Dead Space is a game so unsettling it took me years to finish it. Soon after its original 2008 release, I abandoned my first attempt. I d played and enjoyed horror games before, but something felt different about what Dead Space had to offer. I couldn t take it. Years later I would end up completing the game, but I ve never forgotten the initial anxiety that it stirred up in me. Setting aside the missteps the series would end up taking in its second and third entries, what the original Dead Space accomplishes is simple in its frightening elegance: You re trapped on a ghost ship in the midst of its own industrial/organic nightmare and you have to escape.

Much of the anxiety that I find simultaneously attractive and repulsive in Dead Space is tied to the worn-down, blue-collar approach of its story and setting aboard the massive Ishimura mining vessel. As a kid growing up around the deep, dark waters of Puget Sound, WA, I would watch big tankers roll into Commencement Bay and anchor in the shadow of the giant copper smelting tower that used to overlook the area there. It was a filthy place and I d wonder what part those mysterious rusty ships had to play in that toxic wasteland. Where in all the world had they been and what had they brought back with them?

This was the image Dead Space had drawn from my memory and that had bothered me so much. And it s one that still fascinates me, even as the game s jumps scares and lighting tricks lose their intended effect on repeated playthroughs.

This edition of If you like deals with big ships and the mysterious, sometimes evil cargo they carry. I ve picked out some novels, comics, and films that deal with what I think is Dead Space s central theme—machines that bring us into contact with new fears as well as show us the ones that travel with us all the time.

Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

Clarke s 1973 novel anticipates and works with many themes that have become a staple of late-20th century science fiction. The development of planet earth in response to catastrophe, the limits of technology, and the difficulties of inter-species communication. But just like Dead Space, Rama also functions as a hard-sci-fi adventure story that puts a host of problems at the feet of some pilots and engineers and asks them to find a solution.

In the novel, a massive celestial object appears in earth s solar system. First thought to be an asteroid, it s actually an interstellar spacecraft. But the destination of the ship is unknown. The drama of the story plays out as the crew of the only ship that s near enough to make contact—a solar survey vessel—begins to explore the alien craft. The novel is a great example of Clarke s tightly controlled characterization and attention to scientific detail and plausibility. While Rama isn t a novel of space horror per se, its sense of urgency, claustrophobia and mystery should appeal to fans of Dead Space.

The Thing, directed by John Carpenter

Beyond the obvious references to the 1982 John Carpenter classic in terms of Dead Space s body horror and gore, the psychological dimension of this film also has a lot to offer. We re confronted fairly early in the film with the horrific implications of an alien being bent on murderous replication. But it s the response of the men to the psychological challenges brought on by their isolation in Antarctica that lends the film its true narrative pulse: Who can they trust? How do they escape this scenario?

Carpenter gathers a superb group of character actors to play out this test of wills, led by Kurt Russell who turns in a sardonic performance as a chess-playing helicopter pilot bent on survival. It s also worth checking out the original novella upon which the film is based—John W. Campbell s Who Goes There?

For a slightly less-serious take from Carpenter on isolation and the horrors of space, you might also be interested in his 1974 movie Dark Star. The movie follows a stressed-out group of men who work as a kind of wrecking crew in deep space, launching bombs to destroy dangerous or problematic planets and moons. Sometimes billed as a comedy, the low-budget Dark Star helped kickstart the career of Alien writer Dan O Bannon who acts in the picture.

Southern Cross, story by Becky Cloonan, art by Andy Belanger

A new comic from Image that s only on its third issue, Southern Cross hits all the right notes for dark and ambitious ship-based sci-fi. The narrative so far follows the journey of Alex Braith, a woman traveling from earth to the Titan moon in order to collect the body of her dead sister. A solitary and—perhaps—troubled woman, Braith has to find a way to make it through the voyage to Titan on the giant Southern Cross spaceship, an industrial tanker and personnel carrier that appears to have a few horrors of its own to reveal.

