As a major fan of the Dead Space series (and having a shirt to that effect), I feel it is my duty to review the newest installment of the franchise, particularly because it greatly deviates from the previous two installments.

Dead Space 3 is the continuation of the saga of Isaac Clarke, our hero from the past two games. EarthGov, an organization that is hopefully self-explanatory, is facing a rebellion from the Church of Unitology, the dominant religion of the galaxy. The Unitologists believe that the Markers usher in Convergence, an event where the cycle of rebirth is broken and meets at one final, glorious point. They also believe that EarthGov is corrupting the Markers by making false copies and misusing their power, and so the Unitologists try to free them.

This is where Isaac comes in. On the run from both EarthGov and the Unitologists, Isaac is stuck in his past, refusing to continue his fight against the Markers. Things change when EarthGov soldiers march into his apartment and force him to join their mission to destroy the origin of the Marker signal, a mission headed by Isaac’s ex-girlfriend, Ellie Langford. This mission will take him to the remote planet Tau Volantis, an inhospitable land of ice and snow. Here, he must survive freezing blizzards, the Necromorph horde, and Unitologists, all while trying to stop the Markers’ sinister purpose.

For gameplay, Dead Space 3 is quite different from its predecessors. The system of buying and upgrading items has been added to benches, which are usually never too far away. But the most awesome new features involve gun crafting and ammo. Now you can make your own combinations to deal with the undead horrors before you, and ammo is now universal, a major upgrade from past games. These changes help make overall functionality more important than ammo scarcity or effective range. Another awesome new feature is the Co-Op system, which was done extremely well as far as convenience is concerned. It allows two players to fight alongside each other and complete “Co-Op only” missions. A neat bonus of Co-Op play is that the campaign will moderately alter from the solo campaign.

There are two main problems I have with this game, both involving story. The first problem is that the story is extremely convoluted and vague at times. For example, Isaac has to literally explain a crucial cutscene that drastically changes the whole story. The second is that Isaac is a walking writer’s convenience. (A writer’s convenience is an extremely unlikely event or series of events occurring that serve a purpose otherwise unachievable.) Nearly everything that happens to Isaac serves to either make the game longer or forcibly create tension. It quickly becomes extremely tiresome and conveys a sense of laziness on the part of programmers, which is further highlighted by the recycling of rooms for side missions.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Dead Space 3 has taken a welcomed turn in replayability. In previous installments, once you beat the game, all that was left was go through the campaign again, only on a harder difficulty. Hardcore mode was fun, but once you beat it, that was it. And all the plot twists and surprises that the game had were gone, you knew everything that happens, and you knew where all the enemies were hiding in ambush. But Dead Space 3 has made a significant attempt to fix this. Once you beat the game, you unlock three new modes to play, each of which changes the game’s dynamics completely. There’s still Hardcore mode, but now there are Classic and Pure Survival modes, both of which produce different challenges to overcome and offer useful rewards when completed. There are also incentives to collect every item, such as special suits, circuits, and weapon parts.

All in all, Dead Space 3 is a huge leap forward for the series. The game gives more freedom in weapon choice, has more replayability for gamers, and utilizes a very nice Co-Op system. Thus, I think this game deserves a score of 9/10. Now go and dismember those Necromorphs!