#like the fucking necromorph planets in Dead Space?

[cabi-leodrann]

One funny part, about healing from trauma and all, is that you start digging up things you loved.

I forgot how much I fucking loved space. And even the Horrors™ are like, the coolest thing in the fucking world when it comes to space.

So yeah, I subscribed to the instagram page of Nasa, gonna see of they got one on Tumblr too.

But my fucking ass is kicking their feet and giggling like a child at every pictures of planets, nebula, black holes, system collyding and stars. And it's even better when there's info about it in the description.

Space is so cool. And so pretty so pretty

Anyway, going back to space stuff- I missed it verry much-

[unoriginal-and-dumb]

Df ghuffehugefghugfueyguyefgyyfrgygryf?

Do you like dead space? The dead space franchise?? Do you want to hear about dead space?

Last year they released a remake for the first game! Anyway my favorite game from the series would have to be dead space 2, I love the new necromorphs and the added lore to unitology and the whole thing with convergence actually being a thing. In the first game released 2008 convergence actually wasn’t a thing yet. All we knew was the marker, the necromorphs, and unitology. Which is honestly why I like dead space 2 so much. I mean also the advanced suit which is literally the coolest fucking suit EVER. Anyway, did you know that the original dead space game was actually gonna be way different? As it is now it’s a survival sci-fi horror where you play as Isaac Clarke, an engineer who is trying to make sure the entire ship (USG Ishimura) doesn’t go under since everyone is either dead or now a necromorph. More importantly he is actually looking for his girlfriend who was a nurse on the ship. How the game was originally going to be was actually how Callisto protocol is. In other words, it was going to be that you were a prisoner, but some sort of infection is going around and turning people into horrible monsters that go and kill everyone else. I’m really glad they decided to not go with that idea, because the whole thing with unitology and convergence with the added PAIN of Nicole (Isaac’s girlfriend) really makes for a great game. Callisto protocol kinda fell flat for me, the weapons were kinda lame and the fighting was a bit jank but the designs were pretty cool. Nothing will ever beat necromorphs though. My favorite of the single body necromorphs would probably be the unitologist slasher, the puker, or the stalker. The unitologist slasher in specific areas doing the unitology hand symbol thing and the fact that their faces are completely obliterated is kind of poetic given what unitology is (it’s the belief that death, conversion to necromorphs, and convergence into a sentient meat planet essentially is the final steps of evolution for humanity when in all reality it is just the brethren moons way of reproducing). I like pukers because of how severely messed up they are, their faces are hollow and their flesh is melted due to the acid they hold their lungs. It’s twisted and malformed and the designs for the legs are absolutely so cool. Stalkers im biased for because I loved dinosaurs, I loved xenomorphs, I mean it’s a human contorted into basically a raptor and it screams at you and looks awesome ITS COOL! But god Isaac Clarke is such a great character. Like I said he’s just an engineer who in the end of it all wants to find and save his girlfriend because he was the one who encouraged her to take the job on the ishimura. Spoiler warning in case anyone was actually reading this and wanting to play the games. Anyway Nicole is dead, even before you start playing she was already dead and Isaac knew that. He received her last transmission, all she could really say is everything was falling apart and how scared she was, but she ultimately decided it was better if she did it herself instead of being turned into a necromorph. Isaac watched Nicole die, the one person in his life that was there for him, that tried to help him, that stayed with him and he loved her soooooooo much, so seeing that transmission kind of just broke him. He pushed it out of his head and refused to believe it. And it just gets so much worse because the marker, the thing that created necromorphs, is capable of creating hallucinations and delusions for people making them more susceptible to being killed, killing, or helping the marker reach the convergence event in order to create a brethren moon. Throughout the game Isaac experiences hallucinations, they get worse and worse until he finally finds what he thinks is Nicole and because he jsut wants her alive and well he chooses to believe it, in the end healing the marker get exactly what it wanted.

