Be Excellent To Each Other

Space marines and co-op? Excited or disgusted?

As per my E3 twatting: utterly disgusted.

Cor, this ain't half irritated me from EDGE:

"EA's decision to add another player to DS3 came after research told the publisher that the first two games were too scary for a mass audience. ... EA's marketing head said "People felt far more comfortable playing with someone else than they did alone. We're looking for a way to reach out to consumers who were perhaps not as open to DS 1 and 2"

Contrast this with the interview with Free Radical in GamesTM this month and specifically the change in publisher to, gasp, EA when Timesplitters Future Perfect was released:

"Soon after we started working with [EA] it became apparent that they had a very different way of working to us. Their method was to identify what they called 'the X' - the defining feature of the game ... and then focus as much effort as possible reinforcing that 'x'..."

And so on. Scumbag EA.

Codes are out there at the minute for early access to the 360 demo. Get one.

Fucking hell...

Pretty much all the tension and fear will be gone in co-op. I speak from experience in System Shock 2.

Good to see EA completely compromising the whole point of yet another game.

Apparently, codes are available from the Dead Space Facebook page.

If you can't wait and totally want to spoil it for yourself you could always watch this video.



I only skimmed the vid to see what was happening and, well, it looks OK.

Shit, it works! Got the code from sinister Facebook. Downloading now at 1.9GB, so I'll have a crack at it tomorrow.

It's Dead Space 2 with:

A) Co-op (didn't play)
B) A new bench to build tools. This looks like the (other) major introduction. You find parts, like handles, nozzles, triggers etc, and you make your own weapon. There's a fair amount of parts to knock together in the demo. I made a shotty that has an under barrel that fires drawing pins, but equally you could make an assault rifle with a breast pump on it. Probably. Who knows! It's only a demo.

So that's the new stuff, but 'what else' I hear the man in my head that tells me to do things say. Snow? Well, we're all sick of that right? Aye? Aye? It looks bloody lovely though. But not much more better than 2. It depends if you prefer scary spaceship or snowy planet with plenty of lens flare. I like scary spaceship, but this is nice too.

Do you like QTE's though? I've played 3 QTE's in the last 20 minutes. *silence*

*stares wistfully at the ceiling*

Ahem. Well, the monsters are back. Pew, pew, pew. Remember that bloodied scrawling on the walls "Dismember the limbs"? No need for that - have monsters rush at you, or jump out in front of you and blast the shit out of them. PEW PEW PEW! And bosses! Two in 20 minutes but it only let me play one of em. It was a massive demo mind. If you call 20 minutes "long". I do. Plus you can play it as EITHER character or Co-opping. So that's at least 40 minutes of different gameplay. At least.

I don't care much for the main character talking, though. "Bloody hell, it's snowing". Shut the hell up and put the mask on. He's fairly non descript for a main protagonist but I like his robotic screams through his mask. The other bloke talks too. I call his Butch. I hate him.

Sooooo, Dead Space 3 The Demo, you score a 7.5/10 for being a darn good demo.

I conclude with my summary of what the main will be like: Dead Space 2 but less good. Outside.

How to prove you want to kill a game series

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/01/22/d ... ve-weapons

Dead space 3 includes micro transactions to power up your weapons

If anyone buys a game and purchases in-game tat for real money you're a blithering moron. You're contributing to this nonsense and I hate you.

*sigh* I suppose it was fucking inevitable when the whole steaming pile of fucking bullshit that is 'freemium' gaming on iOS et al didn't instantly die the horrible fucking death it deserved that it would eventually make it's way into proper games. This kind of thing can of course be implemented in a way such that people who aren't interested can just play through the game as normal; but with corporate greed being what it is it's 100% completely guaranteed that games which use this kind of thing will end up specifically balanced so that progressing without being nickel and dimed to death is a miserable trudge. The whole concept's a blight on mobile gaming which utterly enrages me and to see it begin to move to other platforms is depressing as all hell

Also, . So very much .

Didn't that exist in Dead Space (the original) as well? I'm sure I bought some armour.

You had to find the power nodes to upgrade your guns but in Dead Space 2 you could buy DLC packs which had alternative Armour and guns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Space_2



Although these are different to what (seems) to be on offer here which is power nodes when your upgrading guns.

Nah, I'm sure I bought armour in Dead Space 1. I've not played 2 (much to my shame).

Ah, here we are: http://deadspace.wikia.com/wiki/Advance ... lite_Class

It's not quite the same as just buying power nodes though, fo sho.

How much did you pay for this? And why on earth did you pay money?

I thought "this will really annoy someone on the Internet in five (holy shit, Dead Space came out in 2008? Bloody Hell) years time".

Actually, I don't know. I've got a feeling it might have been an accident.

Says 'ere it was 200 moon pies. Blimey.

Dead Space 3 infinite resources glitch.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... ansactions

Dead Space is Deaded....Good work EA, worked your special kinda magic once again.

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/dead_ ... ace_3.html

I'm actually quite enjoying this. It has a Resi 4 vibe. More actiony, less horrory.

Apparently it's not dead.. They've said something to the contrary now.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... e-3-report

Didn't this just come out!?