Along the way Braith encounters a variety of strange types all looking to dig some kind of meaning out of a solar system structured around the faceless corporations that keep the fuel flowing. The writing is pithy and authentic, an approach that gels nicely with Belanger s Moebius-influenced art style. Belanger s art not only captures the sharp edges of Braith s emotional landscape, but also works brilliantly at depicting the technological complexity and scale of the comic s grimy industrial universe.

Event Horizon, directed by Paul Anderson

The movie follows a rescue crew on a mission to investigate the sudden reappearance of a ship that had been missing for seven years. That ship, the Event Horizon, was tasked with attempting to make mankind s first interstellar voyage through the use of a new propulsion system that exploits gravity. Now that the Event Horizon s returned, and in a decaying orbit around Neptune, the rescue crew and the ship s designer head out to try and find out what s become of its mission.

It s no secret that horror films like Event Horizon lose a bit of their punch on repeated viewings. But I ll never forget the sheer bizarreness of my first encounter with this movie in the late-1990s. Although it was a critical and box office flop, it was the kind of film you d pick out and watch with friends just to see how they would respond—kind of like The Shining in this way.

The film s look and story owe a lot to earlier movies such as Solaris and Alien, and were an obvious influence on the aesthetics of Dead Space. And from its costuming to its acting and practical special effects, the nearly-20-year-old film holds up remarkably well. If you like Dead Space and haven t seen Event Horizon yet, it s a must-see. 

For more installments of If you like... , check out Patrick s recommendations for The Witcher, Dishonored, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Deus Ex fans. 

With Visceral Games sadly closing and their Star Wars project of at least 3.5 years being handed off because of "fundamental shifts in the marketplace", here's our 2015 Reinstall on Dead Space, a classic Visceral game that gave survival horror a shot in the arm back in 2008. 

There were 1,332 crew members on the USG Ishimura, but it took an unassuming engineer with a power tool to defeat the ungodly evil that devastated their ship. Isaac Clarke (see what they did there?) is the unlikely hero of Dead Space, an atmospheric space horror game that came out of nowhere at the end of 2008.

After losing contact with the Ishimura, a massive ‘planet cracker’ mining ship, the owners send a small team—of which Clarke is a member—to find out what happened. When they get there the ship seems abandoned and its lights are mysteriously out, so they go aboard to investigate. Bad idea.

There’s nothing that unique about Dead Space. Its mix of cold, industrial sci-fi and gruesome bio-horror has been done many times before, from Alien to System Shock. But it makes up for a lack of original ideas by just being really good.

Borrowing heavily from Shinji Mikami’s peerless Resident Evil 4, it’s an over-the-shoulder shooter that blends slow, atmospheric horror with bloody action. You can trace almost every moment back to a film, but it’s so fun, so atmospheric, and so well-designed that it doesn’t matter. It’s a loving homage to classic horror and sci-fi cinema.

Playing it now, seven years later, I’m amazed at how good it looks. A few blurry textures and low-poly character models aside, the Ishimura is still a wonderfully atmospheric environment. It’s a claustrophobic warren of oppressive metal corridors that owes a lot to Alien’s USCSS Nostromo. The single setting is one of its greatest strengths, giving the developers the chance to really flesh it out. It feels like a real, lived-in place that was once teeming with people, which makes its current abandoned state even more eerie.

You move through different areas—engineering, medical, the crew quarters—and in this sense it’s reminiscent of BioShock’s Rapture, revealing more about the place and its former inhabitants as you delve deeper into it.

The Ishimura has a lot of dark secrets to be discovered, chiefly its ties to Unitology: a fairly obvious Scientology spoof that would come to form the backbone of the series’ mythology over the two sequels. There’s a reason why the crew are all dead and the ship is swarming with monstrous creatures, and a desire to find out keeps you engaged.

The enemies, called necromorphs, are straight out of the Stan Winston book of creature design—John Carpenter’s brooding ‘80s horror classic The Thing is a clear inspiration. To design them, Visceral’s artists studied photos of car crash victims and war casualties.

