I beat Dead Space 1.

I nearly beat Dead Space 2, but I got so frustrated with one section near the end in which I was trapped in a room with regenerating Necromorphs that I shelved it. (This was after the amazing "needle/eye" bit.)

I come from a long history of loving sci fi, in particular, scary, gritty sci fi. Growing up I was more about "Aliens" than "Star Wars." "Event Horizon," as flawed as it was, still inspired a 20-something Cliff to implement similar scare gags in Unreal 1. "Sunshine" included, I love movies in which man explores space with his best intentions and all Hell breaks loose.

I'm quite familiar with the controversy over Dead Space 3 and the issue of horror versus action. Generally speaking, the scarier a game is the less empowered a player feels. Controls are often clunky on purpose, and the pacing is quite different from an action movie. It feels as if developer Visceral consciously gravitated the franchise more towards the "action" elements over the "suspense/horror" ones, and I'm quite okay with that. We look at the target audience for your average console game and it's often a cocky young male who doesn't want to be scared. Unfortunately, he's the guy who wants to get in and "fuck shit up."

Is it possible to blend the two? Yes, I do think it is, and those of you who have read my interviews in which I talk about how you could do that in Resident Evil have seen the thoughts. (Random idea 1: Alternate between two storylines, one is a first responder and the other is a terrified child.) Horror is HARD, and suspense is even HARDER. It requires a true director's hand. A nudge this way and a moment plays as comedic, a nudge too far the other way and it's not scary at all. To compound it all, making a scary moment is kind of like trying to tickle yourself. You think it's scary, but you're never sure until you test it on someone who has NEVER SEEN THE MOMENT.

(This is why James Wan is evolving into a great filmmaker. Apart from the slightly over the top 3rd act there are scares in his "Insidious" that work amazingly well.)

Regardless, I'm currently burning through the campaign of DS3 with my wife in co-op and it's still quite a bit of fun. The dynamic of using stasis and limb shooting in a co-op environment works surprisingly well. If there are surprises and scares to be had it's often the person who charges ahead LeeRoy Jenkins style who enjoys them. Grabbing a leg and impaling a foe is worth the effort, and it's gratifying.

I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the weapon crafting and upgrading system, to be honest. Generating circuits, crafting them, etc… I could have used a bit more hand holding there. (The UI borders on comedic at times when you're starting a game, with ROTATING METAL PANELS OF STUFF FLYING AT YOU EVERYWHERE!)

Overall game pacing is something that's really hard to get right; it's something that a lead campaign designer or overall lead designer are responsible for and that pacing doesn't let down. The game builds to a crescendo of exciting moments (often with ships crashing) and then it takes its time before getting back into combat. The vistas and skyboxes are breathtaking, and the weapons generally feel good. (One of the issues with making sci-fi weaponry is that the guns don't always look like guns. I know the series was going for more of a "mining equipment" vibe but I often have a hard time figuring out which gun is which when they're icons.)

And yes, there's a part when the game briefly feels like Lost Planet, but it's a welcome change of pacing from dark space corridor after dark space corridor. One of my personal quibbles with the game is the lack of memorable locations. There are just so many corridors; there aren't a lot of areas that can be defined as "the room with the N in it."

Oh, and as a side note the parts when you're in space flying around in your suit are suspenseful but somehow peaceful, if that makes any sense.

At the end of the day this franchise feels like it's starting as a solo experience, a solitary and confined horror game, and now it's evolving into much more than that. You can either fight it or embrace it. I choose the latter, as at the end of the day it's FUN. (We're about 50% through…the giant drill bit section was a highlight.)

p.s. In the 60$ disc based market horror doesn't fly—it's the ultimate "Campaign Rental" that's played for 2 days and traded in and I'm sure EA knows this. When we're fully digital we'll see more true horror games coming back. (Look at Amnesia and Slenderman on PC.)

Cliff Bleszinski is a game industry veteran. He blogs on Tumblr and can be found on Twitter at @therealcliffyb.

Republished with permission.