Convergence events are triggered by the markers when there is enough biomass. So these brethren moons, are moon sized living beings. They literally farm species. I’m dead space lore, the asteroid that hit the earth and killed the dinosaurs was the red marker. It was designed to take out the dinosaurs as the brethren moons know what they need in a species in order to reproduce a new moon. The marker sends out signals to the species, encouraging growth in intellect, and also creating the internal greed leading to over using the environment and being forced to find new ways to get materials such as going to the stars. This influence is key not only to create an intelligent species but for small cues in their genes to be easily triggered when they have reached their peak. This is when a necromorph outbreak will begin to occur. First, people have to be near the marker. It produces energy signals that are highly desired as it looks to be free energy, so obviously this draws attention and leads to people studying the marker extensively. Then it starts to hit those genetic cues. It depends on the person, but most will exhibit signs of heightened stress and anxiety, hallucinations as well. People who are unable to hold the knowledge of how to create more markers are driven insane, often times becoming extremely hostile as they hallucinate others to be monsters or believe that others are trying to harm them in some other way. It begins with a body, the marker also has something similar to a viral bacteria that it used to create the first few necromorphs. Once there is a dead body in proximity, it takes a bit of time but eventually it can “reanimate” it (necromorphs are NOT alive, they are simple a collection of muscles being moved around, they can’t be killed but dismemberment can stop them) the first few necromorphs are always slashers. They have large blades and strong legs, they can quickly crawl through vents and are quick and good at killing. Once there’s enough slashers around to protect the marker it moves on to creating infectors, those are severely mutilated human corpses, but their main purpose is to speed up the infection. They have a long proboscis that is designed to stab through human skulls and inject the bacteria. With infectors, the switch from human to necromorph only takes seconds. This allows for other forms of necromorphs to be created. It depends on a number of things for what determines what type of necromorph will come from a human, but the marker uses the materials to the best of its abilities. People with somethingike acid reflux may be more prone to becoming a puker, people who have been cut in half or just have a much stronger upper body may become a leaper (leg less torsos that can crawl and jump extreme distances) if the infection is along far enough the marker may begin to attack in other ways, such as creating wheezers (oo wee ooo) that cough up poisonous gasses to kill off any remain in survivors passively. Sometimes a corpse just becomes part of the corruption, which is often seen as meaty growth along the walls and floor of any areas. In the ishimura it blocks door ways, slows people down, grows tentacle like things that can grab and drag people down. It can also work a bit like the wheezers by relaeasing the poisonous gasses but it works much slower than the wheezers do, much more passive stuff. The most dangerous thing the corruption can do is create wall guardians. Humans can be absorbed into the corruption and have a stationary necromorph that can prevent survivors from traversing as easily. They are extremely dangerous and hard to kill without proper weapons. As mentioned necromorphs are dead, all you can do is dismember them to make it so they are unable to attack you so it’s not just an easy one and done shot.

Brethren moons are so super cool. They are the signs of previously powerful species, they are the reason we are alone. They harvest and kill in order to create life for themselves. A brethren moon requires an intelligent species in order to become what it is. They are hyper intelligent hive minds that are all connected. They share the same abilities of the markers but scaled to like times 100. In dead space, there is a level of intelligence that shows itself as the ability to read others minds, or if cultivated act as a hive mind. Every human has the ability to be born with it but it is rare and again one human could have that ability but it is such a low level it will likely never be noticed unless convergence occurs. Isaac Clarke does not have this ability, but he does have the other form of intelligence that makes him much more dangerous and thus more desired by the brethren moons. He is able to withstand the marker signal better than others (that doesn’t mean he can fully withstand it but yknow) which means he is able to have the instructions for HWO to create more markers implanted in his head. But that also means he can defeat the markers plans (if we are going by dead space 3 non dlc ending that means he can also defeat brethren moons but I don’t like dead space 3 very much so im not counting it) the entire idea is built around levels of intelligence, and there’s so many different levels of it. Humans as a whole are smart, but everyone has different intelligences in different areas and I’ve always been really interested in stuff like that

Anyway im gonna go now I have about 385828578385739 more words to say but I need to do other things

[engineer455]

This is me rambling about something that's been bugging me for a while now.

