How to play Dead Space 3

Posted by on February 7, 2013 in Games

it_takes_two_to_Dead_Space

On hardcore. Or pure survival. Or retro.

The Dead Space games were designed around the idea of shooting monsters in the limbs, which often flail wildly so you’ll have to use stasis to freeze them. This makes it much easier to aim for the shoulders and thighs, or whatever equivalent exists on some Thing inspired squirming amalgam of dog, zombie, and octopus you’re fighting at any given time. You can subvert this concept entirely by playing on the easier difficulty levels and just pouring ammo into the monsters. Dead Space is a perfectly viable meat circus if you want to do it that way.

But to really enjoy the combat model, and to traffic in the survival horror economy, and to get the achievements, you’re going to want to play the harder difficulties and especially the new game plus modes like hardcore and pure survival. However, you have to prep first.

After the jump, cue Eye of the Tiger for your training montage

The first thing you have to do is unlock the harder modes by finishing the game on any difficulty. Since the amount of resources you’ll earn is based on the difficulty level, I recommend playing on casual for a maximum return on your time investment. Blam, blam, blam. You’re mashing monsters, sucking up resources, deploying your scavenger bot, ignoring the story. Blam, blam, zap, pew. You are ignoring the story, right? You’re better off just watching Event Horizon or Pandorum or any other incomprehensible space horror movie. Zap, crackle, blam. Cinematic set pieces! Blam, bang, zap.

You can freely build and dismantle weapons, so don’t be afraid to experiment. Lord knows, this part of space is littered with work stations! This casual runthrough is your training grounds, your test run, your economic foundation. Pick up everything. Sell extra ammo for scrap metal, extra stasis modules for transducers, and extra medkits for somatic gel. Your transducers upgrade your stasis and kenesis powers. Be sure to boost stasis, as it’s going to be important when you graduate to harder difficulties. Somatic gel is used to upgrade your health and armor. Tungsten is the rare element that will limit which badass weapons you can build. Use your tungsten wisely. Note that you can craft a tungsten key for 20 tungsten. Always have one handy. These will get you into special supply lockers, almost all of which will have some sort of weapon component well worth the tungsten you spent to get in, even if you just sell the component for its materials.

Finally, ration tickets will let you buy the downloadable resource packs EA is selling to people dumber than you. Ideally, you want to save these up until you’ve got thirty, which will get you the resource pack that also includes a random powerful Mk.V weapon component.

The limited edition of Dead Space 3 gives you a serious leg up by starting you with some powerful weapons. Feel free to dismantle these and use the components, especially the elite frames, to make other weapons. These elite frames undercut the usual part of a game where you have to use a pistol by jumping you straight to the equivalent of a grenade launcher and uber shotgun. Enjoy them. Use them to build whatever you want. Feel free to craft new components rather than waiting to discover them. I recommend putting a telemetry spike on an elite frame as soon as you can. But if you’re playing on casual, there are no wrong weapon choices. This is the best time to play around and see what everything does (note that you can also do this using a weapon testing arena available from the main menu).

Once you’ve played through on casual, now you’re ready for harder difficulties and some of the new modes. Your suit sports extra health and armor. You’ve got improved stasis and maybe even maxxed out kenesis (a great way to save ammo). You’re rocking a pair of grand weapons studded with upgrade chips. Now you’re almost ready. Feel free to plink away at the new modes if you like. But the final ingredient on hardcore or pure survial — and a hugely important one — is another player. In co-op, with each player simultaneously contributing a different weapon power to any given encounter, Dead Space 3 turns into a grand sci-fi tactical shooter featuring crazy guns and crazy space monsters. Now you’ve finally arrived at the best of Dead Space.

  • Pogue Mahone

    I’m a little confused about something – I am playing through single player DS3 campaign right now, but as I understand it hardcore mode is like playing a roguelike; you can save anywhere but dying will delete your save and you must start over. So how does that work in co-op? Does one player dying end the game for both or does the other player get a chance at a rescue?

  • tomchick

    Oops, I think you might be right, Pogue.

    There are a whole mess of new game plus modes (I think five in all) and to get to any of them, you have to play through the game once. My point here is that those are the real meat, and you might as well use your first play-through to earn phat loot. But there is a permadeath mode where you start with no resources. It makes sense that’s the hardcore mode.

  • Pogue Mahone

    That’s cool, I was just curious if there was a way to “cheat” hardcore mode by playing with someone else. I might be more inclined to try it out, if so. But you know I never played the upper difficulties in the other two Dead Space games, because they really didn’t seem like the type of game to really benefit from it. I think you are right they would be more fun in co-op.

  • KVFinn

    Ugh, I really don’t want to have to run through the whole game just to unlock the cool difficulty modes.

  • luke

    How well do the human enemies fit into the combat ecology, Tom? No one has had anything positive to say about them in reviews for Dead Space 3, but I can’t tell if that’s because they’re “unfun” to fight, or because they’re not scary monster enough for fans of the Dead Space series. Hopefully the latter. I’m all for enemies that add variety to combats and force me to adapt.

  • tomchick

    Why don’t people like the human enemies?

    I actually like how they mix up the type of combat challenges you face, which fits neatly with the variety of weapons. You get so used to monsters rushing at you that it’s nice to occasionally have a traditional stand-off firefight.

  • luke

    People don’t like the human enemies because they’re not as scary as the monsters, their AI is weak, and the combat is too clunky to handle them. I didn’t find the Dead Space 1-3 demos scary, just loud and gory, so I have no problem with their first objection, and as a big fan of RE5, clunky combat is great as long as it feels distinct. What you’re saying about the human encounters adding variety is what I was hoping to hear.

  • thebigJ_A

    Jesus. Nearly every word you’ve written on this game, and many of those I’ve read elsewhere, makes me want to never ever ever play a Dead Space game again.

    And I *loved* the first one, and greatly enjoyed much of the second.

    Rations. Sell your pre-order bonus for scrap. Co-op. Play casual to farm for the real modes. Blech.

    What have they done to my Dead Space? :’(

  • thebigJ_A

    phat loot, forsooth.

  • zosima

    ds3 hardcore mode definitely looks to be more difficult than ds2. On ds2, you got 3 saves, if you die, you only have to replay 1/4 of the game, if you were careful with how you used your saves. On ds3, it looks like you start back at the beginning.

    I think you can co-op hardcore tho, not sure it’ll be too much of a help since you have to stay together tho.

  • http://profiles.google.com/matthiaswatkins Matt Watkins

    Maybe it’s because I’m a more casual gamer (though with 30 years of gaming under my belt and hundreds of game completions, I’m not sure what definition of casual applies: maybe “able to play video games only a few hours a week because work and family take priority”?) Anyway, maybe it’s because I’m more casual, or maybe it’s because I’m only about 1/3 of the way through, but I’m enjoying DS3 on Normal just about as much as I enjoyed DS2 and DS1. That is to say, I don’t really understand what all the hullabaloo is about. It seems like a well-crafted, very pretty game that plays very similarly to the previous entries in the series. I never play games twice (there are far too many games in my backlog and there is far too little time), but I’m enjoying DS3 quite a bit and expect to be pretty satisfied after wrapping it up. Maybe I just have low standards.