Dead Space 3

I was pretty excited when Dead Space 3 hit Playstation Plus as one of the free games for July. As a side note, if you have a Playstation of whatever variety and don't pay for Plus, you're missing out. Probably half of the games I play, or most of them in the case of my Vita, I get "free" because of Plus. Not at all bad for the price of one new disk game a year. 

I really liked the first two Dead Space games, but never got around to playing the third, partly because I didn't hear the kindest things about it and partly because it came out at a time when I was decidedly broke. When I saw it was one of the free games this month, I excitedly deleted a bunch of stuff off of my PS3's hard drive to make room and set it to downloading. 

I finished it this last weekend and I've got to say, it's really quite good. Good enough, in fact, that I'm kind of puzzled as to why people didn't seem to like it. A quick look at Metacritic showed mostly favorable reviews for the thing so maybe it was just one or two critics that I like that disliked it. I honestly don't remember at this point. Either way, I thought it was very very good.

Set three years after Dead Space 2, Isaac Clarke is hiding out alone on Earth after killing the marker on Titan at the end of Dead Space 2. Both Earth Gov, severely weakened by continued attacks by the Church of Unitology, and the Church itself are after Clarke because of his experiences while he just wants to be left alone. Ellie Langford, fellow survivor from Dead Space 2 and Isaac's former romantic partner, had left him to try to stop the marker threat, but she returns to Earth to try to convince Isaac to help her an and Earth Gov team investigate what they think to be the marker homeworld. 

If that doesn't make any sense, I'm not surprised. There's a ton of mythology that gets built up over the first two games, and it all kind of comes to a head in this one. Suffice to say the markers make people into space zombies and Isaac is the only person with enough experience with them to destroy them so everyone either wants his help or, in the case of the Church of Unitology, wants him dead. I'd definitely recommend starting from the beginning of the series anyway since both previous games in the series are worth playing anyway.

The writing and voice acting in this game is on par with the rest of the series with the exception of some weirdness with character interactions toward the end. One of the characters in the group is Ellie's new boyfriend. His strange behavior is more or less explained by the end, but his eventual death causes a lot of weirdness between Ellie and Isaac. She's blames him for it, then she doesn't. She needs space, then she doesn't. She kind of hates him, then kind of loves him. It all bounces around in a way that feels kind of random and undeveloped. Otherwise, the story and voice acting are solid and provide a satisfying conclusion to the Dead Space story. 

The game looks and sounds as good as Dead Space ever has. The creatures still look and sound good and slimy. You still get a satisfying crunch and squish when you stomp on enemies or part their limps from their bodies. The dismemberment combat arrives completely intact from previous games and is still quite a bit of fun. Added to the mix are normal human soldiers who are just straight up shooting at you with guns, and while you'd think that they would serve to make the game feel more generic, encounters with them are rare and actually serve as a nice change of pace from your standard necromorph encounter. 

I really enjoyed Dead Space 3. Aside from some rushed and inconsistent character stuff, I thought it told its story well and served as a good send off to a pretty great series of horror shooters. It made me want to track down cheap copies of the first two games and play them again, which I know is a sign that it is one of my favorites.