Compared to, say, the genuinely unsettling denizens of Silent Hill, they do look fairly ridiculous. They’re bloody constructions of squished-together body parts that flail and screech as they predictably burst out of vents. But in the heat of the moment, with five of them bearing down on you, pincers swinging, they’re an effective foe.

Dead Space isn’t that scary. It falls into the Resident Evil camp of horror games, with cheap jump scares and tension-building looming large in its vocabulary. It won’t affect you on some deep, psychological level, and it won’t tease out deep-seated primal fears. It’s more like a ghost train, with people in white sheets popping up and going “Boo!” But that’s fine, because the game has no pretensions otherwise. Never knowing when a necromorph is going to come bursting through a door or out of shadowy corner is what keeps the tension taut and constant.

To defeat these creatures, you have to take advantage of the game’s ‘strategic dismemberment’ gimmick. You can’t kill a necromorph just by blasting at it with the game’s array of deadly engineering tools—you have to sever its limbs.

The game teaches you this by having the words "CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS" scrawled on a wall in blood. Then it tells you in a tutorial. Then an audio diary. Then another tutorial. Subtlety is not really the game’s strong point. There are a few quieter, more thickly atmospheric moments, which sadly fall by the wayside as the game gets increasingly louder and more action-packed: a crescendo that kept on going until the end of the underwhelming Dead Space 3.

The score, although largely forgettable, makes use of Krzysztof Penderecki-style timpani rolls and sharp, piercing strings to build the suspense, a ploy straight out of Kubrick’s The Shining. Visceral watched hours of horror films during the game’s development to get ideas for scares. Cult scary sci-fi flick Event Horizon is another obvious influence, with a story, locations, and monster designs so similar, it almost feels like an adaptation at times.

This is a game that’s quite unashamedly steeped in imagery and sounds from the silver screen. As a result it can feel overly imitative, but a few visual elements—particularly the green glow of Isaac’s clunky helmet and the Unitology stuff—are distinctly its own creation.

PC gamers were short-changed with the port, and you’ll need to tweak a few things to get it running satisfactorily on modern machines. Disabling vsync on modern GPUs causes certain events not to trigger, making progress impossible. But with it enabled, the game feels unplayably slow and clunky. You have to disable it in-game, then enable it through your graphics card control panel to fix this.

There’s also appalling mouse/controller lag on some PCs. But wrestle with this stuff successfully and you’ll discover an enjoyable horror romp with a memorable setting and great set-pieces.

In moving away from a single, focused setting and introducing more third-person shooting, the sequels never really recaptured the magic of the first game. Hopefully the next—if they ever make another—will take a step back and try another smaller, slower game like the first. Alien: Isolation is proof that bigger and louder isn’t always better.

EA doesn't want your money anymore. Well, it does, but mostly for its newer and shinier selections. Starting today, the publisher will choose one older game from its library and offer it On the House, a new Origin category for games available free of charge. First up: Visceral's disturb-tastic Dead Space.

EA hasn't specifically said how long an On the House promotion will run for a given game, but judging from the expiration date displayed for Dead Space (May 8), we could add a free title to our libraries once every month or so. Otherwise, the promotion looks pretty string-less. It's also a rather strong display of EA's apparent intent to park itself with other online markets running similar costless campaigns such as GOG. "Who doesn't want free stuff?" reads the diminutive FAQ. Who, indeed?

On the House is on Origin, and you can grab Dead Space either through the client or via the website.

EA getting a Humble Bundle sounds like a thing that should raise eyebrows, but considering how much money is being raised for charity right now - and how many normally-quite-expensive games can be had for pocket money - I'm finding that my cynicism chip is just not activating. The explosion-studded bundle has raised nearly $8.5 million already, with EA's entire share going to charities the Human Rights Campaign, watsi, the American Cancer Society, the American Red Cross, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. In addition to the likes of Dead Space 3, Mirror's Edge and Battlefield 3, you can now get C&C: Red Alert 3 - Uprising and Populous if you pay over the average of $4.84.

