The game opens up with a recap of the story of the first 2 games. Then you begin on a snow covered planet. This acts as a tutorial for the movement and a bit of shooting. Your character then gets betrayed and the time jumps 100 years to Isaac’s storyline.
Isaac is then asked to help find Ellie who is his ex-girlfriend and the woman he met in the second game. Isaac is soon attacked by a Unitology group which leads to some frantic gunfights with humans. The gameplay style is a bit weird here since you are encouraged to play it like a cover-based shooter, crouching behind cover, then fleeing. After you get past this section, the gameplay goes back to what you expect. You are then in environments that look like the mining facility Ishamura and are fighting necromorphs. There’s small corridors and lots of lifts/ladders then plenty of backtracking. Later on, you go through the snow covered areas, and necromorphs leap from the ground.
Some people say it is designed with co-op in mind. With the increased speed of monsters, it does seem that way, but the narrow corridors and ladders often make it cumbersome for 2 players. Furthermore, some cutscenes only really make sense in single player.
I’ve also seen people comment that the horror aspects have been dialled back, but there’s plenty of jump scares which was more evident early in the game. This might be because I got used to the mechanics so the jump scares were more predictable. I also only played the first few chapters single-player, then restarted and played Co-op with a friend - you can’t really have a scary, horror game when you make it co-op since it removes the feeling of isolation.
The second player plays as John Carver, who looks like a tough soldier with a scarred face. If you play single-player, then you are on your own rather than having an AI controlled partner. There’s a few optional chapters in the game, including some co-op only chapters.
The save stations are gone, and now the game autosaves at checkpoints. You would think this was to keep the game flowing, but now there’s work benches everywhere which is basically a replacement for the Store. This is where you upgrade your weapons using the new crafting mechanic. I felt the workbenches slowed the pace down, especially when your co-op partner insists on checking for upgrades or wants to try out a new weapon (this depends on who your friend is though).
There’s a large list of blueprints to craft weapons, but you can also create your own by choosing the individual parts to the guns. They have 2 firing methods - primary and secondary. So as an example, you can have a plasma cutter as a primary fire, but flamethrower as secondary if you wish. You can carry 2 weapons, and the ammunition is universal, so you are free to have whatever combinations you want. I thought the slow-firing guns aren’t effective in single-player due to the frequency and speed of the enemies.
I thought there was an abundance of ammo and med-packs so I never felt the need to craft more.
You have your Kinesis and Stasis powers as normal. Kinesis allows you to pick up and propel objects, and Stasis allows you to slow objects or enemies down. Stasis is something you will be using a lot due to the speed and frequency of enemies.
There’s a few puzzles as well as a few “hacking” minigames. Some of these play differently in co-op since they make them require cooperation. Other times one of you is using the machine whilst the other player is fending off waves of enemies.
There’s a section in the game where you need to climb up cliffs or abseil down. These feel pretty cumbersome. There’s a few anti-gravity sections but there’s not enough to warrant spending your resources on the Air upgrades. There’s a few sections, particularly near the end where you automatically fly forward and you have to dodge obstacles. These sections are pretty bland.
The graphics are decent enough but I thought the second game looks a bit more stylish.
The story is basically more of the same Dead Space really. Kill necromorphs, find the “Marker”, but also stop the Unitology leader. There’s a few story sequences that I thought were a bit silly. There’s a few moments throughout the game where Isaac and friends get captured at gunpoint by the Unitologists, but they easily escape by fighting their way out of it. There’s a character that dies because she stays on a lift whilst moaning about how much she hates lifts and wants to get off it (while others have long since left the lift). There’s a character that dies and had no chance of escaping, but there’s a twist - she escaped.
It’s a good game but it just seems to be lacking the magic that the other two games had. Both the previous games did have a lot of enemies to shoot, but I think they have upped it here. The enemy variety was much lower - with some of the classic necromorphs barely featuring. The pacing doesn’t feel as good. Co-op removes the desolation, but I think it is a harder game when played alone.