The existence of Dead Space 3‘s ‘Awakened’ DLC was actually revealed well before the game’s launch, but that didn’t mean we actually had any idea what it was. Now, we do — it’s supposedly meant to be a whole pile scarier than the main game itself, and it should only be tackled after the main game is completed.

The DLC sees Isaac returning to CMS Terra Nova’s Conning Tower, which has been overrun by a Necromorph-worshipping cult of human scarification practitioners. New human and Necromorph enemies will feature, and Isaac will make at least one trip — possible entirely imagined, due to the dementia — to the Necromorph moon.

Source: VG247 and Joystiq

Dead Space 3 is not the clucking fuster its preamble suggested it might be. A lot of its more contentious ideas work on a few levels. The Bench is cool. A lot of the creations that come out of it are redundant, but you can have fun with it and fun is good. Shooting at other guys with guns isn’t that bad, either. They don’t take up much… spaaace and for the most part, it’s pretty close to the Marker the whole way through (which is saying something. This game is impressively long).

Co-op was the big one, though. Having another gun at your back just doesn’t seem very conducive to crapping your space suit. And, you know, it’s not.

With Carver all jacked up and good to go Dead Space 3 becomes very shooty. There are a zillion more enemies. You get less health. Those annoying mini-games become an edgy ballet of we-are-prolly-gonna-fail as one of you wrestles with the Tetris of things while the other runs out of ammo trying to keep whoever draws the Tetris straw alive. For a good, hearty experience, you need to find someone who isn’t stupid to play with. Easy enough if you have friends. I don’t. I sit on the bathroom floor all day typing and occasionally vomiting. I disgust myself that much.

So when I do the co-op thing it’s with some random.

The first time I jump in, I’m Carver, and it’s that bit early on where you have to telekinese some fuzzing pylons into place. The other guy does not even telekinese, bro. I watch him try to make the pylon go down into the pylon hole for a good ten minutes. I get the feeling he’s been here for half an hour. Occasionally he stops trying and shoots at me. I go for a stroll and do a barrel roll and come back. He’s still trying. I can only assume he became mortally embarrassed because then he kicked me out of his game. So far so not that good.

But I’m undeterred and I try again. This time I’m Isaac and the other guy is Carver. I think he’s Mexican. His name is something like “el_facko.” I laugh heartily and we set off into the cold walls of the CMS Roanoke. This guy el_facko, he’s what you want out of a Dead Space 3 co-op buddy: he watches my back, doesn’t dawdle at the bench (ten minutes max is the unspoken gentlemen’s rule), shares his swag, and thank ass, he knows how to telekinese. His telekinese is actually badass.

He’s better than me at the Tetris, but he doesn’t hold that against me. I think I love el_facko, and I follow him everywhere until, cruelly, we must part. I’m having pie for dins.

It’s a weird thing, going out there in a hallucinating bro-ship of custom mining death tools. You could say Dead Space 3 is even at its best in co-op, but it’s a co-op game not built for itself. There are so many conventions that jump in the way of the expedience required by its newest one. So this threequel of inhuman nightmares becomes an entirely human one of pot luck and unlikely camaraderie amidst grim fields of “ur ghey.”

When you find your el_facko, you hold onto him.  You hold on tight.

Rumours flying last night that EA had cancelled the Dead Space franchise altogether following supposed poor sales of Dead Space 3 have been squashed by EA this morning.

The rumours, posted initially by Videogamer, quoted an inside source who claimed that EA had visited Visceral Studios to deliver the bad news and halt all work on Dead Space 4.

Now, EA have responded to the rumour. Videogamer’s article has been updated with a statement from EA which reads “While we have not announced sales for Dead Space 3, we are proud of the game and the franchise remains an important IP to EA.” Gamsutra are quoting an EA source who say that this rumour is “patently false”.

So there you go! Dead Space 4 is probably still okay — although Army of Two developers Visceral Studios Montreal did recently suffer severe layoffs.

Source: Videogamer, Gamasutra

Though it may have been somewhat derivative, the original Dead Space was nevertheless a superb survival horror experience. With subsequent entries in the series, including last week’s Dead Space 3, developer Visceral Games has embraced more action oriented gameplay. Needless to say, many fans of the series are yet to embrace the change. Now, a writer who contributed to the original Dead Space is speaking out in defence of the move.

