Dead Space 3

I preordered this from Amazon, but went with the free delivery, and so haven't received my copy yet. As soon as it gets here, I plan on playing it co-op with my regular co-op buddy.

I got the 360 version but they are basically identical (other than the 360 being split over two discs). I've put in about 10 hours and am enjoying it a lot. I don't get all the negative reviews at all as the game is classic Dead Space with a few additional wrinkles thrown in. There is more action but all of the hallmarks - necromorphs jumping out of the walls, stasis and kinesis puzzles, strategic dismemberment, spacewalks, dark and delapidated rooms, resource upgrades, etc. - are there. The game also has a nice mix of locales - early levels on the lunar colony, then some levels around a graveyard of derelict ships that really harkens back to the first game and finally some planet-based encounters.

In terms of the weapon crafting, the thing to remember is to create a blueprint of a weapon before you dismantle it; in that way, as long as you have the resources you'll never lose the ability to build it. I wasn't sold on crafting at first but once I was able to acquire a decent amount of resources I was able to create some pretty powerful weapons. The crafting ability really allows you to tailor the weapons to how you like to play - up close or long distance - while also allowing you to mix properties (projectiles coated in acid for example) while also maxxing out their power and accuracy.

The game also has a lot of sidequests which further let you accumulate resources for crafting and I've read that if you complete all of them it extends the length of the game to around 20 hours.

Between the crafting, sidequests and upgrading of your rig and weapons the game would also appear to have a healthy amount of replay value. So overall, I'm really happy with my purchase so far and I'd urge anyone who's on the fence about the game to ignore the uninformed reviews and form their own opinions.

I'm enjoying it so far. I'm on chapter 11.
The demo had me expecting a much more action pack gameplay than it is. Which I prefer. It's Dead space after all.
My saves from previous DS2 game had me unlock some goodies in my safe.
I wonder what I would have had with my DS1 saves if my previous PS3 didn't YLODed.

Beat it on normal solo. The last 2 chapters are a bit rough (or were for me). I'm finding co-op so much more enjoyable, not to mention the difficulty is scaled back with a partner. Still don't quite grasp the recovery bots and how to hit the trophy. I look for activity/and hear the ping and drop him off to do his thing for 10 min. Sometimes it recovers decent material, others not so much. Going after classic mode now to get the foam finger! 1 shot kill. That should make the impossible difficulties more manageable (I hope).

I was having a little trouble with the scavenger bots at first also. The trick is to keep the arrows in the bot display pointing towards the center of the screen and the vertical cone pointing up so that the display looks like this: >>>> \/ <<<<

Keep moving so that the display remains centered as it looks above and as you get closer the pinging will get louder and faster and the display will change to pulsing concentric circles. Deploy the bot at that time for maximum resources.
Edited by TonyDP - 2/11/13 at 1:28pm

Thanks, I just kept sending them without a direction lol.

I'm a fan of the first two games and have been planning on picking this up, just haven't had the time yet. Glad to hear from gamers I trust that it's not as uneven as the general swath of reviews would have you believe.

The missus is taking the kid out of town to visit the in-laws on Friday and is coming back Monday evening so I will pick it up and play the hell out of it this weekend . (That and try to finish off Breaking Bad season 3; yes I am that far behind).

I'm enjoying this, if maybe a bit less than the first two games. Co-op's a lot of fun though simply having another human with you removes a lot of the creepy factor. It becomes more of a run-and-gun with two players, though I was pleased that when I tried playing solo for a bit that the old slower-paced, "every vent is terrifying" Dead Space feeling returned.

That said, I don't really care for some of the changes made to the combat system. Fighting in the old games was mostly about maintaining space and strategic dismemberment. But now, enemies are much faster and don't seem to stagger as often. For a while I tried my old tactics of hanging back and methodically slicing off legs, then arms, with the plasma cutter, but usually just found myself swarmed and pumping health packs like crazy. I find it's much more effective to equip a shotgun and just walk up to enemies and blast them right in the face, not even trying to take off limbs. It's still a viable combat system, but feels more generic, and less Dead-Spacey.

The save system is also pretty abysmal. They fill the game with sidequests but then progress is never saved unless you move forward in story missions? Am I missing something?

I finished the game yesterday, even stayed after the end of the credits.
I really like the game. I started a new game + with all my equipment, trying to complete everything at 100%. after the 4th chapter,..saved and quit and decided to finally try the co op.

