Now I played the first section of the game about a month ago, and there were a couple things that irked me about it back then.
Watch Die Hard 5 Online : As long as mankind has existed, our base instincts have included survival and tool creation. Visceral Games' latest entry in its acclaimed horror franchise expertly taps into these core desires. Players still creep through dim corridors while blasting limbs off alien zombies, but the scope of survival has expanded. What you bring to battle is completely up to you thanks to the deep weapon-crafting system. Protagonist Issac Clarke can also suit up with a buddy this time in two-player co-op. These features culminate into one of the most rewarding video games I've ever played. Most of Dead Space 3's preview coverage has highlighted hero Isaac Clarke's harrowing quest on the inhospitable ice planet, Tau Volantis.
Watch Beautiful Creatures Online : I was surprised and pleased to play several exciting acts that take place before his trip to the Hoth-like snowball. One section made me feel like an astronaut more than any other game has, and I loved it. Floating around the debris of destroyed space ships is surreal yet calming. This zero-gravity, focused part of the game is more open than previous Dead Space entries, allowing you to shuttle between sites and accept optional missions. Tau Volantis has a similar structure, sans the zero gravity. Straying off the critical path and accepting side quests regularly rewards players with goodies like ammo, health, and precious resources.
Watch A Good Day To Die Hard Online : Unlike the first two games, players gather resources like tungsten and scrap metal instead of money. These materials are used to make extra ammo, upgrade your suit, craft weapons, and more. Scavenging much-needed resources is just as satisfying as finding that critical health pack when things get rough. Even better, you acquire little robots that troll areas for goodies and automatically return to your workbench, so every trip to a bench is like Christmas. Sorting through all your items to see what new weapons you can craft or tweak is a worthwhile endeavor that gives you a greater sense of ownership over your equipment.
Watch Warm Bodies Online : Previous Dead Space games had players purchase new weapons, but Dead Space 3 gives you one gun to start with and sets you loose with the best weapon-crafting system I've ever encountered. Weapon components like gun frames, plasma cores, and ammo modifiers can combine into countless configurations. I thought I had optimized my resources by cobbling together a decent line cutter that I used for half the game. Then I spent 15 minutes reconstructing my main firearm from the ground up, and boy was I wrong. Your upgrade circuits and components are salvaged when you dismantle weapons, encouraging experimentation. I started mopping up necromorphs with my devastating custom plasma cutter/flamethrower hybrid, complete with stasis-enhanced rounds.
Watch A Good Day To Die Hard Online : Dead Space 3 is still creepy, but this entry is more action-packed than previous games. That's a good thing. Isaac's intuitive new dodge roll makes avoiding the larger nercromorph attacks more manageable. His enhanced mobility is extra helpful during gigantic, tense boss battles that force players to think strategically about their stasis and telekinetic powers. Battles may be frequent and frenzied, but the game does a great job of building suspense. Battling necromorphs along Tau Volantis' frozen surface while your body temperature plummets is thrilling. The game also boasts one of the most intense, Lost-style crash sequences in gaming.
Watch Breaking Dawn Part 2 Online : The only notable speed bump occurs in the final act of the game, which has tedious backtracking and difficult battles that feel forced. Otherwise, the pacing is masterful. Every event in the game, including the aforementioned crash sequence, is playable with a friend via online-only co-op. One player is Isaac, the other is Carver, a no-BS military man. The game tosses more enemies at players in co-op mode, but having an extra gun makes the deadly mission more fun and decidedly easier (we recommend playing co-op on hard). A handful of missions require you to play cooperatively, and are gated off in single-player.
Watch Die Hard 5 Online : These missions reward co-op partners with worthwhile bonus story details and loot, but solo players aren't being denied anything critical. Players controlling Carver see unique, twisted hallucinations that players controlling Isaac will not. The bizarre, asymmetrical experience makes co-op feel true to the series and helps flesh out Carver's background. Also, players gather independent loot but can still share items (including weapon blueprints), which streamlines the whole experience. The main hitch in co-op lies in the cutscenes, which awkwardly pan away from Carver to focus on Isaac. In one such moment Carver miraculously teleports from Isaac's side to the ship they were both trying to board.
Watch Identity Thief Online : Visceral laid the foundation for a terrific horror series with the first Dead Space. The clean, HUD-less presentation, dismemberment-focused gunplay, and expertly crafted derelicts have made each successive entry feel ahead of its time. Dead Space 3 evolves the winning formula into a title not only befitting of the fantastic series, but also one of the best games of this generation. Dead Space is a series I've grown quite fond of in recent months, as I finally got the chance to play through the first two games in their entirety not long ago. What I love about those games is that they understand survival horror; they realize that what makes a video game scary is the sense of dread caused when your character feels underpowered. In an era where gaming is constantly evolving to make players feel more and more powerful, Dead Space brought us back to a time when scavenging every dark corner and constantly counting and recounting your bullets actually meant something. And I will always love that. So, having played through Dead Space 3, can I honestly say that it preserves that special horror sauce I crave? Well, the short answer is not really.
If you want the detailed report, you can read that here, but the short version goes something like this: Dead Space 3 just isn't a horror game. It's not scary. That sense of feeling underpowered is gone, as Isaac Clarke has been transformed from a lowly engineer to an all-out badass who mows down space marines as if they were mere dandelions on his proverbial lawn. Part of this is that you're given absurd amounts of ammo. I'm not joking here: At one point, I had over 2,000 rounds in one of my guns. That eliminates the scavenger element that was a hallmark of the first two games. Here's an example: Do you remember that scene in Dead Space 2 where you were in a storage warehouse filled with crates and Stalkers (the fast-moving, hidey, jumpy Necromorphs)? Because your ammo supply was so low, that scene was terrifying. Dead Space 3 has a scene that replicates that almost exactly, only this time you've got so much ammo that you've been going around shooting cans and computer monitors willy-nilly, just for the hell of it. Even though Dead Space 3's version of this scenario is almost exactly the same as Dead Space 2's, 3's isn't the slightest bit scary because you can run in and stasis the things, then blast them away with your godly piles of bullets.
On top of it all, Visceral Games has created this incredible environment with the ice planet of Tau Volantis, and then has done very little with it. Even with the survival horror elements amputated, this was a phenomenal chance for the game to exploit the frozen weather for a different type of horror. Sure, there's a scene early on where you are fighting against the cold, having to watch your body temperature the same way you had to constantly watch your air gauge in the outer space sections of the first Dead Space, but you'll get a suit shortly thereafter that protects you against the cold. I just can't help but feel like there were several missed opportunities here. How about avalanches caused by the sound of your weapons, or ice patches where your footing is unstable, or frozen lakes where you can fall through the ice, etc.? The environment presented so many opportunities for pants-wetting survival moments, yet the game hardly uses any of those. Instead, we're presented with a story that includes space marines. Well, they're technically Unitology soldiers here, but no matter what they prefer to be called, beefy military dudes in space suits are just space marines in my book. And the crazy thing about these guys is that their aim is worse than the Storm Troopers in the original Star Wars trilogy. You'd think that professionally trained soldiers would have no problem taking out a half-insane engineer.