no need to go to, because I'm getting some sort of binging noise on my radio.' Don't get me wrong the secondary missions are pretty cool, but I don't know why they couldn't have all taken place on the one ship, as slight detours of the main mission, rather than being on ships, or places, that we didn't really need to explore. You know, exactly like they did in the first and second game, or even as they did in Bioshock. These are things we should have stumbled onto ourselves, rather than getting told to go out of out way while the zombies wake up and the cultists get their snipers into position. The game doesn't even start to feel like Dead Space until you get onto the planet, defeating the purpose of even having set half the game in space in the first place. I mean if you can't keep the game's namesake nice and interesting for the players why do you think throwing them down onto a ice planet is going to make the dull repetitive gameplay anymore interesting? You just ripped several cool game mechanics right out; oxygen hazards, zero gravity, unpredictability of necromorph movements and entry points, plus the possibility of shooting glass and shooting monsters out into space, saving your own hide. In fact, even as I'm writing this, I just realised that it doesn't matter anyway, because the game ignored these core mechanics throughout this section of the game. And when they were used they were just repeating the same elements that we're used to, you would think with zero gravity they could come up with something more interesting than rotating fan blades. If I had realised that the game would spend most of its time on a planet I would have never bothered to upgrade my oxygen capacity.

So what do we get? You wonder, aloud, so aloud I can hear you across the internet. Well we get a nice icy planet with a new hazard in the form of coldness, to begin with, but like half an hour later you'll be wearing a new suit that completely nullifies this problem, you'll never go cold again, despite all the icy goodness we still have to go through. There will also be new necromorphs, sorta (I'll get to this later), falling rocks, a few puzzles, more cramped spaces, a reoccurring boss monster (because that's always fun) and another new hazard in the form of acid. The problems with all these new things are many, and mostly these problems are caused by the fact that while many interesting new elements have been added they have been limited down to so very few instances in the game I wonder why they even bothered adding them in in the first place. For example, the acid appears for two scenes in the game, once as not a hazard and then again as a real hazard and only if you accidently step on it for the three minutes of game time that it's actually in the way. There's a laser grid that appears for one simple puzzle. There's these awesome pads that power up your stasis module... at the very end of the game. There's three, maybe four simple obstacles you need to avoid, using your stasis module, and you really don't even need to time it... and... that's really about it, well not all of it, there's some really excellent boss fights (Not the drill one, that was stupid) and some really cool areas to explore (Like a chest cavity) and we learn some interesting facts about necromorphs (also available in a badly written book, I mean so bad that I haven't even finished it, it was just terrible, I got to the bit where things were about to kick off and that's near the end of the book so I just gave up... in fact I think the writer for that book might have came up with the story for Dead Space 3 because both of their stories really take place at the friggin' end). The problem isn't that the game has nothing new to offer, it has tonnes of new things to offer those who might be jaded and bored of the series, the problem is that these new elements aren't used to great effect, at least not in the main game. The side missions probably use the new hazards in brilliant ways, and the few that I have done did have some seriously good, enjoyable moments... but that's not the Dead Space way. The side missions being more enjoyable than the main mission is a serious problem, and they should have been instead incorporated into the main game. The engine that you need should have been crashed straight through the Greely's hull, and that is why Issac should have to consider landing on that ship. The rigged to explode mid section of that other ship, the side mission with the hillbilly, should have been a real issue for Issac to have to clear, rather than to just skip past on his way to the front of the ship. He's being pursued by regenerative necromorphs but he has time to saunter around a hillbilly deathtrap because there's a chance there might be something good at the other end? That's not Issac, that's not Clark, in the past two games he's defined himself as a man who will not take stupid risks unless the stupid risk is the only way to save himself or others.

The bosses, if you could call them that, were proper traditional Dead Space nemesis, worthy of Issac's attention. I had no problem with these guys, other than the reoccurring flesh spider, but the only thing I could fault the game on is the lack of boss monster becoming normal monster. Like the big shelled guys, or the regenerating monsters were in the first and second games. It would have broken up the repetitive string of necromorph forms coming at us if, say, the Spider was killed on it's first encounter, and then smaller weaker ones appeared from time to time with the mobs. So now we come to my next bugbear, yep, the new necromorphs.

