Towards the end of the E3 demo for Dead Space 3, I found myself rampaging through an open field with my co-op partner, enemy soldiers charging towards us, guns blazing, as he shouted all manner of obscenities ("Fucking necromorphs!", ducking behind cover and firing our machine guns. And I thought to myself: Who got all this Gears of War in my Dead Space? I'm a big fan of Electronic Arts' horror-game series, except for the part about halfway through Dead Space 2 where it turned from a creepy, slow-paced exploration of nightmare environments into a generic corridor shooter. So I'm more than a little concerned about the fact that the E3 demo for Dead Space 3, which I played last month at EA's Los Angeles campus ahead of the show, seems to embrace the overworked genre of the dudebro buddy shooter more so than the frightening loneliness at which previous games have singularly excelled. Perhaps it was inevitable. At the event, Dead Space 3 developer Ian Milham touted the popular success of the series: "Look who's a big franchise now!" he said. "Put that in your pipe, Madden!" As a game series becomes mainstream, it must be tempting to shift the gameplay towards something more lowest-common-denominator in the hopes of making it even more popular. Or at least make it seem that way. Milhelm said that developer Visceral Games is "still going to do all the cool haunted-house type stuff." Other writers at the preview event mentioned to me that EA reps had told them that the Dead Space 3 demo wasn't necessarily fully representative of the final game, but that action sequences showed better at trade shows than methodical solo exploration. This may be the truth. But then, what of the co-op play? I'd be interested to see if Visceral could manage to create a truly scary experience even when two people are in the room together. But the sense of isolation -- of being alone and somewhat helpless against the odds -- contributes to fear. How does Dead Space 3 plan to get around that? The E3 demo doesn't tackle this question. Dead Space 3's gameplay mechanics don't feel that dissimilar to the previous games', despite the fact that the action is now set on an ice-covered planet rather than an abandoned spaceship. (Ironically, the E3 demo of Capcom's ice-planet shooter Lost Planet 3 now feels a lot like the original Dead Space.) Scavenging health packs, strategically dismembering enemies and firing the old standby plasma cutter felt just like usual -- even though the demo started me with a generic machine gun and I had to manually switch to the series' classic three-pronged signature weapon. The E3 demo seems built primarily to show the gameplay differences between co-op and single-player. As a lone gunman, you're still playing as the increasingly unstable series protagonist Isaac. If a cooperative player jumps in, they're a new character called Carver who isn't nearly as nuts as Isaac. This creates no small amount of tension between them. You'll see storyline sequences, heavily scripted and cinematic interactions between the two characters, that don't show up in solo play. "If you want to team up, everything changes," Milhelm said. "If you want to play single player and experience that intensity, you can." I don't know if it's possible to keep everything the same while making everything different. If Visceral can pull it off, it will be quite a feat. Dead Space 3 is scheduled to be released on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC in February 2013. Source: Wired.com [MEDIA] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drmumQwh7FA [/MEDIA]
