Dead Space 3

Around halfway through the seventh generation of consoles, I took a break from gaming for a few years. The plus side? Whole trilogies and sequels had long come out in my absence and were mere dollars in the used bin at GameStop. Being a fan of the first Dead Space, I was excited to play through the whole trilogy. That turned out to be a poor idea.

Firstly, I played it alone, so most of the game’s shoehorned co-op features (common for games at the time) were lost on me. On top of that, its heavy shooter emphasis just continued to wear on me. I don’t mind a change of pace in a series, and I love Gears of War. But there was something about snapping into cover and getting into firefights with other humans in Dead Space that just felt thematically wrong. (It also wasn’t implemented terribly well.) The dark allure of this world fell away for what was basically just a mediocre shooter.

I kept feeling like I had to finish it though. I’d gone so long without playing video games, I tried to convince myself that this was the fun I’d been missing. But finally, round after round of banal shooter sequences pushed me to the breaking point and I simply said, out loud, “I don’t want to do this.” I ejected the disc from my PS3 and tossed it across the room into the trash.

At times I still think that I might not have given Dead Space 3 a fair shot. And while I don’t think quitting a game I didn’t enjoy was the wrong thing…maybe throwing the disc in the trash was an uncalled for act of aggression on my part. – Claire Jackson