Antony Johnston describes the more explosive approach as “a necessary evil in order to broaden the fan base”. Given that he also concedes a lack of interest in the sequels due to their “greater emphasis on big action”, it’s tempting to conclude that Johnston isn’t entirely invested in his defence of the new direction. Mind you, he isn’t advocating a return to the original formula either, as that might involve having “the same game on a different ship each time”.

Johnston (perhaps predictably) concludes that his former colleagues have “done an admirable job” of striking a balance between horror and action.

Source: Now Gamer

I’ve got a couple of disclaimers to make before I wax lyrical about Dead Space 3. Firstly, I’m a massive fanboy of the series, with the original making it into my top 5 of all time. Secondly, I’m a bit of a horror aficionado; if a movie doesn’t have cats jumping out of closets, ghosts revealed in mirrors or a shower-curtain reveal scene, it won’t make it into my collection of 300 horror DVDs and Blu-rays.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I can explain why I think Dead Space 3 is easily the best in the series, despite the fact that the last third of the game won’t have you reaching for the Valium quite as much as its predecessors. Any horror fan can tell you that making a sequel to a horror film is hard; making the third in the series scary is almost impossible. Horror of the edge-of-your-seat, hold-your-partner-tight kind uses a relatively small set of tricks, and reusing them is a sure fire way to bore your audience.

Yet, the first two thirds of Dead Space 3 use very similar techniques to the earlier games. You’re still traipsing around derelict space ships, using the dynamic lighting of your weapon to light up the dark corners infested with all manner of deformed nasties. Except now — and this is the masterstroke of brilliance — you’re doing it with a pal.

You might think playing with another person lessens the tension, and that’s absolutely true if your co-op buddy is a douchebag who thinks teabagging Necromorphs is hilarious. Even the most perfect horror ambience can’t withstand such dickish behaviour. But if you find a co-op pal (shout outs to Dr3money, who watched my back) who treats this experience the same way a good horror movie should be approached – in silence, without cracking lame jokes every five minutes – you’ll find it to be even more emotionally exhausting than playing alone.

Now you’ve got a buddy to look out for as well as yourself, and all too often you’ll spot an axe-wielding zombie about to hack his/her head off from behind way before he/she does. Approaching death arenas with a pal, the large open areas where you just know you’re gonna get swamped by the ‘Morphs, usually involves several minutes of discussion about how best to handle it, followed by several minutes of getting your face ripped off as you watch your strategy go down the crapper. Co-op is a godsend, and makes the rehashing of scary tricks that much more enjoyable. It’s also integrated perfectly, with cut-scenes reworked for the co-op game, and even co-op specific missions.

If there’s one disappointment with co-op, it’s that the promised player-specific hallucinations are very rare, feeling more like a token effort than a game-changing feature.

Dead Space has always been known for its fantastic environments, and the third delivers even better game spaces. Each area tells as much of a story as the audio and text logs scattered throughout, and I often found myself browsing the photos and personal items in people’s rooms and homes. The last third of the 20 hour campaign takes the player down to the icy planet of Tau Volantis, a refreshing break from metallic corridors, and introduces one of the many new novelty features, body heat. It’s also the area where the game morphs from tense corridor crawler to more of an all-out firefight, but the gunplay is always tight and satisfying, especially when you experiment with new weapons.

It’s amazing how many different things can happen to the human body depending on what you fire through it. My favourite environment was unquestionably the open space areas, where you’re forced to fly several hundred meters through the cold, silent depths of nothingness. No other game has captured the terrifying loneliness of an EVA like this.

The other huge improvement to the game is the new weapon and inventory system, though it comes at a cost. There are literally hundreds of different weapon types to be crafted at the benches, and you’ll experiment with new varieties every ten minutes or so, as the benches are liberally spread throughout the levels. Each weapon and attachment has a wildly different effect to the rest, and it’s obvious the game designers are fans of Insomniac’s inspirational armouries. Unfortunately I discovered an absolutely killer weapon combo about half way through, that made even the toughest of encounters a bit too easy — and this was while playing on the hardest difficulty level, ‘Impossible’.