Please bear with me for the following, this isn't really all that well structured but I need to get it out:

Aight, so something that's been bugging me for the past couple of months now has got to be how it seems like a significant portion of the fanbase still seem to be 100% sure The Solver is an AI.

Like, I get believing that back before episode 5. But after both episodes 5 AND 6 the AI thought process is really iffy now.

Let me explain.

Episode 2 showed that something was up with DD cores, and the Solverpede was quite obviously NOT J, but hey, there's been weirder AI's out there in fiction, something that screws around with what looks like biomechanics isn't THAT far-fetched, especially what with the use of Nanites that DD's have. And yeah, the telekinesis was kinda

But 5 kinda soft-debunked the AI thing when the Solver gave it's full name, and episode 6 DEFINTELY debunked that.

In 5 it calls itself "The Solver of the Absolute Fabric, the Void, the Exponential End."

I don't know about you, but that sounds less like the name of some homicidal toaster with delusions of grandeur and more like the name of some unholy fucking THING that crawled out of the Space Between Stars and decided to make it everyone's problem.

And then there's Episode 6.

And how the Solver turned Earth and at least 2 other planets (and probably more judging by Tessa's patch on her arm) into chunks of rubble orbiting what looks like a BLACK FUCKING HOLE.

Then there's the other bits how it manifests in damaged Drone AI, which DEFINITELY shouldn't happen if it were an AI.

And finally, there's how I'm pretty sure the the Corpse Spires, the Black Hole that shows up in N's flashback in ep4, and this image from episode 6 are all connected:

I'm not gonna mince words so I'm just going to put it simply: the corpse spires are for the Solver to trigger it's version of a goddamn Convergence Event.

said Convergence Event being those giant black holes.

I've got this whole theory behind this but this is the simple version, so whatever.

Point is, at first it was cool to think the Solver is just an AI, but by now it's quite frankly insane to think the planet devouring abomination that causes deactivated robots to come back from the dead, and inevitably turn into something that looks like the end result of a necromorph fucking a Macintosh 128K is MERELY an Artificial Intelligence gone nutty. Instead of what I believe it truly is:

An Eldritch Abomination using Drone Cores as an entryway into this universe to devour planets for a reason that we still don't know.

...Oh yeah also, Cyn isn't the Solver, can't believe some of you people still believe that.

She's just another poor bastard that was roped into this shit and ended up becoming a literal puppet for some sort of Eldritch Horror from Lovecraft's nightmares.

[rjshepofftheshits]

Ok real talk tho, here is how they can improve dead space 3 for a remake.

Less focus on saving the world and more focus on the characters. i want to see isaac and ellie try to repair their relationship, i want to see carver go from grumpy git to isaacs friend and i want to see robert norton go from a good man with good intentions to someone who cracks under pressure, not because of some dumb jealousy thing with Isaac. if you were feeling REALLY spicy you could even make Danik a reasonable if categorically wrong man who eventually goes absolutely fruit loops by the end instead of starting out that way.

give isaac more story besides running after ellie. i know saving people, particularly the women in his life is a running theme with mr clarke, we do stan a feminist king. but he was perfectly capable of doing everything in dead space 1 WHILE ALSO looking for Nicole, his every other word wasn't about her. Dead space 3 makes me feel like he is only capable of pining after ellie and that is just not him. Isaac and ellie were together for 2-3 years, he knows her and he knows she can look after herself, it's the rest of the fucking universe that needs his competence and intelligence, not her. and if you must go this way, please don't make it another rescue mission. Again, ellie is a survivor and an intelligent person maybe even as smart as isaac she does not need saving.

also give the girl back her sports bra im sick of the cleavage. how she jumped 3 cup sizes is beyond me.

keep carver in the story but make him either an AI companion or do what NIER : Automata or RE2MAKE did. you play all the way through as isaac, then as carver and then once again as whoever for the ending OR you play all the way to the end as Isaac and then on a second playthrough you can be Carver and the way that you played as Isaac is now how your ai partner isaac behaves.