When it comes right down to it, Dead Space 3 is a game about standing in a corner and blasting aliens into bloody bits. I've been playing through the opening hours of the game, and despite recognizing the various problems mentioned in some reviews (including Tina's less-than-glowing review), I have to say that after six or so hours, I'm enjoying myself quite a bit.

Leaving aside the game's overarching successes and failings, I want to take a moment to go in-depth with the thing Dead Space does nigh-on peerlessly: this game knows how to stomp.

The thrill of stomping an alien into the floor is the primary reason I like Dead Space games. It has yet to get old. (I gather that given Dead Space 3's length, it might? But it hasn't yet.) Despite developer Visceral's insistence on adding detailed backstorthy, character-motivation and lore, only one Dead Space "story" captures my imagination, and it's this one: I'm backing up slowly, blasting away at horrifying creatures, hoping to violently dismantle them all before they get their massive, spiny hooks into me. That's it. That's literally the entire game, as far as I'm concerned. Everything else is just window-dressing.

I looked over my 2011 review of Dead Space 2 and found myself saying more or less the same thing:

Visceral has created a world in which things have real heft to them—metal body-suits contract and lock into place with satisfying clicks and pops, alien limbs are severed with disgustingly satisfying cracks, and mucus, blood and viscera splat and explode with palpable physicality. When Isaac stomps monsters beneath his feet, he begins to scream from behind his helmet, a panicked, desperate cry that's all but drowned out by the pounding of metal boots into flesh. Visceral Games, indeed.

The stomping in Dead Space 3 is just as good as in its predecessor. Sure, Isaac's motivation is murky, and he's a lump of a main character. Sure, the sidequests already feel kind of repetitive just a few hours in, and the jump-scares and large-scale encounters are entirely predictable. But sometimes I have to ask: when it feels this good to smash monsters to smithereens, who cares?

Watch this:

That combo move, which I have creatively named the "Kneecap-Then-Stomp," is my go-to tool for enemy destruction in the early goings. (I understand that I'll eventually be able to make weapons that far outstrip my current assault rifle/shotgun combo, but hey, so far this seems to work.) First, you shoot the enemy in the leg so that it falls onto the ground. Then, approach and stomp. Rinse and repeat until everything is dead.

Here, check out this extended cut of an encounter I survived during the game's second optional side mission:

I'm playing on normal difficulty, so it's easier for me to blast off limbs and close in for the stomp. Watch the way Isaac is animated, bringing his gun-arm up and throwing his leg down. It mirrors the urgency with which I'm mashing the shoulder-button, willing him to just crush this fucking thing so that I can whip my head up and deal with whatever fresh hell is likely onrushing.

In those moments, I feel vitally connected to the game and to Isaac, and I get a sense of just how disorienting it would be to begin frantically stomping while wearing a heavy suit of space-armor. Notice how the camera shakes when Isaac brings his boot down. Between the strobe-lights, the writhing monsters and the camera-jitters, it's all so desperate and chaotic and violent. And perhaps most impressive, it's seamless. The idea with these kinds of big games is that the craft will blend into the background and the player won't notice just how many people it took to make each part of a game work properly. And so it is with Isaac's stomp. But when I pause to think about how many different things had to work in harmony to make the stomp as awesome as it is, it's hard not to be impressed.

Clearly the folks who made Dead Space are aware of how much fun it is to stomp things. See that glowing case over there? Want to know what's inside? Better STOMP IT INTO DUST. The game also makes you stomp on dead monster-bodies to get more power-ups, which is at once an absurd concession to video-game logic (what, did the necromorph eat that extra ammo?) and an endearingly goofy concession to how much we like to stomp.

And okay, the sound. Audio director Nick Laviers and his team are killers. Every time I'll roll my eyes at another hackneyed plot development or grumble at a bit of backtracking, I'll survive an encounter and laugh to myself about how excellent it all sounded. (For more on the game's sound design, check out this cool video from Kill Screen and The Creator's Project.)

