These new Dead Space screens look an awful lot like the old Dead Space screens.
The Dead Space formula is pretty well established by now, so I suppose there’s not much point in griping that these Dead Space 3 screens bear a remarkable resemblance to shots from the previous games: Heavily-armed dude in the goalie mask of the future stalks through gritty, ruined sci-fi environments and is occasionally leapt upon by underfed space zombies. And that’s pretty much what we have here as Isaac Clarke, once again looking more like a Systems Alliance operative than a ship systems engineer, strikes some poses and squares off against a bunch of gnawing uglies.
They look good, in the sense that they’re sharp, detailed and promise heaps of plasma-cut violence, but they’re also somewhat distressingly “same-y.” The enemies in five of the shots are just skeletons with their skin still attached, and the other two aren’t especially pleasant but remain close enough to human that they’re not overly disturbing either. Nine screenshots does not a game make, but neither do they convince me that Dead Space 3 is going to do anything more than just “more.”
Dead Space 3 is currently slated to come out in February 2013 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.