Here's the full list. Pay what you want to get Dead Space, Dead Space 3, Burnout Paradise Ultimate, Crysis 2, Mirror's Edge and Medal of Honor, or pay over the average to get C&C: Red Alert 3 Uprising, Populous, Battlefield 3 and The Sims 3 thrown in too. You'll get Steam keys for some of the games, plus the soundtracks to BF3 and The Sims 3. It's quite a good deal, and it's quite a good deal that ends in five days.

The Humble Origin Bundle is live, allowing you to pay what you want for Dead Space, Dead Space 3, Burnout Paradise, Crysis 2, Mirror's Edge, and Medal of Honor. Paying more than the average (roughly $5 at the time of this post) unlocks Battlefield 3 and The Sims 3 with some DLC.And all of EA's share goes to charity.

I know, right?

The offer runs for two weeks, and benefits the Human Rights Campaign, watsi, the American Cancer Society, the American Red Cross, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Bought separately, the bundle would cost over $200 U.S. While Origin keys are provided for all of the games, you'll also get Steam keys for each of the games that are available on Valve's platform. Origin is also throwing in the soundtracks for Battlefield 3 and The Sims 3.

Check out the whole bundle at HumbleBundle.com. It's a heck of a deal.

Are mute heroes better than verbose heroes? Does a voice-acted player character infringe on your ability to put yourself into the story? In this week's debate, Logan says "Yes," while his character says nothing. He wants to be the character he’s playing, not merely control him, and that’s easier to do when the character is silent. T.J. had a professional voice actor say "No." He thinks giving verbalized emotions and mannerisms to your in-universe avatar makes him or her feel more real.

Read the debate below, continue it in the comments, and jump to the next page for opinions from the community. Logan, you have the floor:

Logan: BioShock’s Jack. Isaac Clarke from Dead Space. The little boy from Limbo. Portal’s Chell. Gordon Freeman. These are some of the most unforgettable characters I’ve ever played, and they all made their indelible impressions on me without speaking a single word. In fact, they made such an impression because they didn’t say a word. By remaining silent throughout, they gave me room to take over the role, to project myself into the game.

T.J.: All of the games you mentioned were unforgettable narratives. But everything memorable about them came from the environments, situations, and supporting casts. Gordon Freeman is a great example. What can you really say about him, as a person? I find Shepard’s inspirational speeches to the crew in the Mass Effect games far more stirring and memorable than almost anything I’ve experienced in a silent protagonist game. I was Shepard, just as much as I was Gordon. But I didn’t have the alienating element of not having a voice making me feel less like a grounded part of the setting.



Logan: Ooh, Shepard. That was cold. I’ll happily agree that some games are better off with fully written and voiced protagonists—and Shepard’s a perfect example. But it’s a different matter, I think, with first-person games in particular, where your thought processes animate the narrative: “OK, if I jump into a portal here, I’ll shoot out of the wall there and land over yonder.” In this way I’m woven into the story, as a product of my own imagination. If the character is talking, I’m listening to his or her thoughts—and they sort of overwrite my own. It can be great fun, but it’s a more passive experience.

T.J.: First-person shooters are probably one of the best venues for silent protagonists, but lets look at BioShock and BioShock Infinite. I definitely felt more engaged by Booker, who responded verbally to the action, the story twists, and the potent emotions expressed by Elizabeth... than I did by Jack, who didn’t so much as cough at the chaos and insanity around him.

Logan: But was the result that BioShock Infinite was a better game, or just that it delivered a traditional main character?

T.J.: Booker? Traditional? Did we play the same game? I mean, it’s a tough call to say which was out-and-out better, as there are a lot of factors to consider. But zooming in on the protagonist’s vocals (or lack thereof) as an added brushstroke on a complex canvas, Infinite displays a more vibrant palette.

Logan: Do you think that Half-Life 2, in retrospect, is an inferior game as a result of its silent protagonist?



T.J.: Half-Life 2 was great. Great enough that we gave it a 98. But imagine what it could have been like if Gordon had been given the opportunity to project himself onto his surroundings, with reactive astrophysics quips and emotional back-and-forth to play off of the memorable cast around him? We relate to characters in fiction that behave like people we know in the real world. So yeah, I’ll take that plunge: I think I would have bonded with Freeman more, and therefore had a superior experience, if he hadn't kept his lips sewn shut the whole way.