do not lock Carvers story behind coop missions. i know visceral didnt want to do this, they were made to by ea but still it seems like a dumb move even on their part. Carver didnt need to be there but since he is, why are you hiding that light under a bushel ea???

big one: get rid of the micropayments and retool the fucking weapons and combat. most of the guns are like water pistols and the necromorphs tank hits like brick shithouses. i know SCAF weapons are 200 years old by the time of dead space 3 but like. Isaac is smart enough to make a ripper, a line cutter and a plasma cutter on its own without bolting them together.

do not hide the true ending behind a dlc paywall. i think i was the only person on the planet that actually liked Awakened, better than the base game too. so it pains me to say that it didnt need to exist: either cut it completly and use it as the opening for dead space 4 or merge it into the ending of dead space 3 somehow.

lastly i think the story needs some tweaking. if we look at the progression it goes > outbreak on one ship > outbreak on a station> universe wide outbreaks everyone is doomed. now granted i understand you need to escate things for sequels but i just dont feel the same gravity of the situation in 3 as a did in 1 or 2. we never see the world outside isaacs pov which is fine but i would still like to see some of the world before it got fucked over a picket fence by the unitologists. the only glimpses we get are in text logs and it would make me feel more urgency to save the world if i actually knew what the world was like.

Continuing on with my story point: isaac needs some tweaks. he is a broken and cynical man by 3 which is very fair given all hes gone through but he is also a savior and defender at heart. no, he didnt ask for any of this but since he's stuck in this situation you know damn well he is going to do his best to fix this. I always found it weird that Isaac was essentially suicidal by the time of 3s opening, he was killing himself with indifference and clearly not looking after himself but when Norton comes knocking he still says "find someone else for your suicide mission" outright refusing all of it until ellie is mentioned. why didnt norton open with "ellie is in trouble, she sent us to get you to help" ? and why did isaac flat out refuse if he didnt care about his own life???

all this to say i would very much like to see isaac living a somewhat normal life after 2. ok maybe hes still depressed and alone but hes also still trying to move on, anything better to explain his reluctance to get dragged back into things . Maybe instead of having isaac backed into a corner and avoiding the world it could be more of a case of "i fucking told you so" like the mass effect series. Isaac has spent 2 games telling everyone who will listen "do not fuck with the markers" and now maybe he could be really fucking annoyed that no one has listened and as the only competent man in the galaxy hes got to go sort this shit out on principal.

here also are some things id just like to see.

Isaac struggling with his marker problem less like psychosis and more like a general disability or chronic illness. yes it sucks ass and yes its disabling but hes still a badass despite it. i dont like the wooohhhoooo mental illness scary vibes i get from other marker touched people like stross. thats just not how it works.

isaac with psysical scars from his time in project teleomere/ the hospital in dead space 2. i would like to see him with wounds from the first game healed and also maybe some marker scrawl on him as a permenant reminder of what happened.

id like to see ellie have a more active role or even be a playable character. doesnt have to be a big thing, do something like the born from a wish scenario in silent hill 2, maybe cover the 2 weeks she was lost in space before ds3 takes place.

id like to see the necromorph process slowed down. it happens so fast its almost meaningless, not to mention unbelievable. if it happens over time and the characters can see and react to it happening that has more emotional impact.

In the ending where carver and Isaac get blown off the platform, I want to see them holding hands to stay together.

if i think anymore ill put them in the reblogs or something

but yeah ea hit me up im ready to advise

or if ur not ea and just wana chat shite about dead space you can hit me up too

[pomellon]

Mmm yes good this dead space au is tasty. I'm curious though, what IS Dream doing during all this? 👀 And maybe if you have thoughts on the other trio what's goin' on over with them too?

