Dead Space 3: Initial Thoughts

     Considering this game is getting heavily mixed reviews- I am hesitant to do an actual review.  Besides the fact it's been a hectic week for work and life has been eating up a lot of my gaming time.  So far I've only played for a couple hours and I'm only in Chapter 5.

This is exactly what I'm currently using.

     Some of the things I like already- 1) Universal Ammo clips.  Now I don't get limited in gun selection by necessitating hunting down specific ammo types.  I like certain weapons better than others, and only being able to use my favorite weapons a couple times sucks.
     2) Workbench Upgrading/Crafting System.  This feature is wonderful and I'm only in the early stages of it's use.  I've already upgraded the Evangelizer and Negotiator preorder guns.  They started awesome, and I've added only more awesome to them.
     3) Suit/Rig Universality.  I can, for the most part, now use whatever suit I think looks the coolest, where in the other games I had to choose suits I didn't like for specific features I needed.  It's now mostly located in the RIG itself so I can choose based more on look- which is why I'm using the Witness suit.  I prefer it's look over the other preorder suits and the N7 armor.  Makes me wonder if the Mass Effect armor(or any other suit) has hidden bonuses???  Also- where's the Dragon Age armors?  Mass Effect 2 I got the Blood Dragon armor, which was quite useful for me- so why hasn't it (or something similar) to Dead Space?

     A few things I don't like- 1) How ridiculous enemies are.  I walk into an area- EVERY enemy know exactly where you are, and armed enemies always have immediate sights on you.  The only benefit is you can trace that laser sight back to their location.  In many, MANY cases enemies seem to always be spawning surrounding you.  I wonder what prompted this- because when I slow go and clear everything out quite methodically, they end up both right behind me and another wave directly in front of me- it ends up meaning I'm forced to take damage from at least one side.   
     2) Cover/ducking.  No matter how much I cover, I still get hit with bullets.  Behind solid walls.  Not just short barriers.  I've even encountered multiple enemies gettnig stuck in walls near doors.  They become invisible and can hurt you but no amount of shooting can damage them.
     3) The Story and Dialogue.  Something seems wrong about it.  Like they took all the Scientologi... ooops- I mean the Unitologists and made them all single minded idiots.  Where are all the Unitologists that saw some of this stuff and decided, "Hey, these people are F***ing dumb!  I don't want to be an undead monster." 
     Really- there's got to be at least a small resistance group that was once a set of believers, that are now rebelling.  Or, with all the crazy technology, why aren't there more governmental super weapons out attempting to obliterate some of the Unitology outposts?  Then of course there's what seemed to be a General at the end of the Prologue.  Uhhh... people don't become that high ranked because they give up hope and quit. 
     4)  Ellie.  What the EFF did they do to her!?!?  Seriously- I know it's the future and you needed a new eye, but good lord woman, ease up on the plastic surgery!  I didn't even recognize her at first. 
    
     I am enjoying the game regardless- I'll be attempting multiplayer sometime in the next couple days to see how that fairs.  Looking forward to seeing Carver's side of the story as well as finishing Isaac's story.  There's also the fact that I need to find a Ripper soon.  Necromorphs don't mow themselves to bits you know.  Dead Space 3 remains an action-horror hybrid I enjoy playing.