Logan: A scripted and voiced Gordon Freeman may or may not have been a memorable character, just like a scripted and voiced Chell from Portal might have been. But in a sense, that’s the problem! Because some of my best memories from games with silent protagonists are the memories of my own thoughts and actions. I remember staring at the foot of a splicer in BioShock and realizing that the flesh of her foot was molded into a heel. I was so grossed out that I made this unmanly noise, partway between a squeal and a scream. I remember getting orders shouted at me in FEAR and thinking, "No, why don’t you take point.” I’m glad these moments weren't preempted by scripted elements.

T.J.: You were staring at the Splicers’ feet? Man, in a real underwater, objectivist dystopia ruined by rampant genetic modification, you’d totally be “that one guy” who just stands there dumbfounded and gets sliced into 14 pieces.

Logan: No, I’d be the guy at Pinkberry with his mouth under the chocolate hazelnut nozzle going “Would you kindly pull the lever?” But my point is, I remember what I did and thought at moments throughout all of my favorite games, and those are experiences that are totally unique to me. And that’s at least part of why I love games so much—because of unique experiences like that.



T.J.: I see what you’re getting at. Likewise, a lot of my love for games is driven by their ability to tell the kinds of stories other media just aren’t equipped for. Silent protagonists take us further beyond the bounds of traditional narratives, accentuating the uniqueness of interactive storytelling. That being said, really good voiced protagonists—your Shepards, your Bookers, your Lee Everetts—never feel like a distraction from the mutated flesh pumps you come across. When the execution is right, they serve to enhance all of those things, and lend them insight and believability.

There’s nothing like being pulled out of the moment in Dragon Age: Origins when the flow of an intense conversation stops so the camera can cut to the speechless, distant expression of your seemingly-oblivious Grey Warden.

Logan: Oh yeah, there’s no question that voiced protagonists have their moments. But they’re not my moments, and those are the ones I enjoy the most in games. Valve seems to understand this intuitively, and that’s why it’s given us two of the most memorable characters in videogame history: because I think the developers deliberately build into their games moments that they all understand will be uniquely owned by the players; “a-ha!” moments when the solution to a puzzle suddenly snaps into focus, or narrative revelations like watching horseplay between Alyx and Dog that instantly tell you a lot about how she grew up. Voiced protagonists can give us wonderful characters; silent ones let me build my own.

That’s the debate! As always, these debates are exercises meant to reveal alternate viewpoints—sometimes including perspectives we wouldn’t normally explore—and cultivate discussion, so continue it in the comments, and jump to the next page for more opinions from the community.





https://twitter.com/hawkinson88/status/325060938120183808

@pcgamer it really depends on the writing. Some voiced characters are amazing, and some are whiny and annoying.— Ryan H (@kancer) April 19, 2013


@pcgamer In many cases, yes. I am forced to substitute the absence of a developed personality with my own words and thoughts. I like that.— Rocko (@Rockoman100) April 19, 2013


@pcgamer The volume of the protag doesn't matter, only the skill of the writer: hero voice is just one tool of many in a master writer's box— Jacob Dieffenbach (@dieffenbachj) April 19, 2013


@pcgamer The most interesting characters are the ones with a history, with regrets. Blank characters don't have that.— Devin White (@D_A_White) April 19, 2013


@pcgamer Most voiced characters seem to disappoint. I think silent ones express the storyline better through visuals which I prefer.— Casey Bavier (@clbavier) April 19, 2013


@pcgamer Definitely voiced. Having an NPC talk to you directly, then act as if your lack of response is totally normal feels eerily wrong.— Kirt Goodfellow (@_Kenomica) April 19, 2013


@pcgamer Silent! #YOLO— Michael Nader (@MNader92) April 19, 2013

It isn't often we see the words "Origin" and "sale" next to each other, but this week is the exception: EA is running a week-long Player Appreciation Sale which discounts some pretty hefty games in the publisher's lineup—titans such as Mass Effect 3, Crysis 3, and Battlefield 3.