So far every game has introduced a new type of necromorph, the first game had a steady supply of the base model of praying mantis-like human zombies, as well as baby monsters, big armed shelled things, reaper like monsters, giant arms, screaming wall creatures, regenerative necromorphs, thin men that turned out to be hundreds of little critters and things that explode as well. The second game took all of these things, made them into something slightly different, and also brought out new, frustrating models. The hide-and-go-seek horsed faced men, the jumping around wall critters, the three legged horrors and new and improved wall monsters... on the ceiling! Not much, but these new things did offer challenging new gameplay and a need to watch the ceiling a little more closely. Dead Space 3 has three new monsters; alien necromorphs, humans that split in two and hungry humans. Initially the hungry humans were an awesome addition, a swarming necromorph... but then the swarms just got bigger and bigger then very boring, very fast. The fact that they're just husks borrowed from Mass Effect only increases my hatred for them. They really should have been one shot kill monsters but no it takes a few shots to the chest to kill them and you can't really aim because now there's ten on you and what once was an arm is now a stomachhandlegchest. The splitting humans were annoying from the word go and essentially are just the parasite Spanish zombies from Resident Evil 4, except instead of their heads sprouting tendrils it's their waists and the results are either a torso dragging itself over to you, or a pair of legs walking backwards to stab at thee. They're just an annoying addition that wouldn't even be annoying if we had the original weapons and not the new, difficult to aim, terrible at cutting multiple limbs weapons. The alien necromorphs were kinda cool... but stupid because they appear at the very end of the game, don't have a cool or even ominous introduction and are not frightening. Sure they're big, have a wild cry and are probably very strong (never got close enough to find out) but they're slow, easy to shoot with stasis, and since we have no real idea of what the aliens should look like we don't understand just how twisted and mutilated this necromorph is, I mean, the statues of the real aliens look more frightening than this thing.

Depth Space:
All that being said, a lot of my concerns and anger management issues have been addressed. There's several modes in the game that allows for replayability, and a few more things for you to unlock as well. There's a version that allows you to play with the traditional weaponry, for example, which makes you wonder why that wasn't available in the main game if they realised that's what people want. There are side quests too, some of them obvious and others which need to be discovered via text or audio messages. Side quests do lead to resources and weapon parts, which you may or may not want, but also lead to new unlockable suits, which don't increase battle readiness but look a lot better than the initial costume. And while I do complain about it, I do like the customisable weapons and the ability to create a multi situational gun, for example, my rivet handgun that also lobbed fireballs, was very useful against the head necromorphs... but my rivet shotgun with electro attachment turned out to be ineffective against everything. I just wish so much wasn't left out the main game for the 'end-game', that the stasis panels at the end were more extensive, or that they had made an area toxic for your oxygen meter, or used acid and reverse-grav plates more extensively... mostly I just wish they had fired their layout designer.

Scenes of a Graphic Nature:
The graphics were good, no complaints. The animations believable and scary, as shown by the fact whenever I see something vaguely poked around from a corner I jump and assume it's a horse-faced hide-and-go-seek necromorph... and have been doing so for that past three days. My only real concern was the constant use of darkness and poor lightening, which makes me wonder what they were trying to hide, possibly the repetition of certain sets pieces and items, and while there is a lot of 'different' areas on the planet that look exactly the same as the other bunkers, I don't mind that so much because it's an army base, you would expect some amount of regimental uniformity. This doesen't so much come under graphics as it does layout though, but since the layout needs graphic's I'm adding in my grievance on the subject right here right now. I Hate The Layouts For This Game. I really believe that if they had opened up just one or two of the areas, tossed in a few mobbing necromorphs, or dodging necromorphs and let me have some space to run around shooting wildly in the direction of limbs, I would have been a happier gamer. Someone really though cramped conditions were the way to go, and I understand that on a military ship that would be the case, but why did they do the same for the planet? Why did they do the same in a city built by giant, Giant, space aliens as well? Do the space aliens feel nice and cosy in their tiny, itty, bitty spaces? Maybe that's why they went extinct... There was a boss fight with a MASSIVE drill and swarming necromorphs with enough space to not even dodge in, or you were drill meat. Layouts Bad. Bad Layouts. What is amazing, and I will say this for every Dead Space game, is the way props are used. A spacesuit, a lampshade, a hat... these are just ordinary objects to you and I but in the hands of a Dead Space designer they're suddenly the necromorph of your nightmares. The designers must have spent a lot of time at Monster University because they certainly know how to take everyday items and make them startle you as you catch them in the corner of your eye.

