A lot of people were a bit… disappointed with the demo that was shown of Dead Space 3 at E3. Myself included! Dead Space is a franchise all about suspense, horror and survival. What we got instead was what looked more like EA’s attempt at reviving Army of Two.
The demo featured Isaac and… some other guy fighting in a large, arena-like drilling area. Gameplay-wise, it looked a hell of a lot like the previous Dead Space games’ ‘locked room’ scenarios. That is to say, the two were stuck fending off waves of enemies while waiting for some form of time-delayed set piece to trigger (in this case, the explosion of a massive drill bit overhead). The duo then exited the structure through a massive hole left by the drills destruction and the game took a considerably unexpected turn. Suddenly, as Isaac and his buddy entered the snow planet setting previously leaked a few months ago, the demo seemed to switch gears to become what looked like a third-person, cover based shooter.
This seemed to leave fans less than ecstatic as they took to Twitter and drew comparisons to Gears of War and Army of Two. Those comparisons quickly dissipated as a massive, boss-type enemy entered the fray. Replete with glowing, orange weak points, the corpse/lizard/bug monster swallowed the two characters whole and the entire scene switched to show Isaac caught within the beast’s innards. This didn’t seem to mean the end of everyone’s favorite starship engineer, but the demo ended there.
The similarities between this new enemy and Lost Planet did not go without comment. Indeed, from the demo it seems like Visceral is trying to copy the spirit of every third-person action game but Dead Space.
But as almost every developer will tell you, press events filled with hundreds of people, thumping techno and half a hundred other distractions is not a great environment to show off your less action-oriented elements. It’s entirely possible that Dead Space 3 will bring about the same kind of survival horror that fans know and love, co-op notwithstanding. We’ll probably get a better idea of what the game is really like in the months to come, but in the meantime, I say that Visceral has earned the benefit of the doubt.
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