I wish things in space stayed dead

Review

Played on: Xbox 360
Released: 2011

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to playing Dead Space 2, the original game is one of my favourite horror games ever. In fact, it’s probably in my top three, right under Silent Hill and Resident Evil (the PS1 original). I simply enjoy being scared senseless, and with modern surround sound and a darkly lit room Dead Space delivered this with glorious (or should that be gory-ous?!) graphics and sci-fi atmosphere.

Dead Space 2 continues to follow the main character from DS1, Isaac Clarke, fighting his flashbacks of his deceased wife and nightmares from the spaceship Ishimura from the first game. He wakes up in a mental ward at a huge space station and quickly he realises that the alien race, the Necromorphs, are loose and killing everyone. Right from the get-go you get an understanding that the story is better presented and the main character is given more depth.

This involvement in a deeper and more developed storytelling is obvious throughout DC2. Isaac is no longer so anonymous, has opinions on different matters and meets interesting personalities along his journey. In fact, the story is excellent. It's only slightly marred by too many radio interruptions with distressed callers. They should have made more cutscenes and avoided some of the radio chatter, simply because it breaks with the sensation of being alone.



The original Dead Space proved you can make smooth and fast controls, like in action focused third person shooters, without compromising the feeling of balancing on the edge of defending yourself from monsters and being afraid of dying. Resident Evil’s tank controls can once again take a hike and go shamefully to the corner and cry for being useless and annoying.

DC2 then, luckily follows its last iteration perfectly. Visceral games, the developer, have even added a wider variety of interesting and distinctly different weapons for your disposal and hard earned in-game credits. Each weapon also has an alternative fire button and the ability to be upgraded.

Combine these great controls and weaponry with a large “cast” of horrific aliens, and you have yourself the best horror gameplay on the market. The aliens range from small exploding baby-like creatures to enormous brutes that literally smash your face in. There's even a new type which throws liquid that slows you down, making fights with hordes of enemy types a real challenge.

The challenging gameplay never feels clunky and is entertaining because you constantly need to improve your skills and be even more cunning in how you use the little slow-mo, ammo and objects you have, to throw at the enemies.



There are complaints to be made though. Take the weaponry and aliens for instance, the game is to mean with the amount of credits and nodes you get to upgrade you guns and suit. It should let you at least upgrade weapons fast, the ammo amount though, seems very balanced. The aliens are sometimes a bit cheaply spawned at awkward times, simply to make you die and have to try again.

I hate the part where they once again have an invincible enemy. I strongly dislike enemies with invincibility that constantly rush you. It did add a sort of stressful factor and lasts only a short while, but still it feels like a letdown not being able to kill off an enemy completely.

The graphics and sheer detail within them is incredible. Easily one of the best looking games around. I really liked that the environments in DC2 are far more varied in both location, style and colour palette than DC1. However, the more user friendly “A to B” layout of the whole game is shameful.



Literally, the whole game is a long corridor, it's a huge disappointment. It clearly shows that the developers have tried to get more mainstream gamers into the series. DC1 at least let you traverse each area of its spaceship more freely and without going simply from one place to the other. DC2 should not have been different. Thank god they have got rid of the mission screens though.

If you enjoyed the original game and are into horror games you probably should purchase DC2. Be warned though, it's far more focus on action than previously. The layout is laughably simpler than DC1 but all together it’s a good game from Visceral and a fairly lengthy one at that.

Recommended, and damn, this game is seriously violent and disturbing!




Dead Space 2: Severed (DLC)

I purchased this DLC for DC2 since it was an extension to the singleplayer. It tells a separate story from Isaac's with its own characters (apparently taken from Dead Space: Extraction). The DLC takes about 1-2 hours to complete. It reuses some of the locations from DC2, but takes place slightly before Isaac roamed around, and branches out to new areas as well.

Severed faster rewards you with upgrades and has a more hectic feeling to it than DC2. The story doesn’t really do so much interesting ideas, but the ending is really good. All in all it’s a nice expansion of the DC2 universe.