Dead Space 3
They say bad things come in threes, and there is perhaps no other gaming protagonist who could attest to this motto more-so than Isaac Clarke; Dead Space’s very own engineer-cum-monster hunter. Picking up the dismembered threads of its predecessor, Dead Space 3 takes place largely on Tau Volantis; an abandoned ice planet that’s been overrun by nasty necromorphs — go figure. For the game, players are tasked with recovering a wayward, 200-year old codex to unearth the planet’s mysteries, all the while trying to trace Ellie’s SOS signal — Isaac’s love interest from the second game — amidst the unforgiving terrain (imagine Hoth, but overrun with reanimated corpses).
Dead Space 3 also marks the introduction of several new features for the series, including cooperative play and pesky human enemies in the form of Unitologists. One of the standout features of the game, however, is the way in which the harsh environment filters into the gameplay. Visceral Games haven’t simply transposed our world-weary hero to a new locale for the sake of it. From thick blizzards obscuring your field of view to the way your body temperature plummets when exposed to the elements, it’s almost as if you can feel the icy cold air creep down your spine from the other end of the screen.
In gaming, threequels have been a historically difficult feat to pull off. For the third release, it’s quite often the case that an intellectual property begins to either stutter due to repetition — Batman: Arkham Origins, for example — or, in a bid to keep things fresh, implement a new feature that inevitably dilutes the core heritage. Alas, Dead Space 3 is a slightly less linear foray than its ancestors, and though it may not be — whisper it — as scary or unnerving as the first two titles, there’s still plenty of moments in the game when you realise that playing alone in the dark probably wasn’t the best strategy.
Over the years, Visceral Games’ interstellar property has established a sense of legacy through its interesting, quasi-religious story and signature, horrific aesthetic. And though I would tend to agree that the series has become more action-orientated with each iteration, diluting the sense of tension in favour of blockbuster set-pieces, there’s still an innate gravitas to Isaac Clarke’s space-traversing odyssey that lends Dead Space 3 the benefit of the doubt.
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