Here's the full list of games on sale and their prices:

Battlefield 3 Premium—$25
Battlefield 3—$12
Battlefield 3 Premium Edition—$30
Crysis 3—$30
Crysis 3 Digital Deluxe Edition—$40
Crysis 3 Digital Deluxe Upgrade—$10
The Sims 3 Seasons—$20
The Sims 3 University Life—$28
The Sims 3 Supernatural—$15
Dead Space—$6
Dead Space 2—$6
Dead Space 3—$30
Resident Evil 5—$10
Mass Effect 3—$10
The Walking Dead—$10
Batman: Arkham City GOTY Edition—$12
FIFA Soccer 13—$20
Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection—$15
Hitman: Absolution—$15
Saints Row: The Third Full Package—$25
Assassin's Creed 3—$35
Assassin's Creed 3 Deluxe Edition—$56
Darksiders 2—$18
Dead Island GOTY Edition—$10
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City—$25


Normal and special editions on sale? And they're big games? I don't want to spoil this rare opportunity to enjoy a good Origin sale with cynicism, but it's hard not to chortle lightly at the convenient devaluing of nearly half the games EA offered SimCity players for free earlier this week.

When EA spoke of a future business strategy where "all of our games" include the dreaded m-word, reactions weren't exactly positive. CFO Blake Jorgensen shared that original statement during the Morgan Stanley Technology conference last week, but he's now used another conference—the Wedbush Transformational Technology conference—to redact that statement. As Gamasutra reports, Jorgensen says he meant microtransactions will figure into all mobile games instead of EA's entire lineup.

"I made a statement in the conference along the lines of, 'We'll have microtransactions in our games,' and the community read that to be 'all games,' and that's really not true," he explains. "All of our mobile games will have microtransactions in them, because almost all of our mobile games are going to a world where its play-for-free."

Jorgensen uses a different term for paid content on the PC and console platforms: extensions. "You're going to see extensions off of products like Battlefield Premium which are simply not microtransactions," he says. "They are premium services, or additional add-on products or downloads that we're doing. It's essentially an extension of the gameplay that allows someone to take a game that they might have played for a thousand hours and play it for two thousand hours. We want to ensure that consumers are getting value."

Though there is some difference between types of paid content, it seems like Jorgensen is mostly just side-stepping the phrase "microtransactions." Whether calling them microtransactions, extensions, or micro-extend-actions, EA (and, arguably, most other big publishers) will continue using whatever works to leverage the popularity of its games and sell additional content.

But enough of my yakking. What do you think?

Review by Nathan Ditum

On a city street at the start of Dead Space 3, there’s a poster for a film called Tools Of Terror. It features a man in a tuxedo pulling a James Bond pose, but instead of a pistol he’s holding a wrench. He is, it’s fairly obvious, both an action hero and a blue-collar guy, and despite the fact this film is a spoof – or perhaps because of it – he’s also an accurate symbolic representation of Dead Space hero Isaac Clarke as he appears in this latest game.

"Isaac was a high-functioning spanner in a space suit."
Isaac is an engineer. It’s the thing that made him such an unusual protagonist in the original game – he didn’t talk, he fixed things and had weapons that could conceivably have been used to fix things, if they weren’t busy dismembering the reanimated dead. He was a high-functioning spanner in a space suit, but he returned the John McClane of religious hysteria and viral outbreaks in Dead Space 2.

How could the same shit happen to the same guy twice? And how could he suddenly be so good at it?

The question was raised: is Isaac best as the handyman-in-a-tight-spot or as the stomping shooter frontman? Dead Space 3 fixes on the elegant solution of pushing him in both directions at once. Progression is dependent on a series of hardware fix-ups – this shuttle, that tram system, this alien genocide machine.



But at the same time, Isaac fights wave after wave of monsters while saying things like, “I turned my back on the world because I couldn’t face what had to be done,” – and he’s not talking about an oil change or repairing a carburettor.

