I remember playing Dead Space, the original franchise many months ago.
When I was playing it, my heart was filled with adrenaline, my eyes were scanning for Necromorphs and my trigger finger twitching to fire off a shot at every dreadful corner. I could feel the fear from Isaac Clarke: the protaganist who is the universe’s unluckiest system engineer with zero combat experience. In the original Dead Space, Isaac presents himself as a victim of circumstance. He is not Rambo going into the infested Ishimura guns ablazing, nor did he have powerful melee martial arts or moves to counter the Necromorphs’ attack. His leg movements are jerky, and his flailing arms and desperate stomps are punctated by his frantic screams. His weapons are mining tools with dreadfully limited ammo. His suit has dreadfully limited air supply. The stasis takes a long time to recharge and health packs have to be rationed. With all these limitations, Dead Space brings the genre of survival horror to its best. After all, character and gameplay limitations are what truly defines survival horror. To illustrate, a classic example from the genre: Resident Evil from 1996, evokes players with similar feelings of frustration and horror as they grapple with limited saves, pre-determined camera angles, limited ammo and carrying capacity.
(I can’t believe I got so scared of playing this then)
In the original Dead Space, players have to strategically dismember Necromorphs’ limbs, plan and conserve ammo and health packs while having the stressful urgency sometimes to get from place to place with the limited air supply. Needless to say, Dead Space was a challenging game. I recall the numerous times of cringing, writhing and flinching in discomfort while Isaac gets dismembered in more ways than he does to the Necromorphs (Watch this if you do not get what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIdkR85kpKs). While not as gruelling as Demon’s Souls, Dead Space offers a refreshing respite from the dumb-down games nowadays that aims to appeal to casual gamers. Survival-horror fans rejoiced and hugged each other at the revival of the genre with their iconic Resident Evil going into the track of being an action shooter.
(Notice the count at 75 seconds of precious air supply)
Fast forward many months later, and we see that Isaac transforming into a tired veteran and a reluctant hero in Dead Space 3. Like Isaac, Dead Space 3 is almost unrecognisable from its former self. Gone were many of the limitations that are so intricately tied to its survival horror roots: Isaac gains the fluid ability to roll, ammo and health packs are plentiful, the air supply is a amazing reservoir of 200+ seconds long from the start and the players get to easily craft overpowered weapons pretty early in the game. To take the horror down to its very bottom, you can even have a friend join you for co-op to pawn even the hardest enemies the game has to throw at you. The ambience was gone too. Isaac used to be a lone wolf navigating the echo-ey halls of Ishimura. You get the sense that he is alone and isolated, desperately trying to find ways to get to his girlfriend. Now, there’s constant communication with other NPCs that offer helpful but annoying banter to obstacles in your way (Oh…Fetch this, fetch that). Isaac became this bad-ass who can handle confidently and comfortably any shit the Marker universe can throw at him. You can almost imagine these lines from him in the franchise:
Dead Space: Isaac: OH NO! OH NOOOO, WTF IS THIS?? RUN! RUUUN!
Dead Space 2: Isaac: Oh F***! THESE AGAIN! F***! F***! F***!
Dead Space 3: Oh them…I dealt with them before. Shoot their limbs and stay off the vents. (He actually instructs the rest of the crew in the early part of the game)
It used to be hard to survive in Dead Space, now it is hard to die in Dead Space 3. The Normal mode is the old Easy, and the Hard mode the old Normal. But the gripe is not just on the damping down of difficulty (which could easily be adjusted at any point of the game). The original Dead Space is a merciless pee-in-your-pants survival horror; now it is a Left for Dead rush of enemies aiming to swarm you in claustrophobic areas. The previous strategy of being smart on spending your ammo and relying on your handy Plasma cutter couldn’t be used this time; its better now instead to hold your position and spray ammo using various killing machines at the swarm of enemies the game predictably throws at you.
(Timer? What timer? There’s plenty of air to go around at 300+ seconds)
Fans of the series would be quick to notice two major introductions that has the potential to derail the entire “Dead Space experience”. The first being the introduction of human enemies into a survival horror genre, the second involving the usage of microtransactions to bolster resources for weapon crafting. Human enemies are not what one would expect in a survival horror game, even if it fits the story narrative. Third person-shooters like Uncharted thrives in using human enemies for their Indiana Jones feel, while Dead Space 3 leaves the player puzzled over the seeming loss of the melee Necromorph charge/jump experience from the onset. The human AI in Dead Space 3 are pretty silly too, they do not flank positions nor take cover. It feels like something thrown in simply to pander to a greater crowd.
The usage of microtransactions becomes available once the bench is activated. Microtransactions give players the potential to get overpowered very quickly at the risk of breaking the game. While the difficulty is controlled in previous editions by delivering the schematics of various guns at pre-determined points in the story, with the option of microtransactions, it would be tempting for some players to quickly make themselves overpowered by pumping in real cash (or Rations) to develop a powerful weapon early on.
What does this spell for fans looking for the very same feelings of dread in the original Dead Space? To sum it up: Disappointing. The set pieces are very much underused and I could easily come up with a few scenarios where the tension could have been made better. For example, the pile of corpses that Isaac falls into at the start of the game could all be reanimated when the Marker became active, prompting Isaac to quickly move himself to the next area or risk definite death. Later in the game, when the thrusters from the old shuttle were triggered after the launch sequence were accidentally activated, a robotic countdown could be present to get players to move quickly before the entire place explodes or gets incinerated. It’s set pieces like those that would make the heart pound against the chest, but it quickly becomes tragic when you see all of those potential moments being squandered.
How about players looking for quite a bit of fun? Thankfully, Dead Space 3 is still a very fun game to play. The weapon crafting system gives the player a Diablo-loot collecting resource hoarding feel to it. Hardcore players looking to create their own killing machines have the chance to do so at the choice of selecting previous chapters and grind/get through their Scavenger Bots at a 10 min collection time/ exchange using Rations or real cash. After creating them, players could go to a Weapon test area to test out their newest Boomstick. Players could also rely on blueprints to build pre-set weapons in the game. It’s a pretty immersive and addictive experience that should be commended simply because there are so many combinations that Isaac could play with, and this is an area where Isaac remind us of his roots as an engineer. Though the Necromorphs fail to be horrifying this time, the experience they give in attempting to overwhelm you in numbers and you flashing out your own piece of bad-assery weapon is a pretty satisfying feeling. You know that they will rush you in all angles, and you feel comforted that the piece of metal you created in your hands can chew them into pieces.
(First I craft…..)
(Then I blast! Eat this!!)
To summarise:
Good points
Bad points:
- Microtransactions could break the game
- Disappointing lack of tension, horror and difficulty that betrays the series
- Checkpoints for saving are not well-distributed. Players have to devote a long period of time from one savepoint to another.
- Inclusion of human enemies and dreadful human AI.
I would give it a 7/10. It is decent, but doesn’t realised its potential.