As far as PC-specific features go, there’s a decent selection of graphics options. Anti-aliasing in particular has an impressive range of choices including SMAA and FXAA, but MSAA it out thanks to the deferred rendering engine. It ran beautifully on max settings at 1080p on my 4.5GHz CPU with dual GTX 670s (as it freaking well should) and frequently pleased my ocular system with breathtaking vistas, despite the occasional low res texture. The gorgeous visuals are exceeded by the game’s award-winning audio, with horrifying ambient effects and a soundtrack that perfectly matches the tempo of the onscreen action. This is the kind of OST worth buying on iTunes.

Based on my experience with the series, the Dead Space 3 that I played perfectly fitted my expectations for the game, but it could be very different from the Dead Space 3 that you end up playing. Played solo, the continued reliance upon the monster closets and flickering lights to raise your pulse will probably become a tedious grind of familiarity, rather than the tense moments of co-operative pants-soiling that I experienced. Fans of the series should still check it out just to see where the Black Markers take Isaac this time around, but to see the game truly shine, they should bring a friend along for the ride.

Good:

• Visceral are the masters of creating horrifying spaces that reek of authenticity, and Dead Space 3 is packed full of them.
• Co-op makes all of the old tricks fun again.
• A stunning audio-visual experience.
• The campaign delivers around 20 hours of value.
• Weapon customisation is actually fun as a result of the wildly different effects, rather than the meaningless grind found in other games.

Bad:

• The old tricks mightn’t be so much fun when played solo.
• Some might not enjoy the trend towards action in the final third act.
• Some weapons feel very overpowered, especially when you and a pal are both packing serious heat.
• No multiplayer means that once the campaign is done, there’s little reason to return.
• The much vaunted player-specific hallucinations don’t crop up enough to warrant the attention they received.

Full disclosure: Bennett is currently shacked up with an EA employee, but any concerns of bias can probably be dismissed by his glowing 4/10 review of the recent Medal of Honor over at Ausgamers.

So, you all remember how Dead Space 3 supports microtransactions, so that those who can’t be bothered grinding to gather resources can just pay to win? And you remember how someone figured out a really quick and cheap way to gather said resources? And we were all like “lol EA” and rushed off to exploit it before the first title update removed it?

Well, Visceral Games isn’t going to patch that out, EA representative Jino Talens told Gamefront.

“The resource-earning mechanic in Dead Space 3 is not a glitch. We have no plans to issue a patch to change this aspect of the game. We encourage players to explore the game and discover the areas where resources respawn for free,” he said.

“We’ve deliberately designed Dead Space 3 to allow players to harvest resources by playing through the game. For those that wish to accumulate upgrades instantly, we have enabled an optional system for them to buy the resources at a minimal cost ($1-$3).”

Well. How about that.

Source: Gamefront

Dead Space 3 has been out for barely 48 hours (globally) and already someone has found an easily exploitable glitch in the game that will allow you to farm all the resources EA was hoping you’d pay real money for.

While you can’t access the glitch until Chapter 8 of the game, it is ridiculously easy to accomplish, simply involving walking in and out of a room. How did QA miss that?

The video below has been up for two days already, so there’s no telling when EA will get around to patching this glitch out. So if this is your thing, you should check out the helpful video below.

Visceral and EA have revealed that Dead Space 3‘s first DLC will launch in March.

The DLC, called ‘Awakened’, will feature some of the “darkest chapters as the Necromorph battles become even more gruesome and terrifying than ever before”.

Australian pricing hasn’t been revealed yet, but US pricing is set at $9.99/800 MS Points, so it’s a reasonable bet we’ll get it for $15.

Dead Space 3 launches tomorrow — PC players haven’t been given early access, so we’ll get stuck into it tomorrow and get you a review as soon as we can.

Source: VG247

There’s been a lot of coverage so far on the game play of Dead Space 3 and the horror aspects, but not so much on the story side of things. EA have released a trailer correcting this now though, which they’re calling, aptly enough, the story trailer.

Seems as though we are to rescue Agent Ellie Langford and her team from an uncharted planet and almost certain doom. How very heroic of us! Seems there’s also some kind of villain talking of highfalutin’ concepts like ‘rebirth’ and the ‘contaminating touch’ of mankind. He’s also British, so you know he’s a bad dude.

It’s very action-movie, this trailer. I’d probably see this movie, personally. What do you think of this, the story trailer? Let us know!

