Mon, Jan 21, 2013 | 13:03 GMT
Dead Space 3′s demo does it a disservice
Dead Space 3′s demo failed to turn Brenna Hillier into a flailing, shrieking, foul-mouthed crybaby, but Visceral still has its skills.
Visceral hasn’t lost its touch; Dead Space 3′s demo shows just a tiny glimpse of the developer putting the senile old dog of horror through some amazing new tricks.
EA kindly sent me a download code for the Dead Space 3 demo, which will become available to you all this week. When I decided to write an impressions piece, I sparked, momentarily, into genius mode:
Everyone knows I scream at horror and I swear like a sailor while I play video games. I’m going to make an audio log of my experience with the Dead Space 3 demo and post it on VG247. Ha ha this will be amazing. I will win the Internet.
And indeed things started well. Just a few minutes into the file the music takes a very serious turn for the creepy and I nervously exhort Visceral to “fucking just do it already”. When it did, moments later, I fired off three staccato “what the fuck”s at increasing volume and pitch.
But what follows is about fifteen minutes of near silence, interrupted briefly by one exclamation of “well, how the fuck do I kill this thing?”
I wasn’t feeling microphone shy; this is not a syndrome I ever suffer. Dead Space 3′s demo isn’t very scary. And that’s a shame, because by all accounts, the full game is. EA’s first showing of Visceral’s latest focused on the new content, and it very sensibly allowed a later press tour to show the good old mainstays of dark corridors, slow building tension, maze-like maps and crapping your pants when something hurls itself out of the ever-present shadows.
Visceral hasn’t lost its touch in this regard; Dead Space 3′s demo shows just a tiny glimpse of the developer putting the senile old dog of horror through some amazing new tricks. The taster begins with Isaac stumbling through inclement weather, his movements slowed by the ferocious wind and snow, barely able to see through the whiteout. Snow takes the place of shadows; white supplants black; and the effect is just as eerie.
The graphics team at Visceral has done an excellent job with that snow. It builds and clears across your vision in a very true-to-life way, swirling in and closing you off from everything in an unpredictable fashion far more scary than blanket fog. Its appearances and disappearances are far from whimsical; the developer demonstrates its immense skill with horror while wielding this latest addition to its cluttered box of shart-inducing tools. When the necros make their first appearance you are permitted to whimper.
But after this it all goes downhill. We only experience the storm and its chilling (ha ha!) effect on exploration for a few minutes, and then we’re hammered by quicktime events, weapon and equipment modding, co-operative multiplayer and arena boss battles. The wonderful weather effects and deeply creepy natural caves are gone, replaced by industrial geometry immediately familiar to series fans.
That’s disappointing because as much as I want Dead Space to keep looking and feeling like Dead Space, Visceral’s skill in putting together a snowy but traditionally tense environment, complete with ravishing graphical effects like low sunshine through a cave mouth, is to be much applauded. It was in this brief opening section, the least visually similar to former Dead Space games, that I felt most as if I were playing Dead Space.
The narrated introduction to the demo makes it clear that new content is the star, and in many ways this makes a good deal of sense. The franchise has to grow its audience in order to succeed and showing off fancy new inclusions is a good way to do that. But for existing series fans it may be disappointing. It may even be a dealbreaker.
The subtle graphical and audio cues and superb timing exhibited in this all-too-brief sequence show Visceral still has it.
If you loved Dead Space and Dead Space 2 I urge you to try the demo when it goes into general release this week. When you’ve played through it once, fire it up again and replay that opening sequence, the short jog along in the snow with almost zero visibility. Focus on this section, and switch off before the rapid-fire showcase of new tricks can assault you again.
The subtle graphical and audio cues and superb timing exhibited in this all-too-brief sequence show Visceral still has it. If Dead Space 3 has more moments like these then I have no doubt it’ll end up in my freezer alongside its precursor.
Dead Space 3 releases on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in early February.
75 comments
Older Comments
#51
GilliamYaeger
21/01/13, 4:42 pm
@50 So Vergil could have been Tyler Durden?
That would have been a legit interesting twist. But no, instead we got the blandest, most plagiaristic story in recent memory.
Its a damned shame that Ninja Theory didn’t stick to their guns and do something different and unique, rather than doing a 180 to pander to their angry former fanbase after the initial reaction. Especially when Tameem said that he didn’t care about the fan reaction.
#52
ChrisMustoe
21/01/13, 4:44 pm
Love my job, since I’ve been bringing in $5600… I sit at home, music playing while I work in front of my new iMac that I got now that I’m making it online(Click on menu Home)
http://goo.gl/qjtIQ
Happy New Year!
#53
Clupula
21/01/13, 5:05 pm
@51 – Exactly. I would have been preferred they had gone with a DMC5, but if they had to do a reboot, then they should’ve have just been completely brave about it.
Imagine how tragic that last boss battle I mentioned would be. Even people like me who hated the demo would have been willing to give the game a try after all the talk about the big twist towards the end.
#54
mobiugearskin
21/01/13, 5:39 pm
Why are you polluting this talkback with terrible ideas about a different game?
And anyway… DmC ending… There is no “go evil” about it. He explains his reasoning quite clearly. And its an intelligent way to cement his character. To quote the man himself, “dont be so simplistic”.
#55
Clupula
21/01/13, 5:42 pm
@54 – Don’t you have leaderboards to be checking out?
#56
absolutezero
21/01/13, 6:26 pm
Vergil wears a fedora.
A fedora.
hhmmm wait this article is about something else is’nt it. Dead Space 3 looks terrible. This demo was terrible, the full terrible demo will be in the full game. That means a sizable portion of the game will be terrible. I somehow doubt the quality of the rest of the title is going to be enough to blot out having to have foot high wall shoot outs with shouting human enemies.