I joined a host, he was clearly less equipped than me. I mean that my rig was fully upgraded, and had crafted 2 high damage weapons (1 to 3 shots kill) in normal difficulty.
My host hasn't upgraded anything, He's rig was halfway upgraded and his weapon was a plasma cutter mixed with a line gun.
I think I've spent 2 to 3 hours playing with him. He was mute. He barely stopped to pick up ammo, med packs,....or anything at all. I kept going along.
He was rushing to the next destination as quick as possible,...I followed.
While playing, I kept saving him from death and getting hurt as my weapons were 2 or 3 times more powerful that his. It was a walk in a park.

so spoiler ahead: Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
And I saved and quit.

So went back to my new plus game and it picked up right were I was in co op. lol
Good thing you can select your chapters.
It was fun, but I want to try the co op side missions with someone that knows what he's doing.

I finished the game yesterday; overall I give it a big thumbs up as even though there was more of an emphasis on the action (especially during the last 1/5 of the campaign) it still played and felt very much like a Dead Space game to me. Visuals and sound were top notch, control was tight and spot on and the weapon crafting system allowed for some really interesting and powerful combinations. I'd also urge anyone who finishes the game to sit thru the closing credits as there is a very little tag at the end which might be pretty important going forward.

Two big thumbs down. What a joke this series has become. Dead Space ...more like Lame Space. Or Wasted Space. (On a disc. Get it? Ah, just forget it.)

The Spice Girls will be doing cameos in the next one. Guess what it will be called...

I just finished the game yesterday, having played the entire campaign in co-op with a friend. I thought it was just okay; not nearly as good as the first two. The interiors were very repetitive; they designed only a handful of rooms and simply reused them over and over again. And none of the interiors were as disconcerting as the church or the school in DS2.

And while I give the designers credit for coming up with such an intricate weapons-crafting system, there were aspects of it that were quite obscure and arbitrary; for example, some weapons seem unaffected by certain upgrade circuits, and in other cases, adding an upgrade circuit to your upper weapon would reduce the performance of the lower weapon; why? Also, as ThisOneKidMongo noted above, the game didn't really put the different weapons to good use; a basic shotgun was often the best bet.

I did like the co-op side missions focused on Carver's past: having the two players see and hear different things is a clever idea, and it makes the missions worth replaying so you can see things from each character's point of view. The third one actually involves asymmetric gameplay, which is something I'd like to see more of in games; my only complaint was that Carver's side became ridiculously difficult by the end of it.

I've completed the game, collected all and got 100%.
And I feel the same way about the campaign and co op.

But in order to get the real Dead Space experience imo, I recommend the "Classic Mode" which is on hard and only classic weapons. No crafting. It gets tense and you have to use strategy before taking out the enemies.

I'm not very far (Chapter 5) but I'm experiencing what appears to be a pretty severe bug. My save game picks up right at the end of the invulnerable/regenerating guy. I kill him, get on the tram, stop in the middle section, and play the optional mission with the funny longhorn guy. First time I was doing this I was up late and after getting the stuff at the top I decided to save and quit. Lo and behold next time I start I'm back at the end of the invulnerable/regenerating enemy scene. I would say it didn't save anything but at this point I have less health and ammo. So I beat that again (harder since I have less stuff than before) and save and quit immediately on making it to the next part. Sure enough I start back at the same place, now with even less health and ammo.

I decided to take a break and came back to it a week later (I don't get to game a lot, particularly games not suitable for my 7yr old son). I figure if I make it past the optional mission, all of the way, that should be fine, right? Sure enough I start up the game tonight and I'm back in the same damn place.

This is really ruining my enjoyment of the game. I hate the regenerating enemy stuff anyway and this is really pissing me off. Is there something really stupid I am doing here?

I did notice that the game didn't let you quit and resume from within an optional mission; you had to complete the whole thing in one play session. I found it frustrating, but I wasn't caught in the predicament you are.

Have you tried abandoning the optional mission? If you switch back to the story mission from your objectives HUD and follow the objective marker out of the area, you should be able to reach a different checkpoint and resume from there.

Thanks for the response. I'm actually stuck restarting before the optional mission kicks in. I just have to (again, blah) escape the infinitely regenerating enemy. At that point I can skip the optional mission if I want to. What really pisses me off is I *did* complete the optional mission, the second time through. I saved after getting back in the tram. But it still screwed me after the save.

At this point I'm just mad about the optional mission. I've completed it one and a half (I'd argue closer to one and three quarters) times with nothing to show for it. But if I hear that annoying longhorn any more I might go postal. And if I get further and save again and end up back where I am now I might just break the disc in half. (I'd regret it afterwards...)

Another option might be to choose "continue story" rather than "continue from last save" in the menus when you start. If that doesn't work, maybe try "chapter select" and restart the chapter.

Make sure you check the top right of the screen "progress saving" before save and quit.