I was playing around with two ideas for Dream, either that he was already off the ship or that he’s still on it and simply don’t know his boyfriends are on it too until the last couple of hours of the event (I imagine the time frame of Sapnap and George getting on the ship and eventually managing to escape it is no longer than 10-12 hours, there’s just things constantly happening within those hours). I eventually decided to go with the latter since it would be more interesting for Dream’s character and make more sense to the story.

So Dream has been on the ship since the beginning, since before the Marker was brought on board and witnessed everything unfold on the planet colony and then eventually on the Ishimura. He was protesting bringing the Mark onboard from the very start, having seen the effects it had on some of the civilians from the colony that they brought up to study. But of course the religious fanatics thought it more important to retrieve their holy relic than to protect the lives of their crew. 

In hopes of learning more about the Marker and how it affects people Dream studied it pretty closely and he knows it's the artifact that is causing everything. It makes people have delusions, it causes them to die at the hands of each other or themselves, and it then mutates the DNA of the corpses, creating Infectors that spread the necromorph mutation, creating more dead bodies to infect.

Dream is also having delusions, but he’s more aware of them. He actually keeps seeing Sapnap and George even before they arrive on the ship. At first he ignores them, not falling for the Marker’s tricks, but the worse things get the more he starts to turn to his hallucinations for comfort. He knows that they’re not really there, but he starts talking to them to soothe himself.

This ended up making him believe Sapnap and George are just his normal hallucinations when he does get in contact with them, and he kind of acts like they’ve been on the ship the whole time. Sapnap easily goes along with it because he’s “seen” Dream too so it makes sense to him. Meanwhile George is trying to figure out what the fuck is going on and start question his own sanity with the way his boyfriends are acting. Maybe he’s the one going insane?

As for the other three, they don’t get added to the story until after the Ishimura events!

Karl is a scientist sent with a team to gather Marker shards on Aegis VII, or what’s left of the planet (spoiler, dnn manage to return the Marker to the planet where it, and part of the planet, is crushed when the Ishimura’s gravity tethers fail, releasing the planet chunk it was holding and sending it crashing back down miles below.). He is heavily influenced by just the shard they find and bring back to the ship, managing to decode part of the Marker’s purpose and architectural design to potentially build a new one. But he also ends up testing his knowledge which triggers another necromorph outbreak on this other ship. 

He survives but is taken in by EarthGov, the main governmental body of this setting, that wants to sweep all these Marker events under the rug. They torture him for his knowledge and then lock him in a cryo chamber for potential future use. The same has happened to dnn after they managed to escape the Ishimura.

Three years later we find Punz and Foolish on the Sprawl, a civilian space station built on the remains of Saturn's moon, Titan, which was broken into pieces in a planet cracking operation. Punz is a security and repair officer on the station while Foolish is a technician. They’re often paired up to fix things and are really close friends, maybe even a little bit more than that already. 

They’re doing their normal routine of getting called out to repair jobs around the station when they notice a lot of the issues they come across seem to have been deliberately sabotaged and tampered with. It's while they’re musing over this that they are notified of an outbreak on the station, and I’m sure you can guess what that means!

As it so happens, the cryo chambers the other four have been stored in are also on the Sprawl and Foolish, an agent of Unitology, is tasked to let them out amidst the outbreak. All six of them will end up getting separated and paired up to survive yet another necromorph outbreak.

[croakingfairy]

when i started playing i knew the basics of dead space but was fully 100% convinced nicole would be a horrific monster id have to fight (she definitely became a necromorph because she died on the ship but) and i think that would have been sick as fuck but i also know that if isaac had known she was dead he would have given up, and i think the marker as well as daniels also knew that and thats why she kept that from him until the end when she was going to let him die on aegis vii, and who knows maybe the marker in part kept her from saying anything idfk i love this game and how batshit insane the lore gets because everything is truly inevitable, like the marker (brother moons) fully are pulling all the strings at all times like everything isaac did literally would promote a convergence event, i dont know if theres a single way this could have been stopped once the can of worms (literal planet) was cracked open

[oldest-house]

I had an idea for a Dead Space/Control crossover where in a last ditch effort to save the human race the FBC weaponizes the Hiss against the necromorphs.

