For the past three Dead Space games I’ve been giggling about how the series is all about love. Now that I’m toward the end of Dead Space 3, its stopped being about the love. Its now about the human drama and bone crushing boss fights. Which do I talk about first without spoiling either? I think I’ll go for the human drama.
We’re down to six characters, the villain, the hero Issac Clarke, his ex girlfriend, her new boyfriend, his lackey scar face and an ethnically diverse woman. Like all Steven King novels, the fit has hit the shan and everyone has lost it. Everyone’s true character is showing and well omelets are getting made. Its making the game more interesting to watch, because its sure getting painful to play.
I’ve been plagued with freezes since I started playing Dead Space 3. Every 2 minutes or 5 minutes the game will freeze for a few seconds, then speed up to catch up to where it should be. This hasn’t really been an issue. If I played through Daikatana’s awful partner intelligence, I can play through this. However, now the game is content with throwing boss fights and black necromorphs at me. If you’ve never played, a black necromorph is just a heavily armored necromorph. Sounds easy, until you need to aim at their legs until they fall then aim at their arms until they’re dead. This third game really amps up the necromorph speed. In fact the acid spitters that normally hang out far away vomiting sticky goo now charge Issac.
Everything charges Issac and just piles up on him. Heaps of enemies. I remember that’s what Dead Space 2 started doing. That’s what it should be toward the end of the game. The problem is, I’m not near the end of the game. I’m still about 6 chapters until finishing it. I’m not even running out of health or ammunition. I’m just running out of my own personal sanity to keep trudging through it getting tackled by half a dozen enemies at a time while the rest raise out of the cold snowy ground.
Not just that, but there is a new enemy unique to Dead Space 3 and that’s what I can only call the headless soldier head. The actual enemy is like a giant tick with tentacles that looks like a head. They are the real enemy, but the problem is they jump into corpses to reanimate them. So even if I kill the body, its the head that’s the problem. Boom head shot right? Well its not the corpse’s head its the tick that comes out of the body once it’s dead a second time. After killing the body, you need to kill the second head that crawl’s out. I do give Dead Space 3 credit, its a lot more like John Carpenter’s the Thing than it ever was before.
The pacing has gotten better in the game. There are long stretches of nothing really. Just traversal, a few audio communications…. then attacks by half a dozen to a dozen black zombies. Sometimes the encounter wheel lands on boss fight. Wow these boss fights in this game. The first boss fight was laughably easy. In fact the first few chapters were so laughably easy that I thought maybe I need to move up from medium. Nope. I don’t.
The first real boss fight I can remember since coming to the necromorph home planet (it sounds stupid every time I say it) is a giant four legged, three tentacled spider. I figured out a pretty easy way to take out its tentacles. By easy I mean it works. I think the true definition of easy would be if it wasn’t so agile to just dodge my extremely slow line gun laser blasts. Why am I using something so slow? There’s a chance it can sever all three tentacles at once, plus its so agile that it just dodges the much quicker default weapon that I use. I can’t aim fast enough to shoot the tentacles, so I rely on the wide line gun laser.
That first fight was fun. Then an hour later, I did it again! But with a box in the middle. Dare I say that giant collection of boxes made it easier. Now the spider couldn’t dash at me with boxes in the way. Of course a real creature would just climb over the boxes, but this is a game. With it defeated a second time, it wasn’t much longer before the next boss.
The third boss was a different boss. It was a long fight, so long that the game threw in some comedy. “Are you shooting it in the yellow spots?” “I think you’re only pissing it off more!” “It has yellow things by its mouth!” Yeah if only Issac could throw in his own dialog like why aren’t you two helping me take down this boss? You can at least shoot the black skeletons swarming me It was a painful boss with the game freezing and speeding up. Not only that, but some sections the blur was so awful it was difficult to see the chaos going on.
This boss was a much, much larger boss than the spider. So large that it was too big to get onto the cliff I was on. So large that it didn’t just try to whap Issac to death with two giant tentacles, it ate him. As if fighting the actual boss wasn’t tough enough being covered in black skeletons, Issac ends up in an even tougher predicament.
Inside, with no oxygen, dodging dozens human seeking missiles being shot from three papules. I remember these things from the previous game and they were already tough enough without there being three at once. What makes them tough? Because its three tentacles with weak spots at the end and these tentacles go back into the papule to hide before they spit out a half a dozen seeking projectiles. I really thought that I’d have to restart the game since I only have one save and I was out of health and medkits.
That’s how I play the game though, on the edge. I always save money by not buying any med kits. Why buy them when you can just upgrade your armor and health? After an hour of fighting this colossus boss outside and in, it was on to a fourth boss after another hour. Wanna know what it was? I’ll give you a hint. Four legs, three tentacles. If you guessed a spider, you’re wrong, spiders have eight legs. This thing is clearly a dog a tentacle dog. Nah its a spider. I’ll keep calling it a spider.
I figured, nope I’ve had enough. Time to stop playing. I’m not fighting that thing a third time in 4 hours. Its not a bad boss fight, its just a lengthily one. Not just that, but this third time has ramped up the anti by including black necromorphs. Its cool though, not like I’m 75% through the game yet. Heck the game says I’m 50% but I know that’s including all of the hidden items that I’ve missed.
I’m starting to get sick of over the shoulder games and their giant boss fights. They’re just not fun.
Another day and its back to the grind. I wasted an hour of my life trying to beat this third spider. I even looked up FAQs and Youtube videos. The premise is easy, do something other than fight the boss to beat the boss. Easy. I even figured that out myself. Problem is that I just can’t seem to do what they’re telling me. What am I supposed to do? Mash a button. Yep to finally kill the boss at long last, just mash the button. Problem is even 30 minutes into button mashing, I just can’t do it. I’ve won button mashings on Mortal Kombat: Deception’s test your might on highest difficulties, but not this.
Games That I Play 