by Phoenix, HSM team writer

A horror game for the Halloween Season, pick #2.

Just as there are elements that make great horror movies, there are elements of great horror games. These elements are used to create a sense of fear, panic, alarm and dread. When combined with the usual unsettling scenarios, they will push and pull the player through nightmarish events on a tension-filled drama of discovery and danger.

The hero or heroine must face an array of trials, discovered secrets and sometimes half-truths that will spur them on through the dark, familiar yet foreign, labyrinth, and the close-quartered fights that lie before them. As with most genre-specific categories, the horror game genre has sub genres. Knowing a little about these will help you know what to expect when playing them.

There is the supernatural horror drama, where you can be plagued by ghosts, vampires werewolves and the like. This genre can also be classified as monster horror.

There is the category of sci-fi horror with the elements of alien invasions, either extraterrestrial or some home-grown laboratory escapee, which must be overcome and stamped out before it can further ravage and destroy the world.

There is the popular zombie horror — yes, this one has its own category, as zombies are monsters, but also not monsters. They are supernatural, being dead — but also sci-fi, being undead and always having some human cause for existence.

Finally there is the category of comic horror drama. This game can have the comedic levity found in the ironic conversations of the hero and the subordinates surrounding him, on their quest to survive and save what’s left of mankind. A bit of this is thrown into every horror work from games to books to movies — it is the thing that keeps us off guard in an otherwise predictable scenario.

The second game I picked for play this horrific season is Dead Space 3; sci-fi horror genre, an EA game released February 2013. The ultimate merciless solider Isaac Clarke is back in a fight for his life on a hostile landscape, Tau Volantis. As Clarke, you must become a survival scavenger, creating weapons on your way to discover the origin of the Necro plague and destroy the Necromorphs. You are  in a life and death situation all the time. Necromorphs are human corpses reanimated by signals broadcast from an alien artifact known by those that play the series as the Marker. This was my first encounter with necromorphs, and they freaked me out when the first ones attacked.

This game, the third in the series, sees the return of the RIG suits along with the holographic display projected from them. If you find yourself in a confined vacuum area when playing, you will see a timer on your right shoulder that will show the amount of oxygen left before death by suffocation. If you have not played these games before, pay attention to the tutorial!

You will find Clarke and newcomer Sgt. John Carver are now able to take cover and roll away, avoiding attacks from the ever advancing necromorphs. This is a much needed ability for any hero in an outnumbered onslaught of undead foes. The games creators realized this, and now the game has it. Dead Space 3 offers a more organic play mode this time around for return players. When in play, Clarke or Carver can accomplish the appropriate task in any given situation. There is no more need to walk up to a targeted thing and press a cover button.

In this drop-in, drop-out co-op play, Clarke and Carver must work together to survive the hostile ice planet’s elements, the avalanches, the deadly environment itself and the more evolved and numerous advancing necromorphs. In campaign mode co-op, additional story details and game play mechanics are available as unlocks. These can only be accessed through co-op play.

The character of Carver must be played. Carver, through his dementia, will interact with and find things Clarke cannot see. Clarke is unable to experience any of these events during these times. Also there will be times when Carver is trapped in his mind, so Clarke must protect him from advancing reanimated undead, until he can free himself from his own mind. This will be something players of the series may find familiar from Dead Space 2.

The full campaign can be played in online multiplayer or single player mode, if you would rather be alone fighting your own dark fears and nightmares. You can fight your way through from bullet riddled, blood soaked, limb slicing, head spewing, and gut exploding death laden levels from start to finish, in space and time, where no one will hear you scream.

Dead Space 3 is a third person shooter multiplatform game available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Distributed in digital download form, DVD and Blu-ray.

Developers: Visceral Games
Publishers: Electronic Arts
Producer: Steve Papoutsis
Composers: Jason Graves and James Hannigan
Gameplay engine: Visceral Engine

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