Dead Space 3 was my most anticipated game of 2013, largely because I was so impressed by the first two games. The original blew my expectations out of the water—it was the best horror game I’d ever played (and might still be). Its cramped, oppressive environments and “dirty future” aesthetic created an unmatched atmosphere. Its storyline was original and the way it was told—through voice, video, and text logs—made the unfolding chaos much more real. Dead Space 2 was in the same vein, but with more open areas and set pieces. Its story delves deeper into Unitologist beliefs, and reveals the purpose of the Markers, but stops short of addressing the result of that purpose. THAT would be left to the threequel, surely, so I waited with bated breath.

This is the part where I give the typical spoiler warning. Parts of this article will spoil the ever-living hell out of Dead Space 3, so if you don’t care, read on.

Dead Space 3 has lots of problems, which all stem from an attempt by Visceral Games (and maybe EA) to broaden the appeal of the series. While bits and pieces of the previous games remain, Dead Space 3 feels like an entirely different animal, which I consider to be a bad thing. Now, I’m not commenting on the inclusion of co-op; reviewers have lauded the co-op campaign, and I am eager to try it out. I suspect the game actually works BETTER as a co-op venture. I’m criticizing the game’s solo campaign. After all, you’re supposed to play Dead Space by yourself, right? The game opens with a space marine (sorry, a Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces soldier) bringing a piece of technology to his superior officer. It serves as a way for players to acclimate to the control scheme, or for series regulars to remember how to curb stomp things. The intro sequence takes place on the frozen wasteland of Tau Volantis, and for the most part, you’re wandering around a lifeless, snow-covered planet with wind and snow obscuring your line of sight. This goes on far too long, and made me a little apprehensive. Would Isaac Clarke hold his arm against the wind for 20 hours?

That's John Carver on the right, a hardened space marine who recently conquered Mars with the help of Dejah Thoris.

Thankfully, he does not. The game proper opens in what appears to be Mega City 1 from Judge Dredd, where Isaac must escape a city under siege by Marker madness in order to meet up with some dudes looking for your ex-girlfriend (Ellie, from Dead Space 2). In addition to the usual gaggle of Necromorphs, Isaac also gets to contend with… gun-firing human Unitologists, who believe that Isaac is the Antichrist who goes around destroying Markers in his spare time. This is one aspect of the game that just doesn’t work. Visceral has implemented a roll move and a crouch/cover system, neither of which feel natural, in order to deal with human enemies. All of a sudden, you’re playing Gears of Dead Space and it doesn’t feel good. Headshots are suddenly a thing, but Dead Space has never been a “pick off enemies at a distance” game. It’s about hitting gangly monsters with stasis and severing their limbs. Thus, Isaac’s trek through this graffiti-laden city is frustrating and not enjoyable. Thankfully, it’s over quickly, and things start to feel more like Dead Space.

Your mission, along with space marine John Carver and Ellie’s asshole boyfriend, is to find Ellie, and that happens after about 30 seconds. Unfortunately, your ship also gets blown apart, and Isaac must make some harrowing space jumps. Remember that rocket chair segment in Dead Space 2? This is like that, but more involved. Soon afterward, Isaac is back to doing what he does best: exploring dank, dark, decomposing spaceships crawling with Necromorphs. This first third of the game does an admirable job of recreating the dread and isolation of the original Dead Space, and it is by far the most enjoyable part of the entire game. You’ll even find yourself free to roam around in the void of space a few times, which is always fun. At some point, Isaac explores an abandoned, 200-year-old planet cracker mining ship, kind of like the Ishimura, but smaller and outfitted with older technology But it’s here the old formula starts giving way to some new gameplay wrinkles. Chief among them is the weapon creation system.

No longer do you find or buy new weapons and then upgrade them using power nodes. Now, you find pieces of weapons, blueprints of weapons, and lots and lots of loot. When I say “loot,” I mean things you collect to build weapons. It’s everywhere, and the game even outfits you with scavenger bots that go out and collect loot for you. If you want to make yourself, say, a line gun, you have to (1) have the necessary parts; and (2) have the necessary loot costs. A specific blue print might help, too. After you successfully crank out a line gun, you can further modify it through painfully experimental means. Visceral’s reasonable expectation is that players tinker to their heart’s content.