"Should it be a     lean horror or an explosive shooter? The game opts to be both."
The debate over Isaac-as-engineer versus Isaac-as-action-hero feeds into Dead Space’s genre identity crisis. Should it be a cold, lean horror, or an explosive shooter? The game opts to be both. This is possible because it consists of big, distinct sections: a breathless high-stakes opener (in the James Bond tradition, appropriately enough), a claustrophobic few hours in a debris field of broken ships orbiting a planet, a lengthy action push on the planet’s icy surface, and a climactic section in an ancient city.

The segments feel episodic, as though they were built by different teams and bolted together to create a varied, lengthy whole. The first major stop is a floating scrapheap, with Isaac exploring a series of derelicts looking for a way to reach the planet below. It’s an expanded echo of the original Dead Space – not just repeating the haunted ship routine, but bringing the quiet, tense and considered approach to a frozen flotilla of craft with Isaac shuttling between them.



Dusty airlocks and the grand, muffled spectacle of Isaac drifting through space are the foreground to the game’s hard sci-fi style, and it fruitfully resurrects the old, effective mix of mundane tasks performed amid calamity. The first moment of dread I’ve experienced since crawling through the guts of the Ishimura – “but I don’t want to find out what’s blocking the tram system” – confirms that this is partly the faithful sequel to Dead Space that people who still resent Isaac for learning to talk or daring to display his human face – have been waiting for.

"The game fruitfully resurrects the old, effective mix of mundane tasks performed amid calamity."
A change of pace on the surface of the planet moves Dead Space 3 into more conventional action territory. The snowstorms and wind-battered outposts are a nod to the influence of The Thing on Dead Space, just as surely as the Ishimura paid tribute to the devastation of the Nostromo in Alien, but the combat here introduces elements of cover-based shooting. There are still encounters with skittering necromorphs in corridors and vent-heavy rooms, but there are also more clearings and open spaces, and action set-pieces in the form of cliff-face rappelling (both up and down), boss encounters (tiresome), and an industrial drill that’s transformed into a giant rusty flesh-whisk (loud).

It feels as though Dead Space 3 has settled on volume and value as part of a big-fisted approach to appealing to everybody. The game feels laudably substantial, although sometimes the pacing suffers. The inclusion of any level that requires players to double back through a now-repopulated section justifies a call of shenanigans; Dead Space 3 does it more than once. And while the inclusion of optional side-missions is definitely a good thing, not just for the added content but also the opportunity for resource gathering, they can feel at odds with the urgency of the larger objective at hand. Near the close, I was offered the chance to explore one such cul-de-sac, and declined in order to continue my in-progress race against a religious fanatic to reach a control panel in time to prevent the extinction of mankind.




Fighting religious fanatics is a staple of Dead Space 3. The intriguing Unitologist sect, which worships the monolith-like Markers, emerges from shadow and conspiracy to offer all-out war. The result is combat against humans for the first time, and an extension of the split that runs down the centre of the game.

"Dead Space 3 manages what the hapless Aliens: Colonial Marines could not - abundant monsters that are also individually deadly."
Combat against the necromorphs is refined and dangerous. It manages what the hapless Aliens: Colonial Marines could not: abundant monsters that are also individually deadly, thanks to Isaac’s accumulated skill set which includes the ability to slow enemies in time, to move and fire small objects with telekinesis, and the need to slice enemies limb by limb in order to despatch them most effectively. It’s a layered, satisfying set of systems.

However it’s also one clearly designed for a game pad – even with options to customise controls, the need to have fingers hovering over four triggers at once makes a mouse and keyboard unwieldy. In contrast, battles against the Unitologist army offer little except variety and gunfire in stereo. They don’t subtract from what might be called the purer Dead Space experience, they just bolt a conventional addition to the side.

The nature of combat is largely determined by the weapons at Isaac’s disposal, which in Dead Space 3 come from the bench. The gun crafting is deep and worthwhile, offering a basic choice of weapon type (plasma, laser cutter, military, explosive) before adding variety (modifiers to these types, the ability to combine any two on larger weapon frames) and stat-tweaking and optimisation.