Surprisingly, this last ditch shot in the dark most people expected to do nothing at best and backfire horrendously at worst somehow actually mostly works.

With all the Brother Moons in the Solar System, the Necromorph species is temporarily wiped out, although so long as Markers can be built they'll always be able to return, but in the process much of the Solar System is rendered incredibly hostile to anything that isn't the Hiss for the foreseeable future.

In addition, the weaponization of the Hiss against the Necromorphs and resulting declassification of who the fuck the FBC are and what the hiss is and what it does results in a massive schism in the Church of Unitology between people who want to continue worshipping the Necromorphs and a new faction that sees a lot of their beliefs about Convergence as being better embodied by the Hiss than by the Necromorphs and seeing the Hiss' corruption and destruction of the Brother Moons as the ultimate vindication of this belief. A small faction of "Reform Unitologists" even believe that Polaris will bring about convergence - though this is mostly because she's a lot nicer than their other options.

Because of the collapse of human central authority and fall of the Solar System, humanity immediately collapses into a bloody dark age of intense religious fanaticism, radical political ideologies, and civil war. Hundreds of trillions die. Unitologists continue to build markers or let the Hiss into their planets or space stations.

However, humanity survives. The FBC finds a way to tune entire planets to Polaris. The Necromorphs may not be gone forever but the power gap between them and humanity has been shrunk by several orders of magnitude.

What do you think?

I am not familiar with Dead Space, but this does sound like it would make for a wonderful fanfic concept.

I'd encourage you to give it a go, trying to write it out. I am sure there are people out there who would love to read it.

[elegant-agent]

thinking about dead space 3 and how to retell its entire thing

i think it would have been better if ellie was the main character instead of isaac - she's gone through the same thing he has, but has less overall experience, considering he already killed 2 markers, making her a good choice of a familiar protagonist with little experience but not helpless

take out the co-op stuff, retain the original weapon system, maybe make the combo weapons a special deal for ellie since she might have learned how to scavenge and survive after dead space 2 but have the combo weapons be a special occasion rather than every weapon being that

instead of human squads of goons, make them fodder for the necromorphs instead, like in dead space 2. they're always just out of reach of ellie, but just ahead of the necromorphs chasing her too. maybe have special humans as miniboss fights

why are they chasing her? so that isaac will try to rescue her. obviously she doesn't need it but he definitely helps out.

also i won't lie and say i haven't been thinking of isaac getting chased by power armored soldiers, maybe unitologists or earthgov, but he warns ellie about them. this fight is different than the previous squads of cultists, but ties into my human soldier miniboss fight idea. they don't use lasers to aim since they know it's visible, so they slowly try to find ellie in the dark, calling out for her and to each other. semi-puzzle fight since getting caught by soldiers with weapons specifically designed to kill humans is a bad idea, so don't get caught. their armor makes it hard for ellie's attacks to go through.

basically the same things happen to ellie as did isaac in dead space 3 with some changes here and there, but their roles are mostly reversed

change the ending a bit because it kind of does suck ass, have the dlc take place not on frozen planet but rather a lunar colony cultist cell post-game, also fuck that ending too

[nicholasthepunisher]

dead space 3 really is a game that’s Just There. like whether it existed or not wouldn’t have that much of an impact cus it sure didn’t explain the origins or purpose of the necromorphs like the original promo material lead you to believe it would and it ended on a big cliff hanger (TWICE), so really what else does it have to offer? a terribly written love rivalry between characters with no chemistry? uhhh fun but ultimately unbalanced weapon crafting? a subpar co-op experience with innovative but very underutilized game play mechanics?? a few additions to the lore featuring an interesting an ancient alien planet that they unfortunately never fucking managed to divulge enough information about? not a lot going for it, really

[fridge-reviews]

