Well, I finished it tonight, and I'm more convinced than ever that nobody in the games journalism industry has a fucking brain. I honestly wonder if these people even play the games they review.
To address the most common complaints I've seen: the story is better than both prior games, insofar as they can even be compared. This is an epic conclusion, those were gradual crescendos that only left you with questions and no answers. Even if the personal story is a little contrived here, it's far from awful, and the real event is in the logs and finding out what actually happened to the SCAF flotilla and planetary bases, which really is an honest-to-goodness story with its own twists, turns, heroes, and villains. The main villain of the present-day affair isn't as bad as people have made him out to be, and he at least has a reasonable motivation due to his perspective, which makes enough sense given how crazy and un-understandable the situation is to begin with. I didn't find him unbelievable at all, and of course he's preachy. He's the leader of a fucking religious cult, how is he not going to be preachy? That's not a valid complaint. Anyway...
The marker debacle comes to a head and the big reveal is great. Obviously this is subjective, but it sets up some crazy stuff with big potential for coolness later on. Aside from the main story, there are sub-stories told along the way via side missions, most of which are great. There are no more "fetch quests" here than in any other similar game (it's a fucking shooter, and everything you're doing here is the same shit you were doing in the other two games, and works just as well). This accusation has been several times leveled at the side missions, but almost all of those are simply to kill your way to the bottom of a facility where a bucket of goodies is waiting for you... it's not a fetch quest, it's just a slaughter with some loot at the end, so that's not a valid comparison. Too, everyone says this isn't scary, and that's probably because you're seen all this shit over the course of two games already. But in point of fact, the horror here is far stronger here than in the last game despite the fact that there are other characters around sometimes. The second game features nothing even slightly disturbing unless you actually found the necro-children disturbing (I did not). It's a great game, but not the tiniest bit scary on anything beyond surface level.
Environmentally, the third game is hugely impressive. There's just so much cool shit to see. Despite a couple issues of architectural recycling in some of the later side missions, there are as many "wow" moments in the last half of the game as in the first, and in my opinion considerably more. The first half is a big "wow" in the beginning, and it's all fun throughout, but ultimately it's just more of the same from the first two games and doesn't really do anything particularly special beyond the initial reveal that you're in a ship graveyard and get to explore the wrecks. It sustains itself well and is great, but there's really a constant stream of new surprises on the planet's surface, so I totally don't get the complaints. There are some stunning bits and unique moments, and some big set pieces that make you really want to know what the fuck's going on.
Oh, and lastly, the Unitologists aren't damage sponges like I've seen them called. People must just not be upgrading their weapons, or they just fucking suck at the game. Every Unitologist I fought in the latter half of the game died in a single hit. I generally kill them even at a distance with a single shotgun blast. They're a nice addition to the combat, they aren't hard, you don't have to freak out about cover (you don't have to use the "cover system" at all... I didn't know it existed until I used it by accident a whopping one time the entire game), and there is absolutely, positively nothing here that borrows from Gears of War or any other action game, despite what IGN would have you believe. That's just fucking shoddy journalism. This is Dead Space almost (almost) to a fault, regardless of the additions. The enemy counts are higher, and this is a bit more actiony, but it has to be. Again, this is the big epic finale, it can't be the same thing. The stakes have to be upped.
I don't know. I guess maybe I just didn't worship the first two games as hard as some people, and maybe came in with somewhat lower expectations. I think this is a much bigger and much better game than either of the others. My biggest complaint is that the enemy variety should have been better. There are some types they virtually never use, and I couldn't quite figure out why. There are a few smaller complaints, most of which I can't seem to think of right now. And definitely some stuff felt like a missed opportunity to do something awesome, but not because the game had an awesomeness deficit in general.
Anyway, great game. Highly recommend it. I unlocked tons of cool stuff from finishing on hard, so plugging new chips into my guns and going for round 2.