February 8th apparently.

So they have one months worth of sales figures and are already crying over whether its sold well enough for a sequel? Crazy. Also: impatient.

That story was quoted this morning but it turns out that it's not quite true (according to that Eurogamer link). Dead space is apparently very important to EA.

I thought that the " being cancelled" was false but they were crying about the sales figures?

They reckon 5million is the number to hit to "keep a franchise viable franchising franchise prequel franchise"

Finished this on the Xbox - started okay - really dragged in the middle and actually had not a bad 'end' part of the game adding in some new puzzle elements and a bit of a more focused task.

Mild spoilers for content below



No where near as good as the first one , and not even as good as the (slightly disappointing) second one.

I got it on the PC when it was cheap recently and I'm pretty underwhelmed so far.
Nothing has made me feel nervous in the same way the first one did and it's very much "more of the same".
I'm on chapter 13 of 19 and if I don't get it finished before GTA V arrives I can see me just forgetting to return.

Bit of a shame really.

I found those middle bits - maybe from Chapter 10 till about 16 really dragged , it does get slightly better at the end with a few new things thrown in but its not really worth it for the long slog that it took - and nothing is really there to make you feel nervous about facing the enemies or what will happen although it does throw in a few jump scares along the way.

About where you are I also started to feel overpowered against anything but the bosses as I could down them really quickly and even facing large groups was just a question of getting into an area where they could not get behind me and mowing them down as they came into view.

I had bought the xbox version before the Origin bundle sale and even downloaded it on my pc to maybe try some of the multiplayer stuff but I dont think i'll bother with it for now.

I've started this. More than £5 but less than £6 on PSN which I thought was a groovy price plus I've wanted to see what it's all about for a while.

Started off ok.

It's not scary though.

Plus stupid story.

I enjoyed the first part of the game - however it drags on a bit too long - if you can find someone else who had it on PS3 and can do co-op with your you'll probably enjoy it a lot more

I dislike the new Bench thing. BUY CREDITS, BUY CREDITS, BUY CREDITS.

The answer to that is to find the little scavenger robots and just keep sending them out (I think I had 3 by the end of the game) - also if your not aware you can strip just about everything you find down to its bare components to build up other stuff but for the first 3/4 of the game i used a variant of the laser welder thingy from the first game

That sounds like monumental effort to shove a boom stick on the end of a pole.

I just picked up my first Bot Thing though. Sent him scurrying off and, um, that's it. Nothing else seemed to happen and, er, I'm a bit confused what that was about really.

Also, is it just me or is the outsidy-bits substantially less atmospheric. Literally! Ho-ho. (Anyone?) There's a bit of sucky noise but I remember these bits being utterly ace in Dead Space 2 but here they seems to be slightly less indoors but outdoors, if you see what I mean.

And there's a reason Dead Space was a bit survival horror hit, BECAUSE HE WASNT TALKING EVERY 2 MINUTES ABOUT WHAT HE WAS DOING. Bloody atmosphere ruining idiots. And now there's an extra irritating surly solider character! A-Maze! Where DO they come up with their ideas!

AND... what's with the weird roll out the way? There's a reason Resident Evil got shit and, between us, I think it was because wholly because of the roll move.

AND, AND... I'm sick of getting attacked by enemies. I know, weird, right? They're actually just the same as 2 but sped up.

Oh, and one last thing, I did the first optional mission and was half expecting it to ask me for money. Tch. It didn't, but shouldn't I just be enjoying the game?

Its a crap way of trying to gate stuff by time , you send the little bot off and after X number of minutes you'll get a pop up to say he's back - if you then go to any bench you'll get the stuff he's found and then send him off again to gather more



'outside' is generally just a place to traverse through with no real set pieces during it whereas in previous games when you had to go outside it was strange and different (and a little bit scary) this time its just there as an environment for you to travel through although I did like the space graveyard bits where you can see things off in the distance and go to them (there is one type of set piece to come set outside but its nothing special :-(



I find it easier just to consider that everyone you meet has been exposed to a marker at some stage so they are all a bit mental but yes Isac shows some bad decision making by who he trusts at different points (and remember at least one of the surly guys you meet is 'player 2' if your doing co-op)



The roll is crap :-)



Ideally do all the optional missions at the end of each you get a pile of 'stuff' so you can craft better items and upgrade your rig - also some of them have better story beats and set pieces than the main game (I really liked some of the weird stuff that you found out about people in the derelicts and how they coped or did not when the madness took them)

There's some odd "mini-games" in here.

There's nothing that says survival horror than matching Tetris shapes.

Self entitled "Optional Mission 2" (way to retain the atmosphere, guys) complete. After wave after wave after wave of attack and just running out of the place after I'd completed the mission (largely due to combat boredom than terror) I finally made it out.

Guy on radio "Was it worth a look?"

Isaac (sounding inappropriately upbeat) "Yeah, he had some sweet salvage".

