Finished
Dead Space 3 ...yeah
By the last 1/3rd, the game way too long (16+ hours) considering this is no RE4 varied scenarios game; I realized that the fairly lengthy optional areas just consisted of cut & paste rooms with a million guys for 30-40 mins just to get some loot so I skipped the last few and I started just running past all the enemies because there were just SO MANY ENEMIES. Like the amount of enemy waves in the last 1/3rd is ridiculous and how they armor up the enemies so even maxed out weapons that used to be satisfying in Dead Space because they'd 1 hit cut body parts off just phase through an enemy for 2-3 shots before taking a body part off is just not fun.
The first 1/3rd of DS3 in Space is solid because it's Survival Horror with loot and weapon crafting. Fun in an RE2 kind of way. The middle 1/3rd on the Ice Planet is still solid Survival Horror on creepy ice planet though the further and further you progress the worse and worse it gets. The last 1/3rd is Gears of War but without cover. Like for some reason they decided with DS3 they were going to change from survival horror into Gears of War with a billion enemies who are now bullet sponges and rush you constantly. While it does create tension because they're always in your face, your weapons are slow, have low ammo clips and reloading takes forever, it's the not fun annoying type of tension that just gets you sick of fighting in the game.
Also the weapon crafting system takes a major nose dive about 50% through because as the enemies get more bullet spongy, it basically makes 80% of the weapons useless because they're just not strong enough. Basically by buffing the enemies with armor, Dead Space becomes a lot less fun to play. For all I know this is because they balanced it for co-op and with 2 people shooting the enemy health is more reasonable and fun. No idea, since I just played it single player.
I do want to give Visceral credit for not shoving an AI co-op partner in the game like RE5. It's a co-op game but if you play single player it's just you. That's how co-op games should be for certain genre like survival horror.
The first two DS1 games have a much better balance of combat. Sure, even those games had a ton of enemies and were more action survival horror than adventure survival horror, but it was never anything like the combat in DS3. Fighting marines with rocket launchers and stuff was just stupid.
The last 1/3rd reminds me a lot of Visceral's Dante's Inferno where it just feels like a weak clone of another game.
Also the story for the series about GIANT CTHULU MOONS was hmmm. Like in another game that was a spooky sci-fi horror game I could see it working in a nice creepy tentacle planet way. There's stuff about the lore and how the markers work that's fun and neat creepy schlock. But execution-wise it was just big dumb tentacle monsters yawn, and I read the plot summary from the true ending DLC since I don't want to play anymore DS3 at this point and the final end is eh.
I think for their big Amy Henning Star Wars game, if Visceral can, and has control to, not dumb the gameplay down to a generic clone of some other better game, that with better execution that Henning brings I think they could make a good game. But for me it'll be a "wait until it's like $20-25 to try" game after this. They're not
bad developers. But Dead Space 3 just feels so uninspired by the end. And I think that feeling was mutual with their players because basically no one seemed interested in the game when it was released (myself included) and it sold poorly and was like 99 cents on Origin in a few months. Which is weird because Dead Space 2 was pretty good, so if they'd played their cards right there should have been a whole "finish the fight" type excitement.
