More of the Worst DLC Ever

[Musashi1596]

As some of you may now, DLC can sometimes be a rather touchy subject with me. I love it when it's well-made, but it so often isn't. You might remember the last time I had a rant on DLC, back when I was playing Continuum Shift. http://prestigegamerz.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 64#p129964

But Dead Space 3 does a pretty good job of trying to top its crown for 'worst DLC'. Let's take a look.

First you have three suit and weapon packs. Each pack gives you one engineering suit, and one or two weapons. I assume these probably boost your performance somewhat. Each one of these costs you £3.99. So thats almost £12 for three suits and weapons.

Then there's the resource packs. These represent a rather alarming trend. See, Dead Space seems to restrict your resources quite a lot. I'm near the start of Chapter 6, and I have barely been able to afford a couple of suit upgrades, with about one upgrade each for Kinesis and Stasis. I haven't been able to construct anything in the way of weapon customisation and am solely restricted to using custom pieces that I can find.

There are three resource packs available; £0.79, £1.59, and £2.39 respectively. The £0.79 pack gives you a base pack of resources like scrap metal, etc. Think of it like this; this pack gives you 500 scrap metal, and I probably only found a little bit more than that in the game so far.
The £1.59 pack gives you more resources (essentially more than I have been able to acquire in total so far) and one weapon part... With a chance for a secon. You're actually paying real money for something you might get, something Mass Effect 3 is also guilty of. Which, funnily enough, is an EA title too. The £2.39 pack predictably enough gives you even more resources but with an extra weapon part.

Incidentally, you can actually buy these packs with 'ration seals', which you find ingame. But also consider this; at chapter 6, I have precisely 7 ration seals. The £0.79 pack alone will cost you 10.

Worst of all, though... You have the bot upgrades. In Dead Space 3, you have a scavenger bot; you release it in certain areas, and it comes back a little later with (a tiny amount of) resources. fortunately, those kind folk at EA give you the option to improve the performance of your bot...
For only £3.99 you can halve the time it takes gathering resources. It doesn't take too long, mind. Or, you can get it to bring back double the amount of resources. This will also cost you £3.99.

Finally, you can buy... Er... The 'Bot personality pack'. To take the ingame description, this will 'automatically upload advanced speech and sarcasm protocols, empowering them with the ability to speak out loud the random thoughts whirring inside their microprocessor-powered brains'. This, too, is £3.99. £3.99 to give your scavenger bot a personality. This sounds like the sort of shit that someone like me would make up in a satirical article about DLC, but here it is, real enough.

Don't know about the rest of you, but I find this sort of DLC outright insulting, not to mention the fact that the game menu clearly list the things you haven't bought. Bringing Pay to Win into a survival horror game is just inexcusable, but maybe even less so than charging outlandish prices for things that, frankly, are just beyond parody.

[gigitygigity]

It seems a bit shit for sure. I guess there is the option not to buy the stuff but it sounds like they're effectively making the game harder to coerce you into buying stuff, which is down right dirty tactics.

As for the personality upgrade. I know in BL2 I would have paid to shut the claptraps up. But I believe the old saying about fools and money would apply in this case.

[Musashi1596]

It seems a bit shit for sure. I guess there is the option not to buy the stuff but it sounds like they're effectively making the game harder to coerce you into buying stuff, which is down right dirty tactics.

As for the personality upgrade. I know in BL2 I would have paid to shut the claptraps up. But I believe the old saying about fools and money would apply in this case.

to be honest, something being optional has never really held any water for me, it's always been a matter of principle. It bothers me that thet charge these outlandish prices for minor digital content. Plus there's the whole 'pay to win' thing. If people need a leg up, they should just be able to play it on a low difficulty that gives them more to play with.

But it does seem to me that they are deliberately starving you of the more valuable resources like Tungsten to encourage you to purchase the packs. Don't get me wrong, I can play through the game OK, I've never felt like I had to buy something to progress, but my upgrade and construction options are severely restricted.

[Lieutenant Fatman]

I wonder how many people have actually purchased the Bot personality pack. Incredible that they want any money for that, let alone £4. It should be something that you unlock just by playing the game.

[Musashi1596]

Just an update while I'm further into the game. The DLC is still crap, but resource starvation really isn't an issue anymore. It's very tight early on, but as certain side missions give you significant bonuses, you get a fair amount to play with. However, I'm now playing Classic modes, which only lets you construct Cold Dead Space weapons using blueprints. As such I can't scavenge parts to help make weapons anymore and am entirely dependant on resources, so things are extremely tight.

[Musashi1596]

Agreed with everything said.
Though with the newest DLC, which is actually an expansion of the game and not some dumb shit that you can get in the game and you buy to make it easier. Dead Space series has been moving away from from horror since the first one, and I find it really Ironic when in the latest DLC : Awakened which is a 10 dollar DLC with only 3 chapters had more horror in it then the entire Dead Space 3 game. Though it had the same enemies from DS3 story and it would have been nice to fight some followers or new enemies I didn't see it as a big deal. The only big problem with this Awakened DLC that I had, was the ending. Dead Space 1 Hello Isaac and Marker , Dead Space 2 welcome back, combat hallucinations, and hello marker, Dead Space 3 Hello Marker home world which I thought would have been a perfect end to the Dead Space franchaise. The end could have been left off where

Spoiler: show

(you hear Isaac voice saying Ellie.) Indicating that he is alive. Still I would have accepted this ending, but the new DLC shows him alive and Carver never actually explains how they survived and at the end as they return to earth shows another moon is awake convergence or some shit.

While they say they won't make Dead Space 4 and I pray to friccin Odin, god, zeus, mother nature, shit everyone they don't. If they do it will be an absolute abomination. Dead Space 3 was it terrible yes and no, was it playable yes and was interesting at times. But tacking on all these Bullshit dlcs, giving us endings without really giving us endings and just cliffhangers to the next potential Dead space which will be Isaac be with 3 friends and the army shooting lasers at humans, dragons, necromoprhs, suns, planets, the deathstar who knows what else...sorry for the long post I don't know how it ended up like this.

[Musashi1596]

Thanks for the spoiler warning you put in the text, but I went ahead and put it within spoiler tags just to keep it safe.
Anyway. you raise some good points. I haven't got Awakening yet but it would have been nice to see new enemies, or ones from previous games not used here. I felt DS3 had the least variety in enemies so far.
I wouldn't call DS3 terrible but I can understand the discontent. I'll review the game soon as I'll have a bit more time on my hands.

[Treehugger]

Sorry new to posting I just noticed the spoiler tag up top when typing will do so next time.

[Musashi1596]

Sorry new to posting I just noticed the spoiler tag up top when typing will do so next time.

No worries, you were considerate enough to put a warning in so it'sall good.