No one can Hear you:
The sound was outright horror, I mean it was perfect for the scenes and kept a constant pitch of terror in the air. Scary violins are getting a little annoying though, it's getting to the point were we're hearing them in every horror flick, game and cartoon, but until someone can make a xylophone sound scary I guess we're stuck with jumping everytime there's a furious violinist. And once more I have to show my utter amazement at the ability of the game designers to turn simple noises, like a door shutting, into the gutteral growl of a undead, mutated human. I will say that they have gone for some cheap shots by adding the occasional jumpy moment in the form of an advertisement doll and a pinball machine, these are something I expect from a bad horror movie, I want my Dead Space fear to come from soul wrenching moments and obscene screams of the damned.

Diffi-Cult-y:
I liked the difficulty on Dead Space and Dead Space 2, Dead Space 3 however seems to have decreased it's difficulty level by removing more or less all of the instant kill moments. The only instant kills come in the obvious forms, with the necromorphs being less of a hazard than usual, this eventually becomes clear when you look at the new game modes, one of which will restart you at the very beginning if you die... so it seems that they've dulled the edge of the necromorphs, and therefore what makes them scary, just to introduce what we would used to have called a mini-game or arcade version. "House of the Dead Space 3" must be very difficult, I imagine, assuming you can't get past the drill in one go... or are very slow at shutting off your xbox before an auto-save. Seeing how my character died twice from falling through the world, I can tell this will be a very frustrating experience.

Turn It Off:
I wouldn't say this is a very addictive game, I imagine most people will want to power through so they can get their answers to the big questions in the series, but I can spoil that in the conclusion if you want to read on. I mean I understand that people will want to play the different game modes and play co-op with their friends, look for evey audio and text log and maybe even try to finish the impossible mode but, to be honest, I really think people will play this realise how much better the first two versions were and go back and play them. Dead Space 3 is a good starter, but it's not the main course that Dead Space 1 and 2 had on offer. There's bigger and better games to get addicted to... and smaller and weaker games as well.

Convergence:
In conclusion, I hate this game. There I said it, I didn't like it, I hate that it'll probably wind up being the gateway for more and more bad quality Dead Space games and likely ruin the franchise. Dead Space had it's own humour and way of doing things that was systematically attacked and ripped out during the course of Dead Space 3. Sure Dead Space 2 had some rough edges and rebelled against it's father, but Dead Space 3 feels like the work of a pragmatist who had a lot of great ideas worked on those parts and then hired a guy to connect them all up, with cramped layouts. This is mostly felt in the way that, despite being on two discs, there feels like there less content than what was available in the previous games. Despite a few new interesting elements the game doesn't seem to know how to deliver it's unique abilities to it's audience and relies on the hope that it's name alone might be enough to keep it's players interested... Now that I think about it this is typical of this game developer's pattern. The first game is amazing (Mass Effect, DragonAge, Dead Space), the second game is okay or at least interesting, carrying on the promises and actions in the first game (Mass Effect 2, Dead Space 2) and then the final game ignores everything up to that point, changes the gameplay massively and then tries to pretend this is the interesting story conclusion it was aiming for the whole time (Mass Effect 3, Dead Space 3, Dragonage 2).