Skeletal monster, you are still in the running to become America's Next Top Model.

Rather than being freeing and fun, the weapon crafting is time consuming and frustrating. Just give me a goddamn line gun and let me put power nodes in the attributes I want to improve! And let me have four weapons again! Remember that? In the first two games, you could carry four weapons around. In this one, you’re whittled down to two, with the excuse that you could really be carrying four (two combination guns). Well fuck that. One slot will always be taken up by my trusty Plasma Cutter, thank you, so I’m limited to three guns.

Thankfully, your suits remain the same. While different aesthetically, they all retain the same core functionality. In the first two games, different suits had different item slots or armor ratings. Here, they just look different. You can’t improve the item slots, but you can improve your RIG’s performance using… sigh… loot.

"You see that little shop down there? The one with the red roof, being overtaken by Necormorphs? Totally got this sweet jacket there. Cheap, too."

But more tedious than the loot collecting or weapon crafting is the game’s reliance on kill rooms. Dead Space 3 features plenty during the course of the campaign, which is perfectly normal. But it also features several optional missions (some of which are only accessible in co-op play) that amount to little more than traveling through a series of kill rooms until you reach a big stash of loot and a final, giant, tiring kill room. The one exception seems to be the “Reaper” side quest, which instead focuses on backstory and tension-building—things Dead Space is good at. Are the rewards worthwhile? If you’re into the weapon crafting, maybe they are. To me, they felt like hollow victories, and there were many times when I just felt frustrated killing wave after wave of Necromorphs. Co-op would make much of this less tedious, but playing by your lonesome, it gets pretty ridiculous.

Once Isaac and Co. reach Tau Volantis, our heroic engineer becomes errand boy. Meeting up with your cohorts means you’ll be separated from them (usually by some extreme circumstance) within seconds. Thank the Marker your radio works so you can constantly receive marching orders from your useless team members, who can’t even do something as simple as turn on a generator. The middle 12 hours of the game are ensconced in doing other people’s chores. “Isaac, we need you to turn on the power. The generator’s across the complex.” Great; fine. “Thanks, Isaac, but we can’t figure out how to turn on the generator even though it’s clearly labeled. We’re also up here on the second floor and we’re too lazy to use the elevator.” No problem. “It turns out we need you to find a bunch of components for a sensor gun and we think they’re way over there. Could you grab those, craft the gun, and bring it back?” Why not? “Hey, look at that! Unfortunately, none of us know how to use it and that dead monster is big and scary, so could you descend into its thawed-out belly and shoot its nerve clusters while monsters gang-bang you?”

Again, this might be more tolerable with a co-op partner, but damn if it isn’t annoying by your lonesome.

The plot makes absolutely no sense. All Ellie and Co. know is that Tau Volantis is the Marker homeworld and that there’s some machine that can do… something. They find this machine, with Isaac doing all the work. You don’t know what’s going on until Isaac assembles a frozen alien specimen named “Rosetta” and has a vision that tells him everything about Tau Volantis and the Markers AND Convergence in a convenient two-minute montage. Now keep in mind, up until this point (which occurs roughly three hours from the end of the game), Dead Space 3 featured a complete absence of plot points. It seems like Visceral could have built some of this necessary backstory into the first two games or even the first 3/4ths of this game. But they didn’t, which makes me think (cynically) that they hadn’t figured out the end of this trilogy until the very end.

This asshole is the REAL villain of the game because he's so goddamn irritating. He does eventually die, which was the game's absolute high point.

So I guess I’m disappointed with the overall storyline of the Dead Space games in that no questions I cared about were answered. But I’m VERY disappointed in Dead Space 3, which changes the tenor of the series so much that it’s not horror anymore, and Isaac isn’t a reluctant hero so much as a glorified laundry-washer. I still love the first two games, but the third has tainted their appeal somewhat. Thankfully, the gameplay and atmosphere of the first two remains unquestionably freaky, and no amount of snow-bound errand running can change that. I can’t imagine for an instant that the franchise is just going to end, so I’m hoping further games in the series will answer some of my questions and address my concerns.