The fuck!? You almost lost your life. You aren't supposed to be some hardened combat warrior, you're a mechanic put through the wringer in extraordinary circumstances. No mention of all the many attacks that just came at you, having acid vomited on your face, and a guy with BLADES FOR ARMS shoving his BLADES FOR ARMS in your codpiece? Just "sweet salvage". He's either a fucking loon after the events of the first two games or someone is dicking me about.

You need to get away from the idea that Dead Space 3 , is the 3rd in the series of Dead Space games - that way leads to disappointment.

Fixed.

After some tedious ship reconstruction the flight down to the planet was pretty cool actually. I suppose you need a little bit of the mundane to make the set pieces explode and that's a fine balance in a game like this. Resi 4 got it right and, in my eyes, so did Dead Space 1 & 2, but this is treading a fine line.

The main problem is that they've really fucked up the combat. One size ammo fits all sounds lovely but removes any sort of interest you might have had juggling your weapons about since you endlessly use the one that suits you. And I'm about half way through (I think) and I've still only got two weapon slots which is absolutely criminal if you ask me. I haven't checked but I bet I could buy the remaining two slots - FUCK THAT.

So there's even less interest in expanding your weapon set as there's no space anyway. Instead you can lump two weapons on top of each other which removes any of the interesting alternative firing modes you used to have in previous games.

Instead you get to buy weapons for real money if you want the experimentation of the previous games. A system that was, before this, perfectly fine: 4 weapon slots, a variety of different weapons each different to the last, limited ammo types to keep you on your toes and juggle your weapons and weapon slots and, best of all, some cheevos that reward you for using every weapon. Seriously, in-game purchases can FUCK RIGHT OFF. If you want to make gamers pay in-game give them something they couldn't get previously, don't fucking remove what we already had 5 years ago, fuck around with the weapons and create a convoluted system for milking your customers at the expense of the most fundamental part of the entire game: shooting monsters bits off.

Fucking EA cunts.

This has got loads better now I'm on the planet. I wish they'd found the resolve not to give you another suit so soon as freezing to death made an increasing mechanic for all of ten minutes. I'd go out, explore, get in a shuffle and peg it back to base to warm up. Then I found out where I should be heading and it was over. Tch.

I much prefer this aspect of the story now there's a recognition as to what happened at the start of the game. It's much easier to enjoy it.

ESPECIALLY since losing contact with all my irritating buddies, no one has said a word in ages. Feckin' blissful silence.

The beats are still slightly wrong though. Too many attacks in obvious places and just too many attacks full stop. There's no downtime between fights or very little.

Dinosaur chickens are back! Best enemy Dead Space has in it's arsenal.

Really enjoying this now. They should've had an abridged version of the outer space bit and focused on making a spooky ice planet. The frozen outpost is the proper sequel to Dead Space 2.

Plus, I can now pretty much make all the weapons and the need to buy, well, anything at all has disappeared since I don't need to. I'm kinda confused why they even included microtransactions in here except so impatient tits can ruin the drip feed of weapons by buying everything from the start. I can see now (say, 3/4 of the way through) that it's totally unnecessary and, actually, the way in which you get weapons is convoluted (what with picking up scrap, bots to send out, and so on) but follows a traditional pattern of letting you get the stock weapons first and the big stuff later. It's just done in a silly hamfisted way but otherwise it's business as usual.

I'm actually warming to the whole game. It's the equivalent of Resi 5 to Resi 4: it breaks the traditional tight single player game (of DS1 & 2), throws in online co-op, mixes up your storage box and goes for loads of shooting rather than scares. It's probably really good fun co-op and I can see loads of people enjoying this.

How bizarre. It's turned out nice again.

YES! Finished!

Hang on, what's this weird rock track while the credits are playing?

Anyway, what a ridiculous amount of nonsense.

... but fun nonsense! I suppose when you get some cunts screaming "FRANCHISE" then you'll extend the story so it no longer makes a lot of sense for most except the fan boys. Happened with Gears of War, Star Wars, Halo and the like init. I prefer something simpler like Dead Space 1. All killer and no filler etc.

This was surprisingly good fun in the end. It'd be easy to recommend to two people who were going to play it at the same time, it's slightly less easy to recommend it to people with no friends (like moi) but it's still a solid blast in the end. I'd have played all the optional missions as well but one involved a massive length trek across an area if already been and the pay off was just parts for guns and by that point I'd already picked out my favourites and nothing was going to change that so I couldn't be bothered with the rest.

I'll say this about it though, on normal difficulty it was still putting up a bloody good fight. Especially towards the end when I'd drained all my resources and was staggering about trying to avoid fights that were unavoidable, I was struggling and dying a lot. It's got some bullshit checkpoints too so when I went out for the day I had to leave the PS3 paused all day cause I was mid-mission and I'll be fucked if I was doing half a chapter again.

Oh, it's playing rock music again. Jesus why?

Anyway, Dead Space 3? Entirely deserving of the 7/10's it was getting. Much better than Resi 6 an' all, right? Right? AMIRITE? Course I am; that was a load of bollocks.

Hang on, there's a post credits bit again. SEQUEL! Or not. It should probably get one more go but it'd better get back to basics and recreate spooky spaceship. In space. And no fucking moon monsters or monoliths, ok? Ta.