Monsters under my bed? Meh. Let me just shoot them.
Deadspace 3 was a huge disappointment for most veteran Deadspace players. DS3 concentrated more on providing a Call of Duty-esque experience than being the terror-inducing survival horror game we had grown accustomed to. The player had to focus more on taking cover and eliminating irksome creatures that looked rather funny with weirdly jutting out proportions.
The mounting terror with each step you take through that dimly lit corridor, and the dread of what’s luring in wait around the next corner, is no more in DS3. Instead all you can look forward to here is the next one sided firefight you’ll have with yet another horde of crazily sculpted creatures.
1. Scare On!
Some scary moments in DS2
Deadspace 3 hardly had any of those scare moments; instead it looked more like a gory movie where we had limited control over the player. The eye candy level had been spiked up but the horror levels had fell flat and bottom-lined rather badly.
Deadspace 2, the previous version had some serious jump scares and even more edge-of-the-seat nail biting moments where you’ll find yourself fumbling with your controls to save yourself or a friendly NPC. On the other hand, DS3 turned out to be a rather lazy shooting game where you play tiny minigames of “kill the monster before it eats you” scattered throughout each level.
It would be better if we saw the return of these scare elements in the next installment of Deadspace.
2. Help! Someone… Anyone…
DS3 even on hard mode, gives you a considerable amount of ammunition and in the easy mode, you are a walking military arsenal. The helplessness and the desperate need to conserve ammo is no more in this third iteration of the franchise.
Even though this helplessness often frayed your nerves, it contributed greatly to the formidable aura this game created.
3. Total Silence VS Loud Scary Sound Effects
Silence…
The silence is so deadly that it pounds on your eardrums, the horror and tension mounting with each step you take along this rather dark corridor, your flashlight dancing around fervently on mutilated corpses squashed behind desks and upturned chairs. A piercing guttural cry slashes through silence, indicating that you have been spotted. You are left rooted to the spot, spinning your flashlight around trying to spot the creature.
We need more moments like this instead of a straight forward shooter game; we always have CoD for that.
4. What’s that Hammering Sound? Oh… It’s my Heart!
Stick a needle in your eye…
There was a small sequence in DS2 where you had to puncture your own eye right in the center of your pupil in order to activate some brain cells. But imagine a needle slowly inching towards your eye; it can seriously play with your mind making you feel things that you didn’t know that you could feel.
Mess this up and you can watch the gore spurting out of Isaac’s eye, sounds pretty sick, eh? But trust me; this single eye puncture sequence was worth playing the entire game.
Yet again DS3 disappoints on this front, no more heart hammering moments like this, but just lazy bullet spraying around irate monsters.
5. Hallucinations and Illusions
All hallucinations in DS2
Every time Isaac reaches a significant place of interest within the game, a hallucination is triggered making Isaac see strange things, sometimes it can be creepy like the time when a hideous version of Isaac’s dead girlfriend starts closing in on him singing a chilling lullaby. Or at other times, it informs the player of something related to the story.
Either way, it was a great add-on to the overall story narration of the game often helping break the linearity of the playthrough. Similar events like this could be a huge plus for the next upcoming version of the game.
From the Perspective of the Developers
EA has said that it still believes in the brand of Deadspace even though the latest iteration had not achieved commercial expectations. The top brass at Visceral Games have expressed trust on the series saying that they will start development on the next game, but only if they come up with an idea that captures the core spirit of what the franchise is actually about.
Nevertheless it would be a long wait owing to the fact that they had been busy with Battlefield: Hardline for the past few years and that development on the next Deadspace game is yet to be started.