Check out the audio on Isaac's stomp:

YES. The boot just smashes into the ground, hitting just the right blend of the carom of the boot and the squish of necromorph-guts. (The scream at the end is another alien, by the way, not Isaac. He never gets that freaked out.)

I've been trying to figure out just what it is that makes me drawn to Dead Space games, sometimes despite myself, and the stomp best encapsulates it. I like how these games feel. The jury's out for me on Dead Space 3 as a whole—I haven't even landed on this ice planet that people seem to have such mixed feelings about, and I haven't sampled the co-op.

Last night on Twitter, I was talking about the game and Polygon's Arthur Gies asked me, with his tongue somewhat in his cheek, yeah, but how does the game make me feel? This was the best I could come up with on short notice:

That pretty much sums it up. The grapes are screaming, and I'm screaming, and as long as I keep stomping, it's a lot of fun. Stomp, stomp.

Some would contest whether or not Dead Space was ever a scary franchise, but most will agree that Dead Space 3 focuses more on being an action title. In a recent NowGamer interview, Dead Space 1 writer Antony Johnston explained why he thinks the added action emphasis occurred.

While admitting that the newer Dead Space games weren't really for him thanks to the action focus, he said that the emphasis was "a necessary evil in order to broaden the fan base."

"I know the developers always wanted to go bigger, in terms of scope. And I've mentioned before that the universe we created was huge, with lots of elements, which simply didn't make it into the first game.

"So to get that story told, to round out the universe, it was inevitable the settings and environments would open out a bit, become a bit more epic in scale."

Without the more epic scale Johnston claims that Dead Space would likely become "pretty dull."

What do you think, does Johnston have a point? It seems to me that regardless of what Dead Space "really is" (or was), there is a group of people that wish Dead Space 3 was more of a horror game. People who are upset to be cast aside for the sake of a wider audience, even.

Dead Space 3's Action Focus A 'Necessary Evil' - Dead Space 1 Writer [NowGamer]

…Literally!

This video from Prima Games shows how to get the "Devil Horns" weapon, which… well, it's actually just a foam finger. Like, from sporting events? Yeah. They say it's the most powerful weapon in the game. Makes sense.

To get it, you'll have to beat the game in classic mode. This is not the first time the Dead Space series has given us the finger. Nor, let's hope, will it be the last.

Via GameFront, here's how to take advantage of an exploit to farm unlimited resources in horror-survival game Dead Space 3, which came out yesterday for Xbox 360 and PS3.

This, of course, means you won't have to pay for microtransactions in the new EA-published game, which allows you to pay real money in exchange for resource packs. If you have the patience to farm forever, you can get the best weapons without shelling out any extra cash.

Which I suppose raises the question: is it unethical to take advantage of a glitch in order to avoid paying for downloadable content? I guess that's up to you.

Dead Space 3 Unlimited Resource Farming Glitch [YouTube]

The game itself may be dividing critics, but I'd hope there's one thing we can all agree on, and that's the fact that before the game's frozen wastelands could be played, they first had to be drawn by some very talented people.

We've featured Patrick's work here before, but now that Dead Space 3 is available at retail, he's been cleared to release and share with us a whole ton of artwork, most of which is presented here at wallpaper scale.

You can see more of Patrick's stuff at his personal site.

I'm not a Dead Space guy. Oh sure, the series is great, but Fatal Frame and Silent Hill are more my speed when it comes to pants-wetting horror. But you know what would make me a Dead Space guy? Absurdist spin-offs and mods.

How about a survival-horror game starring legendary comedian, father figure and star of the Cosby Show, Bill Cosby?

Or a spin-off in an alternate universe where everyone is a giant Shiba Inu puppy? All upgrades would be chew-toy related.

Or perhaps a gritty sequel to the movie Office Space? Players can customize their own Swingline stapler.

Or maybe if the Dude from the Big Lebowski played a space marine out of his element, trying to track down the Necromorphs that peed on his rug?

Got an absurd Dead Space spin-off you'd like to see become a reality? Submit it in the comments. Bonus points if you throw in some Photoshop magic.