#57
mobiugearskin
21/01/13, 6:32 pm
On what planet is anything in there “terrible”?
Honestly, comments sections should be removed from the internet. The tabloid levels of hyperbolic retardation is literally causing me PHYSICAL PAIN.
#58
Clupula
21/01/13, 6:34 pm
@58 – If you’re in such pain, then go away. Rub some ointment on your butthurt and go back to gluing collages of Tameem and yourself to your bathroom mirror.
#59
absolutezero
21/01/13, 6:36 pm
Lets see whats terrible. The lack of tension, the lack of darkness, the lack of ammo types, weapon creation, giant enemy akrid, the huge stupid drill.
THE HUGE STUPID DRILL.
Human enemies shouting rubbish at Issac like generic merc enemies from any other third person shooter.
ELLIE ELLIE ELLIE ELLLLLLLLLIE
JASON
If you choose to play it by yourself you miss a large chunk of character and story related to a game world that you might have possibly grown to like.
As soon as you start playing a horror game with either an audience OR in co-op you cease feeling any sort of tension or fear and start laughing instead.
Issac has gone from an unlucky engineer to a direct threat to the galaxy wide religion that is Unitology.
It looks tired and bland.
#60
GilliamYaeger
21/01/13, 6:41 pm
@58 Why are you telling yourself to get some ointment
#61
YoungZer0
21/01/13, 6:44 pm
@50: Yeah, yeah, still would’ve pissed more people off. And i still think this reboot was more than necessary. DMC 4 was just a bad, bad game and clearly showed us that CAPCOM has no idea where to go with the franchise, so they gave it to a superior developer, instead of doing another Resident Evil 6.
#62
YoungZer0
21/01/13, 6:46 pm
@51: He didn’t. But he still had to listen to Capcom. And they aren’t interested in just one DmC. Your story as much as it is predictable doesn’t allow for a sequel.
#63
GilliamYaeger
21/01/13, 6:50 pm
@62 “Doesn’t allow for a sequel”? The hell are you smoking?
A sequel could have some serious Prince of Persia: The Twin Thrones vibes, swapping between Dante and Vergil as the game goes on as they fight for control over the body, and eventually allowing swapping mid-combat for some truly crazy combos.
#64
GilliamYaeger
21/01/13, 6:53 pm
@61 DMC4 was by no means bad, at all. It is objectively the deepest action game available today. The ONLY problems it has are the level reusing and Nero only getting one weapon and thus having a limited moveset compared to Dante, both of which are results of Capcom cutting dev time short in order to capitalize on the lack of good action games on the current-gen consoles. Everything other than that was flawless – and a fifth Devil May Cry game would have been perfect, since they had no need to rework the combat system at all (Other than adding new weapons, of course) and could thus focus 100% on level design.
Furthermore, the game’s sales were by no means indicative of a dead franchise – after all, DmC’s only sold a third of DMC4′s day one sales, and the DMC franchise is Capcom’s fifth biggest moneymaker (Behind only Monster Hunter, Street Fighter, Megaman and Resident Evil, all of which have oodles more games than the DMC franchise does. Like, 40-something compared to about 6.)
#65
YoungZer0
21/01/13, 7:00 pm
@63: If you want to get involved in an ongoing conversation, the least you could do is trace it back to understand what the hell we’re talking about.
#66
GilliamYaeger
21/01/13, 7:05 pm
@65 Are you replying to yourself?
#67
YoungZer0
21/01/13, 7:09 pm
@66: What do you mean?
#68
Clupula
21/01/13, 7:22 pm
@60 – Claymation.
#69
Clupula
21/01/13, 7:23 pm
@63 – that’s actually a really interesting idea.
#70
ariessiren
21/01/13, 8:09 pm
im going to wait on this. i dont like the co op focus. while i play single player mainly, what irritated me was that in co op, you see alot more of the story and events/visions that you cant see in single player. it doesnt allow you to play as the other character in single player so your essentially missing out on alot because it is, in reality, a 2 player game. if it did it like resident evil 2, where you could play both players campaigns like claire and leon, total day one buy. at least i know i can see everything.
but knowing your missing out on content in single player is not cool. your forcing the player to play co op to see everything and get the full experience. ill wait for 19.99 sale/greatest hits version.
#71
manamana
21/01/13, 9:41 pm
I’m still not convinced, Brenna. A single sequence where Visceral still has ‘it’, says nothing about the whole game has lost ‘it’. And the way I see ‘it’, EA has ruined ‘it’!
#72
kassandrakevin4
21/01/13, 11:33 pm
before I saw the bank draft four $7906, I didnt believe that…my… friends brother was like actualy taking home money part time at there labtop.. there brothers friend started doing this for less than eight months and at present repaid the debts on their cottage and bourt a gorgeous BMW 5-series. I went here… http://goo.gl/Qu4Ci
#73
Telepathic.Geometry
22/01/13, 12:20 am
@Brenna: I liked this “…shart-inducing…” XD
#74
Clupula
23/01/13, 6:56 am
You know, I didn’t hate the demo. I actually really, really liked the drill part.
What I worry about is the shootouts. They only lasted less than 10 seconds in the demo, which is fine, but I get the feeling the full game will have actual several minute-long cover-based shootouts, which is NOT what I play Dead Space for.
The co-op was actually also pretty fun, but my friend was quiet most of the time, which is how it should be in a game like this.
#75
Telepathic.Geometry
23/01/13, 7:02 am
Wait wait, there’re no ammo types? 0 . @
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