At a recent EA event, games.on.net had the chance to sit down with Visceral’s Dave Woldman, senior producer on Dead Space 3. Woldman discussed Visceral’s approach to horror, how they’re planning to keep the game scary, and how truly successful horror is about the absence of combat, and more about what you don’t show rather than what you do.

Woldman also touched on the Dead Space community’s reaction to the new game, saying “People are resistant to change. They don’t know about the thought processes we go through, and that what we’re trying to do is evolve the franchise, deliver more of what they want in new and creative ways.

“I think the natural resistance to change is something expect, especially when you have such wonderful, rabid, passionate fans that we have.”

You can watch the video below, or download it in HD from our file library. A YouTube mirror is also available.

Last week, we revealed that Dead Space 3 would be getting a straight port to PC with no extra features. The PC gaming community went wild, accusing Visceral Games of everything from laziness to stupidity — so executive producer Steve Papoutsis has come forward to defend their position.

“It’s confusing to me that this question even comes up,” Papoutsis has said to Shack News. “It’s by no means any less important to us; it gets a lot of attention. The PC is a very different platform. As developers, you want to deliver an experience that’s as similar as possible on different platforms.

“At our studio, we’ve always made console games. The biggest thing is we want to make sure the quality of the experience is consistent across all platforms so we don’t have one userbase saying it’s better on their system (…) It’s a confusing question and I hope my answer brings a little bit of light to it. We seem a little bit discredited for the amount of effort that goes into it, quite honestly.”

“We want it to be great on all systems, that’s our approach.”

How do you feel now, sportsracers? Seems like they’re taking an attitude of equality over favouring the PC master race, while still keeping in mind that the PC is a different system with different inputs and requirements. Do you feel placated? Or do you still thirst for blood? Make sure you let us know!

Source: Shack News

Perhaps the star of Dead Space 3‘s latest ‘Take Down the Terror’ trailer is meant to be Isaac, or maybe even the Necromorphs, but confusingly enough it ends up being the background music: a weird heavy remix of In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins. Still, there’s a bunch of pretty CGI and game footage as well, so there’s something for everybody.

Dead Space 3 hits shelves next Thursday, February 7.

Joining the laundry list of games that feature microtransactions (AKA “nearly every game, these days”) is Dead Space 3, confirmed to feature an element that will allow users to spend real-world money to buy crafting resources — if they want to.

“You can buy resources with real money, but scavenger bots can also give you the currency that you can use on the marketplace,” Dead Space 3 associate producer Yara Khoury clarified in an interview with Eurogamer. “So you don’t have to spend [real world] dollars.”

Khoury also explained that it’s not possible to just drop mad Hamiltons and buy the best guns from the start. “No you can’t! There are a lot of weapon parts that are only available to buy later in the game. Unless you’re playing through it again [on New Game Plus].”

Interesting stuff. What do you think about the whole thing?

Source: Eurogamer

Speaking with Visceral Games at a recent Dead Space 3 event, games.on.net learned that the PC version of Dead Space 3 will be a straight port of the console versions.

The PC version is understood to have some graphics options, but no support for DirectX 11, no additional high-resolution textures, and no further graphical enhancements above and beyond those seen on the PS3 or Xbox 360.

At the same event, we got to sit down with Dead Space 3‘s producer and talk about how they keep the game scary, even in co-op. Have a look!

Dead Space 3 launches in Australia very soon — February 7, to be exact — and it’s bringing with it a whole new approach to co-op, where the game dynamically responds to the presence of another player by adjusting the storyline and levels to suit. games.on.net recently had the chance to sit down with producer Shereif Fattouh to discuss how they’re going to keep the game scary even with another player around to comfort you.

EA provided games.on.net with flights and accommodation in order to attend the Dead Space 3 preview event in San Francisco.

Ever feel like you need some more Mass Effect in your Dead Space? Of course you do, who wouldn’t! Well, luckily for fans of both series, EA have announced a very cool in-game bonus — N7 armour.

And the best part about this bonus? If you’re a fan of either series, you’re probably already qualified to get the bonus armour. Forget forking out an extra five bucks, or whatever: all you need to unlock the bonus armour is to own and have played Mass Effect 3 and have a save file. Then, you purchase and play the full game of Dead Space 3. And voila, you can equip your new armour!

The wording around that last part is a little iffy, it’s not clear whether you’ll have to play the full game before getting your armour as a bonus for subsequent playthroughs, or if you’ll get your N7 armour straight away. But really, without having to pay anything extra, there’s not a lot of room to complain either way. Check out the trailer demonstrating this cool new look below.