Dead Space 3

Developer: Visceral Games Publisher: Electronic Arts Rrp: £7.99 (Origin) Released: 5th February Available on: Origin Played Using: An Xbox 360 Controller Approximate game length: 15 Hours It seems that Isaac Clarke just cannot catch a break, if its not necromorphs gunning for him its a government agency trying to kidnap him. That is until now, now a religious group called the Unitologists want him, or more specifically, want him dead. And that's just the tip of the iceberg that are Isaac Clarke's problems... Dead Space 3 is the third, and thus far final, major instalment in the Dead Space franchise. Once again you take control of Isaac Clarke, a man whose job title might be 'Engineer' but might as well at this point change it to 'Necromorph Exterminator'. This time the game kicks off on a lunar colony... actually, no it doesn't. The game actually starts you off not playing Isaac Clarke at all but a Marine (who’s name I don't remember) on a ice covered planet. This bit is short lived and is basically just a tutorial for the more basic controls as well as being a sort of premise setter.

Dead Space 3 has gone for a more... cinematic feel in this instalment, and I don't mean by limiting the frame rate, it has far more cutscenes than the previous games. Most of them are well executed and don't outstay their welcome, but at the start of the game it can start to feel a little insufferable. I quickly became annoyed when a cutscene ended and I literally was given control to walk through a short corridor (is in only a few steps) only to have control wrested from me again by yet another cutscene! Its pretty standard practice that with each new release of a game franchise that some new mechanics are brought in to keep things fresh, and Dead Space is no exception. Between the first Dead Space game and the second there were a few differences but nothing that felt out of place. Dead Space 3 however brings in a whole slew of new game mechanics, as well as something more... underhanded.

I'll start with the first mechanic that appears and was possibly the most jarring to me, the cover based shooting. That's right, yet another game with cover based shooting, which is stupid because the cover mechanic isn't used all that often and is pointless against pretty much all the necromorphs. What's more is that the crouch action is bound to the same button as the waypoint tool. It feels a bit.. tacked on, like it was more of a enforced boardroom decision than one the designers had planned. The stores that were in the previous games are gone with the Benches acting as a one stop shop for buying, selling, crafting, storing and upgrading your weapons and items. That's right Dead Space 3 has crafting elements, of course at the time when this game was originally released crafting within a game was still a somewhat novel concept. Many things can be crafted at a Bench, from weapons and their upgrades to items and ammo. This crafting takes up resources that you'll find throughout the game (or buy via micro-transaction, more on that later). What’s actually kind of impressive is that you can create custom weapons and save the blueprints of them. Its actually a fairly robust system, do you want to make a semi automatic rifle that sets enemies alight and has a underslung rocket launcher? Well you can, and if you decide you don't like the weapon anymore you can dismantle it and reuse the parts. This high level of customisability essentially fixes something that I would generally have an issue with in this game. You can only hold two weapons at a time. Of course, if you can create a weapon that’s basically two weapons in one that kind of negates the problem. Now among all this talk of crafting and upgrading the more veteran players out there may just be wondering about what is possibly one of the most important parts of the series, if not one of the most iconic, the suit. Not to worry your suit is also fully upgradable, just not at a bench. Suits are upgraded and changed at suit kiosks. Again, no sign of power nodes, instead you use materials found in the game (or purchased via micro-transactions) to make the wanted upgrades.

Another new mechanic is the Scavenger Bot, when you eventually find these you can send them off to find more crafting materials for you. It takes them a little while and there are certain area's that are rich in material. Not to worry though EA has a way to part you with more hard earned cash. You can buy a DLC to decrease the wait time, and another to increase their carrying capacity. It's almost as if EA are just trying to anger me. All weapons now operate from a single ammo type once again this removes some of the tension the Dead Space series had for me. Part of the fun was scrambling for the right ammo for your weapon when you've run out. It added to the fear of the whole thing. Now that I can just get any ammo clip that sense of danger has been defused.