It rewards experimentation and patience, and is paced sensibly enough that the controversial option to buy raw materials through microtransactions never feels imposing – I always had enough to create weapons that felt suitably powerful, and after one run through the game I had the resources to build pretty much anything.

"The effect of co-op is that some sections are a little strung out and lonely in singleplayer."
It’s possible to make the same cutting, tearing, flaming tools that have been the series’ mainstays, but just as effective now are single-shot weapons with high concentrated damage, and forgiving, spray-and-pray automatic rifles. The basis of Dead Space’s combat is a little undermined; de-limbing enemies is a precise, engineer’s way to kill space zombies. It sits uncomfortably with the game’s own rules that, with damage stats boosted, necromorphs can now be killed with a single sniper shot to the chest.

Also impacting on combat is the addition of co-op. Ironically this makes manifest the split in Isaac’s gaming personality – when present, his co-op partner really is a gruff action soldier type, called Carver, the Tyler Durden to Isaac’s jittery narrator. Co-op is drop-in, drop-out, with cutscenes shifting to reflect Carver’s absence during solo play, the only noticeable effect being that some sections are a little strung out and lonely in singleplayer.

Whether it suits a horror game is a moot point: given Dead Space 3’s efforts to provide both scares and thrills, the impact of co-op is negligible. But it does change the combat, in entirely positive ways. Working together is fun: trapping enemies in stasis for your partner, or rescuing them from pinned execution, and planning what complementary set of weapons to use as a pair. As with the others in the series, Dead Space 3 positively encourages post-completion playthroughs on higher difficulties and with tougher restrictions.



In terms of performance, Dead Space 3 ran without a hitch on an i5 processor-equipped rig with 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia Geforce 560 Ti. Before release, Visceral Games spoke about their aim to create a uniform experience across console and PC, which raised legitimate concerns that the PC version would be a horrendous port. It’s not quite that bad; custom render settings are available from the in-game menu to control various effects like bloom, glow, SSAO, depth of field, and it does look prettier than console versions. I played on 1920 x 1080 with no impact on framerate, which was locked at a steady 30fps – something that can be unlocked with some VSync tweaking.

"It delivers an uncompromised, high-quality horror game."
If this ‘uniform’ approach is slightly disappointing, it’s absolutely in keeping with Dead Space 3’s comprehensive, please-all approach. The game tries hard to be all things to all men (ironic, considering it features a religion with the ultimate objective of making all men into one giant thing). It’s accomplished, it looks wonderful, and delivers an uncompromised, high-quality horror game. It’s just that it’s so big that it delivers a less compelling shooter title as well.

This is perhaps the inevitable reality of creating a searing, stylish new IP – that two sequels down the line, the need to maximise appeal has turned everything great about that game into the still-beating heart of a commercial machine augmented with features, an appealing hero, and explosive moments. Dead Space 3 is still good, and it’s still Dead Space. It’s just lots of other things as well.

Antony Johnston, the writer behind the original fright-filled Dead Space, spoke with NowGamer on the more action-heavy tone in the just-released Dead Space 3. Though he prefers fear over firepower, Johnston believes the increased action is "a necessary evil" to ensure growth of the series.

"I’m personally a big fan of old-school survival horror, and that was one of the main reasons I wanted to work on Dead Space," he says. "So the greater emphasis on big action in the sequels means they’re not really for me."

Johnston states that expanding Dead Space 3's fan base through action sequences presents "a very difficult balancing act" for Visceral, and he commends the studio for "an admirable job of maintaining that balance" in the wake of concerns over the diminished fear factor and the inclusion of a co-op mode.

"I know the developers always wanted to go bigger, in terms of scope," Johnston says. "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. Otherwise, you’d just have the same game on a different ship each time, and that’s pretty dull."

Read the full article at NowGamer, and let us know: does Dead Space 3's action mesh well with its more terrifying moments?