Whether you’re like me and just have an awful memory, or whether you’re also like me and haven’t actually played either of the first two Dead Space games, then this is the trailer for you: recapping the story of Dead Space, Isaac, the Markers and their tendency to mutate people around them. The game launches February 7, so look forward to more of our coverage very soon.

Ah yes, Dead Space. You are the saviour of survival horror for this generation. Resident Evil would rather shoot first and ask questions later; Silent Hill is merely questionable. If not for Dead Space, then what? There are scary games, sure. Amnesia is unnerving, and more recently Slender coaxed shivering driblets of wee from an unsuspecting gaming public.

These are arguably not survival horror games, though. It’s a very particular kind of sepulchre cloth, and the mostly third-person shapes cut from it include Alone in the Dark, ObsCure, Clock Tower, Fatal Frame, and the wonderfully out of reach Rule of Rose – none of which we’ve heard from lately, and none of which we’re likely to.

Which is why Visceral’s seeming plan to turn Dead Space 3 into a tour de force of co-op shootin’ is a little bit of a disappointing one. Sure, we can only really go on what we’ve seen so far – two guys with guns shooting up necromorphs and now also shootin’ other guys with guns, hello – but Visceral’s reluctance to back up their insistence that this will not just be another shooter isn’t a confidence-builder. To wit, the day’s preview is an intentionally non-committal one.

Taking place during the game’s first act during an optional side mission entitled “The Lost Flotilla,” Isaac boards a derelict ship called the Greely and goes a-wanderin’. It’s a scenario completely divorced from any of the arctic planet-side action, completely divorced from any kind of co-op with new guy John Carver, and you don’t even have to marry it in the first place. This demo is purpose-built to avoid everything you really want to know about this game, hopefully in the lead-up to a more tangible reveal at Gamescom – but possibly because Dead Space 3 really is actually going to be a lot shootier this time around.

That’s the impression we get the first time we shoot up a crate and grab the resultant bobbing ammo icon, anyway. It’s also the first impression we get when a drooling acid bath of a necromorph comes sizzling into view in a blaze of obviousness and a massive firefight begins. Isaac remains clunky, and said firefights are a case of shooting, mostly missing, and then running around in big lethargic circles trying to get back into a good position. There’s no sticky cover, but rather a strange sort of automatic cover wherein waltzing up to a pillar, for instance, will incite Isaac to sort of hunker behind it and lean around when you want to aim. If Visceral are indeed headed for Shootersville, this er, might not pan out too good.

But hints that that Shootersville is in fact where they’re going abound, especially as we spy a gun-altering workbench on our way to opening up a door with our mad psychic powers when, really, we could just our hands. Soon our time’s up and we’re not allowed to go much further lest we actually see something interesting, and it’s a horrible but not horrifying sentiment that remains: That was the most chilled out we’ve ever felt while playing a Dead Space game.

EA Games’ marketing head Laura Miele has claimed that market research led to the decision to include co-op in Dead Space 3, saying that “the obvious next step” in the series was to include co-op, as many gamers they talked to felt they’d rather share a scary experience with another player alongside them. “It’s still true to its roots and no less scary,” says Miele, “but people felt far more comfortable playing it with someone else than they did doing it on their own. We’re looking for that to reach out to consumers that perhaps were not open to Dead Space 1 and 2.”

Source: MCV UK

If you thought the two things missing from Dead Space were “scripted events” and “swearing”, then you’re in luck: the reveal trailer for Dead Space 3, fresh out of E3, shows a game with heaping helpings of both. The co-op gameplay is confirmed, with Carver and Isaac set to butt heads over their various priorities, while still trying to shoot necromorphs and make their f-word quotas for the day. Enjoy!

EA’s upcoming Dead Space 3 has been confirmed to be introducing a cover-based mechanic similar to those found in Gears of War or Mass Effect. It will also pack a co-op feature where players can play as both Isaac or Carver, the man from the Dead Space graphic novel, while the competitive multiplayer from Dead Space 2 has been scrapped. New enemy types are promised, including twisted humans who have been forced to feed on infected Necromorphs to survive, and a 30-story-tall Necromorph centipede called ‘the Nexus’.

Source: NeoGAF