Like an infection that starts small and spreads fast, the story of Dead Space has grown wildly since its inception. The first game took place mostly aboard a futuristic starship, the Ishimura, where engineer Isaac Clarke needed wits and weapons to survive the reanimated corpses on every deck. When these necromorphs returned in Dead Space 2, it was on a giant space station where the Ishimura was docked and our hero was still recovering from his earlier trauma. And now we've got Dead Space 3, a bigger, more expansive sequel whose plot spans time and space.

It's clear from the very first scene — a flashback to 200 years before the Ishimura disaster, on a barren ice planet called Tau Volantis — that Dead Space 3 has a vast scope. This playable prologue (a neat, unexpected touch) introduces a backstory about the necromorph-spawning Markers that's pivotal to the rest of the game, whose main story picks up a couple of years after the events of Dead Space 2. When we first see him, Isaac is bitter and lifeless; he's long since parted ways with Ellie from the last game, and hope is a distant memory. But soon after Unitologist zealots attack his new home and try to kill him, he's off on a new mission involving more Markers, more necromorphs...and a reunion with Ellie.

Dead Space 3 supports dozens of Kinect voice commands, which you can use for everything from stomping boxes to triggering stasis. We found them more of a novelty than a useful substitute for a controller.

Before it's over, this adventure will take you from the New Horizon Lunar Colony to a spaceship graveyard (the Lost Flotilla) to the surface and subterranean depths of Tau Volantis. Clocking in at around 20 to 25 hours, Dead Space 3's campaign is considerably longer than its predecessors', and made even more so by optional missions where you'll explore, say, extra vessels in the Flotilla or additional areas on Tau Volantis such as an armory or supply depot. You'll want to do these missions partly to nab more loot, but also to get more backstory via text and video logs. Some of these 200-year-old recordings depict survivors who went insane or struggled desperately against the necromorph onslaught — nothing particularly new in the Dead Space universe — but collectively, they're part of the broad tapestry that forms the game's overarching tale. More so than in the other games, we found much of Dead Space 3's time-spanning story pretty interesting; at the very least, it deserves kudos for its sincere attempt to explain and redefine the Markers in an intriguing way.

If you came for the action, let us assure you...it's intense. Generally speaking, your third-person butchery feels fairly similar to the other games' — topped off by a handy new rolling move for evading nearby necros — though you're often fighting packs of 5, 10, even 20 monsters now instead of just a few at a time. Part of that's due to the new weapon-crafting mechanic, which has you collecting parts throughout each level and assembling them into double-decker guns of your choice at sporadically placed benches. Because you're usually toting devastating firepower like a Contact Beam/Force Gun, a Shotgun/Rocket Launcher, or a Flamethrower/Bouncing Bolas (easily our favorite), you can tackle more opponents at once, and the game never hesitates to throw them at you in large numbers. Blade-armed Slashers, three-tentacled Lurkers, and other enemies from the previous games are joined by several new types, including Feeders (skeletal nasties who try to rip your head off) and the Pregnant (who release the Swarm if you shoot their belly). Twitchers are especially freaky: these Slasher-like creatures rush you super-fast, so slowing them down with Stasis blasts is a must.

Your visibility can be impacted during a storm on Tau Volantis. Watch your back!

As much as we enjoyed the combat most of the time, and as much variety as weapon-crafting injects into it, we were disappointed to find ourselves growing bored in spots. Simply put, there's too much fighting; like other aspects of Dead Space 3, its impact becomes lessened by excess repetition. Unlike Dead Space 2 (OXM rating: 9.5) — an amazingly tight and well-paced 15- to 20-hour game where few parts overstayed their welcome — this sequel never misses an opportunity to repeat an element two or three times when once would've been more fulfilling. Dueling an incredibly tough Snow Beast is fun once but not three times; likewise, we dug rappelling up and down cliffs...until we'd done it six or seven times. Even a battle against a towering Hive Mind creature, where you have to shoot its temporarily exposed heart — hardly an original concept in the first place — felt minutes too long.

Our Dead Space 3 review concludes on the next page!