*Warning, minor plot
spoilers below
There are few games I stop playing before I complete them
and now, Dead Space 3 has joined that small group in my games library. Not
because it’s functionally broken in some way or terrible in quality, but due to
a lack of atmosphere and genuine scares.
Dead Space is one of the very few AAA franchises that considers
itself to be horror. And yet with each
new title, it moves further away from the shocks and scares of the original and
towards being an action orientated title. And there’s no reason or need for the
change of direction as the original had a good balance between action and
horror that made it unique.
A lack of atmosphere and pacing are the main culprits for
the missing terror. Instead of trying to build any tension, it relies almost solely
on jump-scares to the point where you can predict the appearance of every
enemy. To compound the problem, the Necromorphs have had a significant speed
upgrade which gives you about a second to kill fresh enemies before they jump
on you and take a chunk out of your health.
That may seem unfair and often I did feel cheated when
entering a room; being immediately jumped on with little time to react. But to
give you a hand with your quick draw, the audio goes absolutely ballistic with loud,
sharp noises to announce the appearance of every enemy. The sound design
completely robs the moment of any shock value and instead becomes a cue you
rely on to progress. There’s no moment where the audio tries to build tension,
it’s just flicked on and off like a child playing with a light switch.
Dead Space 3 also fails to make the best use of space. In
fact only about a third of the game is set in space with the rest of the game
taking place on the snow planet of Tau Volantis. And the developers missed a
great opportunity to use the most terrifying scenario of the series. The
moments when Isaac has to step into a decompressed room, or walk out onto the
hull of a ship. These were brilliant examples of when the sound design
perfectly complemented the atmosphere of the game.
All you can hear in these moments are dull thumps of your
footsteps and thuds of your weapon discharging. You have to depend on your
other senses as the Necromorphs can sneak up to you unheard. It was these
moments that put me on edge, sweeping the room to find enemies before they
found me. I didn’t even want to step into these areas.
And there wasn’t a single moment like this in Dead Space 3.
There are some interesting points where you can jet around freely in space
between the wreckage of an old fleet to scavenge parts. However the fact that
you can simply fly through space means that enemies can barely attack you. I
often didn’t even notice that Necromorphs were firing at me because they couldn’t
hit. Otherwise the homing space mines were the biggest concern, and they fail
to be any real threat as they kindly announce their approach with loud warning
beeps; like angry trucks trying to reverse into you.
The new upgrade system is the largest change in Dead Space 3.
Notoriously done to cram in EA’s micro-transactions so you can upgrade faster.
EA did claim that micro-transactions wouldn’t be necessary and in fairness to
them, it’s absolutely true! Once again you quickly acquire your trusty Plasma
Cutter and it’s still a perfectly viable weapon for the entire game. All the
other parts you pick up along the way allow you to craft other weapons to add a
little more flavour to your arsenal. The big flaw is that the crafting system
is very confusing. It took me a while to work out all the possibilities and how
valuable certain resources were. Compounding the problem is the lack of
detailed tooltips which led me to creating a few poor weapons and adding
useless upgrades.
I might return to Dead Space 3 when there’s a lull in the
release schedule just for the sake of completing it. I feel that Visceral Games
has taken a wrong turn and need to rethink their approach to horror if they
want really scare players. Otherwise the franchise will become just another
third person action game; a very competent third person action game, but
lacking the elements that used to define it.
