DEAD SPACE 3

To be honest, before anybody got hands on this game I was rather shocked reading statements like "This game takes us back to the roots" in several reviews. I mean: Is this the 7th sequel already? What the hell? This is the 3rd part of the series! Please don't make such a drama out of it! Anyway, Dead Space 3 is an absolutely great game. While I think in several points this game doesn't come close to the second part - the best so far, in my opinion - many new features, above all supporting a coop-campaign, make this game clearly outstanding.

Why doesn't it come close enough to the second part? I think mainly because of the lack of atmosphere. Ok, to be fair, because the game was actually very long given all its optional missions, it might be the same amount of atmosphere than in the other parts. If you still don't know what I am talking about: The snow/mountain area! - I hated it, seriously! This blurry, white and foggy environment is not what I want to experience in Dead Space. Already the first trailers made me fear that this new environment could destroy the game. My only hope was that it was as short as possible - unfortunately, it was not. About a good third of the game you just wander around in this cheap and boring place. You can't see shit and the few monsters that simply hop out of the snow (it just can't get cheaper than that) only annoy you. If this was one small location with a maximum of one hour of playtime, ok... but like I said, you have to stay in this boring glacier for about a minimum of five hours! Is it so hard to understand, that we want be on space stations or space ships? - Where it's dark and spooky, where console lights flash and you can never be sure if it is a monster or just a computer terminal...

Besides that I really don't have much to criticize... Ok, I do: The story was... well, wrong. I mean it felt wrong and boring. I guess it was just badly told, that's all. It was clear the writers had to come up with some bigger plot behind the marker(s). That's all logical, justified and started already in the second part... still, it's remains boring how they did it. You know what I mean? (Spoiler Alert) - First part: One marker, Second part: Another marker and in the third part suddenly the whole universe is full of markers... YAWN! But even that they could have pulled off, if only they didn't have so many and so impersonal characters in that game! Honestly, I felt like all they told was "Blablabla, marker,... blablabla". I hated every single one of the characters of the story (except Isaac) and I was always on the brink of skipping every single cut scene of the game, because they annoyed me so much!

But that's really all. The rest of the game is pure enjoyment; The new weapon craft system is amazing and gives you a ton of options to fight how you like to. Although it is very hard to get into, and the whole Bench-Menu could have been designed way easier and comprehensible. Bonus objectives enrich the gaming experience and easily double the overall playtime. The graphics look great, the fear factor is as good as it can obviously get for contemporary games, besides the snow passage also the setting is good with a nice soundtrack and above all the coop feature makes Dead Space 3 an absolute must for any decent gamer!

I just hope the next parts will be even darker and a lot more frightening than this.