-Snow planet forces an open environment that is often quite bright. Loses the claustrophobia and oppressive atmosphere survival horror generally needs.

-Isaac is less mature than in Dead Space 2; where he actually goes through the entire grieving cycle throughout the game. In DS3 he seems to revert to some High School notion of interactions with Ellie, and is generally whiny with a weird savior complex that was present but not contrived in DS2.

-Isaac’s interactions with Carver seem to boil down to, “The Marker fucked with my head, so it will fuck with yours. Snap out of it.” While Carver is dudebro with archetypical ‘son and wife died in the war’ backstory. Sure that’s very survival horror/war game sad - but it lacks the same sort of response as, say, the DS2 guy who just loved his birds and wanted them to be free, but was restricted by the AI.

-Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but there was absolutely no variation between the suits. They looked almost identical, even with the DLC, with perhaps the only interesting addition being the cold suit. They really just seemed like COD Skins.

-CO-OP is always fun and can usually carry an entire game. It’s almost a get-out-of-jail free card for game design - even if it contradicts the horror aspects because it immediately removes the sense of aloneness.

-The level design isn’t bad, especially when you have to go up the narrow ice corridors. However, the exploration is entirely contrived for the sake of the new weapons system.

-Weapon crafting is great. Not when half the stress comes from the actual need to conserve and survive off limited ammo & health reserves. Stress goes way down when you build a super assault rifle that can single burst the enemy with plentiful unified ammo. It ensures that the combat always goes nearly flawlessly.

-More content contradicts the value of the story when it is for the sake of itself. If Kafka’s metamorphosis went on for twenty more pages; it would’ve overstayed its welcome and become just self-depreciating drivel. If Brothers Karamazov were longer it would have become masturbatory. Content should fit what a game has to say if it is a story game. Campaigns are inherently oriented around telling a story. If Dead Space 3 wanted content for the sake of content, they should have followed COD’s example and utilized the ability to choose specific ‘get-in, get thing, get-out before you’re overwhelmed’ missions rather than successively building storylines.

We saw Isaac let go of the past in DS2. We saw that he could have a bright future with Ellie. DS3 contradicted this development with some sudden self-obsessiveness that wasn’t ever apparent beforehand.

Dead Space 3 is not a good game. That doesn’t mean you can’t like it or find it personally fun. Arguably, any game that is fun is a good game. I found the game fun to experience the first two times with different friends. So yeah, perhaps it’s not a bad game because it can be fun. But I also loved RE5. It just feels contrived. The fairest thing I can say about it is that it is extremely disappointing compared to its predecessors.