Dead Space 3 Dismembers Its Survival Horror Roots

ALex Hilhiorst writes, There’s no place for co-op in survival horror. There’s nothing scary about blasting away at aliens on a sunny ice planet while yelling obscenities at your buddy over Xbox Live. Adding co-op automatically turns the game into an action title; this was exactly what happened to Resident Evil 5. RE5 was a fun game, but it wasn’t scary, and as such it isn’t considered to be one of the better entries in the series. Instead of scrounging for ammo while running from zombies in a cramped mansion, you were now gallivanting around a nondescript African nation fighting, as my friend puts it, “zombies with AK-47s."

[Dorwrath]

If done right there could be a place for it. For example you start in two different locations and make your way through. player a) has to do something to let player b) proceed and visa versa. I donno but maybe play it first before making a judgement.

[user5467007]

"but maybe play it first before making a judgement."

If we say this to every game which is ruined even though it's so painfully obvious whats happened to it then your just giving EA or any other developer who ruins their game for a bigger audience a happy sale at the end of the day.

The AI partner is going to be with you for the entire game, the game looks built up around co-op and theres hardly any trace of horror which made the first one so good. I think we can all judge before playing it.

[Kratoscar2008]

Exactly, but i think coop can be put in survival horror and still work.

An example is RE outbreak it has coop but it never was about the concept "Lets kick the hell out of anything, Buddy" it was more about "lets survive togueter" and it was great.

The horror comes when you feel helpless in a situation and having scarse recourses to survive, in OUTBREAK you have these and more and worked, I higly doubt DS 3 can pull this out as many people said this will be more like RE5 wich is the scariest part.

Lets dont feed EA greed.

[Sevir]

There will be No AI partner! Your character only shows up when you do coop online much like it was in resistance 3. Game informer covered the game just before E3 and they confirmed that Isaac is unaccompanied when playing single player.

Like Dorwrath said. Can we just wait to play the game.. its crazy how people go nuts about a 10 min demo of a feature that's optional for u to try in the game, your angst towards the inclusion of an optional gameplay feature is causing you to make assumptions and draw unnecessary conclusions on a product yhats largely unfinished.

Can we just wait to play and keep an open mind. It's a popular franchise and all u saw was 10 mins. It's not the whole game It's 10 minutes. -_-

[Trebius51]

Weve already seen over 20 minutes of pure gamely...we've seen the E3 demo, we've seen previews .... theres more than enough info out there to know they ruined Dead Space.

It may still hold its own as a simple action game, but they ruined DEAD SPACE, and should have just given this a new name and made it a spin-off series so they could make these dramatic changes and not disappoint their Dead Space fans.

DS3 to me looks like regurgitated garbage...every other developer can make a game like this, its nothing new or special.

[user5467007]

@Sevir

Well drop in/out or not it's still there and they've still built it around co-op, especialy the story.

"its crazy how people go nuts about a 10 min demo of a feature that's optional for u to try in the game,"

Well it's crazy how everytime something like this happens where people judge the game before it comes out because of obvious things you can see in the gameplay video they always turn out to be right in the end and those "Wait untill you play" people such as yourself are always wrong.

People moaned about RE5...they were right, they moaned about FF13...they were right, they moaned about Bioshock 2s multiplayer...they were right, the moaned about the tacked on online in DS2...they were right

You get were I'm going with this...if it was something like Max Payne 3 which changed most things which made it the game it used to be...yet it still ended up as a good game in general then fair enough, wait untill you play it but come on DS3 has turned into another generic third person shooter just so EA can make money...supporting a company which has sold out on the games loyal fans shouldn't be supported

[Paragon]

I think a lot of Survival Horror series are giving up chilling atmospheres, and hair curling features instead for explosions, a perk system, and taking the shooter route moreso.

[DestinyHeroDoomlord]

It could work like re outbreak, but I was thinking more like little to no resources I mean unless a necromorph was a soldier he won't carry ammo right and don't you think people would use most of everything trying to stay alive not leaving stuff at the shops? Not to mention tight corridors

[iMaim]

Watch the GT demo of Dead Space 3.
Its possible to play through the game without that co-op buddy with you. Issac will be alone throughout the campaign and the option for drop in co-op is only available in certain sections.

[Treian]

however, it is still action....

[TheDivine]

Yea that preview soothed my disspointment at the e3 co-op-a-pallooza but it does seem more like a 3rd person shooter now (as opposed to survival horror). I remember playing the first game and bieng genuinely frightened. It wasnt all action it was about the slow build up to a frightening encounter. All i had was the nail gun thing which wasnt fully automatic. Ammo was hard to find and i had to ration it because you could only hold so much and i needed the other items also. It will still be awesome but i much prefered 1 to 2 and will prob prefer 1 and 2 to 3.