Dead Space 3

The third entry into the Dead Space series sees Isaac Clarke once again having to battle against mutated or "evolved" beings while dealing with a religious fanatic who believes the markers will unlock the truth of life. You'll have to battle your way through your home town, spaceships, and a frozen planet to try to put an end to the markers. There will be many enemies and obstacles in your path, but if you're smart and careful you might be able to change the future of man kind.

Graphically this game is top notch. You can see the love and attention that was bestowed upon this game. There were a couple of different generic area pieces that were used over and over again, but the vast majority of the time you were so drawn into what was going on around you that you didn't feel cheated. The enemies, both small and large were gruesome, frightening, and really kept me on my toes.

The music, as always was creeky, the voice work was very well done. I wish that the lips synched a bit better when you had those cut scenes of dialog, but for the most part it was at least close. I did also like the fact that they definitely used directional audio in some parts of the game, but there were a couple of times that even right up on the audio source you could barely hear it.

The controls took a bit to get used to. I played it on the PlayStation 3 so reload was square, use a med-pack was circle, and using a stasis pack was triangle. Your universal button was X. For some reason my mind kept switching the circle and square buttons so I lost quite a few med-packs. Overall though the aiming felt good, a bit loose, but overall it worked, could have something to do with me mainly using a shotgun, but for the most part I felt there was definitely a fine precision feel to it.

So you are once again forced into action. Everyone hates you but at the same time there are those out there who either need your help desperately or want to end you. So as you can see right off the bat you're in a very interesting position. There is a good chunk of game to play, which made me really happy, and there's even Co-op play for the first time ever. I also found the side-missions all refreshing and sometimes stressful. They definitely allowed you to sneak a peek at what extra goodies you could get to help you out in the long run. As I stated before I really did like the enemies I had to face. There were acid spitting ones, that if they hit you would slow you down, then you had the electrically charged ones that were almost spinning out of control while moving at lightning speeds. Then there were some of the oldies but goodies, the little baby looking monster that crawls around and then reveals three tenticles that fire projectiles at you, the clawed man that just loves to run at you and try to stab you to death, and of course if you shoot out his leagues he'll still come after you, crawling away on the floor.

I did find that by the end of the game I had a ton of different pieces to make weapons, but I had grown so used to the setup that I had, and had invested in so many upgrades that I didn't want to tinker around with what else I could make, and part of me is saddened by that because there's part of me who thinks the further into a game you get the more powerful the weapons you should have at your disposal, but this game seemed to give you the random luck of the draw where you might be able to assemble the best gun for you near the first half of the game, and then all you're left with are making sure you put the best upgrades on that weapon.

I know that there are reports that they dialed back some of the spookiness in the game, and they did, but at least they left a little bit of that popping out of no where shock that I love to have while playing games, so at least I still had moments of pure terror. I guess I should probably wrap this up, and I will, this is a solid game, a perfect example of continuing a strong series. I'll be interested to see if there will be a Dead Space 4, it could really go either way, but I'm leaning towards another one making an appearance simply on the fact that the game continues to be a strong game. So with all that out of the way I have to give this game a 9.2 out of 10.