Once upon a time there was a video game publisher named Electronic Arts. Electronic Arts was a very big video game publisher with lots of money and friends. Every year, they would release lots and lots of video games, which they would sell for lots and lots more money and friends.

One day, Electronic Arts was ready to launch a Very Big Game! It was called Dead Space 3, and Electronic Arts wanted people to buy it. But how could they make it look as good as possible? Electronic Arts thought and thought. Suddenly, they got it! They would write a Press Release! They would fill it with mystical alchemical ingredients with exotic names like Hyperbole and Cherry-Picked Review Scores.

So Electronic Arts sent out the Press Release to Media and Investors all across the world.

Dead Space 3 Launches Today to Global Critical Acclaim – Heralded as One of the Best Games of This Generation

Dead Space 3 is an International hit having received a 9.0 from Multiplayer.it in Italy, 9.0 from AusGamers in Australia, 8.8 from 3DJuegos.com in Spain and a 9.75 from Game Informer magazine in North America. As a result of these four, the game is launching with an average score of 91, and being raved by Game Informer magazine who said Dead Space 3, '[is] one of the best games of this generation.'

Electronic Arts was happy! The Press Release was a success. They would sell lots of video games and make lots of money and their Investors would all be very happy.

But then, Big Bad Reality came lumbering in with an ugly smile on his face. "I come from the city of Metacriticopolis," he said, "where all of the numbers people assign games live."

"I have a message for you from my city," he continued, in a gruff voice. "You did not get a 91. You got a 79."

And Electronic Arts was heartbroken, and they cried and cried. But they learned a lesson that day: To stop spinning and distorting, because telling the truth looks a lot less ridiculous than trying to skew it just to make yourself look good.

The End.

There's a handy little robot in Dead Space 3. It's designed to collect resources for you in the new sci-fi horror game, released for Xbox 360 and PS3 today.

But as helpful as it is, it may be a little too helpful. Like, too helpful at getting you to open your wallet.

We already know that Dead Space 3 features DLC that looks a lot like microtransactions. You can pay real-world money for in-game items like suits, skins and upgrades.

But my gut tells me that the cute little scavenger bot was built with a specific purpose outside of getting you resources. Sure, it's handy. I can send my bot out and go to the workbench to find a ton more tungsten or semiconductors that I can use to outfit my rig or craft new weapons with. But wouldn't it be easier to dock the price of resources on these upgrades? Or simply give me more loot to find around each map?

Several of the already-available downloadable content packages center on the tiny bot that Isaac (or co-op partner Carver) can equip to send out on scavenging-for-resources missions. It scurries around dead bodies to find you resources that you can use on weapon and rig upgrades while you're off killing Necromorphs and listening to audio logs.

You can access downloadable content through Dead Space 3's workbenches. You can see the content that's already available for purchase with real money or, in the case of certain packages, in-game resources.

Resources can be gathered off of corpses, loot boxes, and other storage containers, too. But sending out the bot gets you a ton more with nary a finger lifted. You can then turn those resources into items to craft bigger, badder weapons. And weapon-crafting happens to be one of the best things about Dead Space 3.

I don't have a problem with the existence of microstransactions so long as it doesn't interfere with my own game. If I'm not being held back in a significant way by not forking over real cash, I'm ok. I'm skeptical of the intentions behind DLC like this, but I also don't let my need for weaponry and achievements and random in-game swag get the better of me.

The scavenger bot is a conduit for paying for the privilege of more resources, faster harvest times and, sure, a personality modifier. The scavenger bot feeds into the most obsessive gamer's desires to collect everything, and collect it fast. Want that sweet HUN-E1 Badger shotgun? Want it now? Pay for some scavenger bot DLC and we'll expedite that right away! It's a neat trick.

Of course, fragmented game experiences chopped into DLC is nothing new. Paying for DLC-specific weapons is nothing new. Paying for privilege is nothing new. Heck, Dead Space itself has been there in the past. But the scavenger bot is the perfect excuse to make an extra buck out of the situation without making it seem too much like that's what its purpose is.

Yet when you think about it, doesn't it seem obvious?