u/Cute_Discount_7688

Beat the Dead Space remake today, took a few days because I wanted to do as much as possible on Story difficulty before moving my way up the list.

Beat it using a plasma cutter only, and honestly, the game felt too easy, as someone who has beaten the original trilogy on every difficulty and mode. I'll see how that changes as I ramp the diff on subsequent playthroughs.

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Things I liked:

• The graphics look great, mostly. My increasingly geriatric pc is overdue for a RAM overhaul. I'm running at almost half the recommended amount, but it mostly ran fine despite that. Only crashed once on the mining deck because it ran out of memory.
• Being able to explore more of the Ishimura is great, and being able to backtrack at pretty much any time means exploring is encouraged, and side missions add quite a bit to the story.
• The game managed to make me jump, only once, but still, that surprised me when the door in the mining deck slammed shut behind me after grabbing the guy's rig and starting to leave.
• The lore additions are interesting, the Marker madness is getting more fleshed out, so people's experiences with it are more varied, which is pretty awesome, and
• The new unitology lore about fleets of ships designed to carry armies of future necromorphs is very ominous.
• The Kellion staying a wrecked hulk in the hangar instead of vaporizing is cool, and the added characters help flesh out the world.

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Things I didn't like:

• I honestly think the audio from the 2008 original might be better, with character dialogue seeming like a downgrade in my opinion, and enemies' sounds being less distinct, almost muted.
• The new power panels are cool, but the choices they offer are mostly pedantic. Oh, would I like to turn the main lights on when the emergency lights are already good enough, and doing so means I can't progress because the doors lock? No, thanks. Most of the options they give are like this, and it's kind of silly.
• Mercer seems less like the bonefied religious zealot he was in the original and more marvel villain with his seemingly endless monologuing.
• My concerns about making Isaac voiced in the remake were partially realized, now that the man can speak, be just seemingly will not stop talking, silence is golden in horror, and Isaac Clarke is seemingly broadcasting every thought that runs through his head.
• I don't know if I like the intensity director or not. Vents randomly exploding, and enemies spawning in areas that otherwise should be cleared, is... odd, and killing them slows me down consistently, which is annoying.
• The new flight mechanics feel odd; everything has momentum, both flying and orienting, and it takes a minute to adjust.

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Overall, I liked it.

Is it perfect? Oh no, but it's fun, and the changes made are certainly interesting. Still think Dead Space 2 could use the same treatment, but I guess we will just have to wait and see.

I am willing to give Dead Space 3 a lot of slack.

The game was rushed, with development lasting 2 years instead of the more traditional 4, and EA constantly demanded last-second changes.

Such as purely player-controlled CO-OP, micro-transactions, and the nauseating love triangle that adds nothing and damages the characters of everyone involved.

Now that being said, even after I set aside my numerous grievances with these additions, the quality of the game's writing is still highly questionable.

I like the new side characters, mostly.

I really like Buckle; he's a cool, respectful character who voices his desire to make a difference before he dies in the conning tower side mission and arguably does so later on.

Santos helps dig up information about what S.C.A.F. was up to 200 years ago, and helps foreshadow what you will be doing later by encouraging you to explore the Greely and decrypt its encrypted broadcast about Rosetta.

Rosen and Locke are helpful in getting the Crozier repaired and flying down to the planet, when Rosen isn't being an asshole.

Norton could have been a really cool character, being a friendly Earth Gov captain in a series that made Earth Gov the bad guys in the last game.

Carver gets his past explored through the co-op side missions and develops as a character through the game.

The problems really started when I noticed a pattern after my last playthrough.

Namely, you can remove everyone except Isaac from the main story, and everything ultimately plays out the same.

In the end, you fly to Tau Volantis, go down to the planet, make a new Codex, and use the alien machine to pull the moon into the planet.

This could all be achieved by Isaac Clarke alone. Probably faster to.

Without Ellie's insistence that Admiral Graves was right about turning off the machine, and totally hadn't lost her mind to the Markers, the story progresses faster.

Without Norton's sabotaging the mission by letting Danik know where you are, everything progresses faster.

Without Rosen and Locke, nothing changes.

Without Buckle, nothing changes.

Without Santos's insistence on the Nexus experiment, the story progresses faster.

Without Ellie, maybe Isaac doesn't go, that I will concede, but he is able to reconfigure the machine and pull down the moon alone, so she isn't technically necessary either.

The game is loaded with filler that constantly slows you down while actively railroading and hopes you won't notice.