Ooh! This is just egregious to me. So, while exploring the Bench system I see that I'm given the option to upgrade my weapons. Of course, I take a look and notice that my starting machine gun only has two available upgrade circuit slots. The rest are blocked off in silver (meaning they are completely unavailable), all bar one in a bronze colour. Being curious, I take a look at it and find that I can unlock this upgrade using material I find in the game. A pretty standard way to gate content and keep the game balanced, that all seems fair. I didn't have enough of the materials required but click anyway because 'why not?'. As expected I'm informed that I don't have the resources, however I do see a 'Downloadable content' option there. Still curious I go take a gander. This is where my ire started to rise. What do I see before me but an offer to purchase a micro-transaction which will give me not only the material I need to make the upgrade but also a bunch more materials plus a guaranteed super-charged weapon part and a 50% chance at a second bonus part... WHAT THE EVER LIVING FUCK EA?! YOU PUT MICRO-TRANSACTIONS IN A MAJOR RELEASE AAA TITLE! I bought this game years after it originally released and I'm angry, I can only imagine how people must have felt when they bought this game at the time of release. These micro-transactions can also be bought through 'Ration Seals' that can only be found using the scavenger bots. So I took the plunge and bought one of the 'packs' using the ration seals. As I suspected even buying just one made the game much much easier. The super-charged component that was mentioned was so powerful that once I attached it to my weapon I almost never had to change out again. I was so disgusted by this practice I quit the game and played something else for a whole just to calm down. Ok, now that I've calmed down lets get back to it... The new upgrade system has done away with the power nodes from the previous games. This time you have upgrade circuits that you can find within the levels, or craft for yourself once you have the resources. These upgrade circuits come in various shapes and sizes but they all relate to one of four stats for your weapon; Damage, reload speed, clip size and rate of fire. While this does make upgrading your weapon less straight forward than the previous games it also allows for greater variance in gameplay style. I, for one, tend to prioritize high damage and clip size but others might focus more on the rate of fire etc. Upgrade circuits aren't the only way to improve your weaponry, you can also craft attachments which can have a wide range of benefits to you (or your co-op partner).

Hang about. Co-op? In a survival horror game? Yep that's right Dead Space 3 has two player Co-op, so now you and a friend (who also has the game) can play together in this tense horror game... In case its not clear, I'm not impressed by this. To me having Co-op in a horror game removes much of the actual horror. On top of there being Co-op missions there are now optional side missions that can be completed, doing so doesn't effect the game in anyway beyond giving the player access to more upgrades and materials as well as expanding the story a little. The missions themselves tend to be quite short but challenging often ending with you being swarmed while in very enclosed quarters.

As is to be expected with a sequel within the Dead Space franchise there are even more new necromorphs to fight against. Actually in one case its not so much a new necromorph as a rehash of one. I don't know what the name of them is but in the first and second game it was a baby that fired darts at you and could climb the walls and ceiling. In Dead Space 3 the babies have been replaced by dogs. I can only assume that this replacement this was a tactical move on EA's or Visceral's part to make the game appeal more to the mass market, probably a good idea as those babies were pretty disconcerting to say the least. As you may have noticed everything I've written above is, well, its essentially just a list of mechanics with a few scattered complaints rather than discussing anything about the way the game plays. There is a reason for this which is very simple... I have nothing new to say. Seriously the gun play is damned near the same even with the modding mechanic. I may as well copy and paste what I said about it from my Dead Space 2 review.

Is this one to recommend? At the price that its at now its an easy recommendation to make, even with all the unscrupulousness of EA's micro-transactions its hard to argue that this game isn't worth a look at. I won't say its the best of the franchise, that title is held by Dead Space 2 for me. If this appeals to you perhaps try; Prey Resident Evil 4 The Evil Within

[nicholasthepunisher]

really love how the dead space story was like. capitalism caused humans as a species to venture out into space and harvest resources from other moons and planets bc our own planet was dying and if the fucking CEC didn't arrogantly waltz into the centuries-prohibited aegis system to mine there none of the necromorph bullshit would have happened and then the third game is literally like. You can spend $1.99 to buy more resources and pay to win. You can buy a suit and a weapon for $4.99 and increase your chances of survival. very cool