Dead Space 3 review

The Dead Space series has been known for prioritising terror over the more base thrills of explosive gaming blockbusters. The first games' love-letter to sci-fi horror movies like Event Horizon, The Thing and Alien delivered EA a cult hit from an audience demanding nerve-shredding tension.

But with success inevitably comes escalation and, as EA announced Dead Space 3, complete with co-op multiplayer, swearing military types, giant tentacled beasties and booming weaponry, fans of the first two games wondered just where the terror had gone. And sure enough, there's little of it to be found in Dead Space 3.

 

While it's natural and right to mourn the loss of yet another survival-horror, focussing on what Dead Space 3 isn't does a disservice to what it is: a consistently entertaining sci-fi action game.

Once again players are cast as Isaac Clarke, the engineer with the ability to destroy the 'markers' that are scattered around the galaxy, malignant alien constructions that turn people into slavering mutant space zombies. At the beginning of the game, Clarke is hiding out in an apartment, contemplating life and growing a beard. That is until he's found by a group of soldiers looking to take him to Tau Volantis, an ice planet which could hold the key to destroying the markers once and for all. Initially there's nothing doing, until he finds out his ex-girlfriend, Ellie, has gone missing out there. So it's back off to the big black in his hulking space suit to cut up some necromorphs.