In student accommodation everyone can here you scream. This may be due to the thin walls of aforementioned dorm room or perhaps it’s because Visceral games have once again proven they can pull off a good sci-fi horror.
Dead Space 2 does what any good sequel should, adding enough new features and improvements without affecting the mechanics and atmosphere that made the original so unique. This atmosphere being that of wonder (stepping outside of the U.S.G. Ishimura and into the vacuum of space) and of pure terror (well, ugh... having your face mauled of by some horrific abomination, obviously). So for those of you who have been living under a rock or just don’t care, 3 years after escaping the Ishimura and the planet of Aegis 7, man at work Isaac Clarke finds himself on the Sprawl, a massive space station/city built in and around Saturn’s fourth moon, Titan.
I was surprised just how quickly things go all fubar for our brother in tools. It takes less than 30 seconds of taking control of the camera for a proboscis to plunge through the head of the chap untying our hero from a straight jacket, resulting in Isaac being covered in various flavours of brain matter. Yeah, this one ain’t for the kids. Not to give much away of plot (not that I can, I’m on my second play through, and the narrative is still quite elusive) it involves the spooky cultish religion of Scientol- Oh I’m sorry, I meant Unitology, the earthgov (self-explanatory) and Isaacs very own nightmarish dementia.
Overall however, the plot is pretty lame and is mostly just a vehicle for moving the player from one bad-ass sci-fi cliché too another, which is a shame as DS1’s plot was actually quite decent. But not to worry fellow space farers Isaacs second tango with the Necromorphs still triumphs in nearly every other way.
Visceral have been making a big song and dance about their concept of “Isaac 2.0” which essentially translates as slight advancements in narrative conveyance, gameplay and character progression. First and foremost Isaac now talks. Despite the developers assuring us that this won’t change the tone of the game, i.e. Isaac won’t be talking his mouth off constantly; this is a bare faced lie. Isaac doesn’t shut up for more than 5 minutes during the whole game and I’ll be honest, this is a good thing. The voice acting is not half bad and Isaac’s lines are very well written (no cheesy one-liners here).
Also Isaac’s abilities have been modified for more fluid and enjoyable combat and gameplay. Telekinesis has been introduced into combat as well as puzzle-solving by the way of making the TK module a brutalizing gravity gun.
The zero-g segments have been completely changed, giving you the ability whizz around these areas with jet thrusters built into Isaac’s suit. While this change doesn’t necessarily improve the formula it does offer new and interesting ways of solving challenges. Another simple yet clever addition is the evolution of concept that Isaac is an engineer and not Master Chief. Therefore a few (admittedly tedious) hacking minigames have been introduced, forcing Isaac to use his own skills to get even with the necros, as well as overcoming other hazards on Titan station.
So the whole upgrade system of using rare and valuable power nodes returns, however this time around it feels like you’re customizing your gear too suit your combat style rather than just improving your equipment to keep up with the difficulty curve. Case in point: certain weapons now have special abilities (usually at the end of the upgrade tree) adding more personalization to your arsenal. For instance the trusty plasma cutter can be modded to incinerate on impact, or the new javelin gun’s electrifying alt fire can be topped off with an explosive charge. The space suits have been modified in a similar sense, in that there isn’t always a clear progression in the quality of the armour, as different suits yield different bonuses. True, these new features are nothing original or revolutionary, but they do serve to better the Dead Space experience as a whole.
In light of all these new toys Isaac has to play with, the alien scum should also bring some new tricks to the party shouldn’t they? Yes! And they do, with moderate success. Best of the reanimated bunch are the stalkers, or zombie velociraptors to you and me (read that again and once again be in awe of that concept) which require tense cat and mouse combat in order to... you know what, I have no idea how to top that, just to reiterate there are ALIEN ZOMBIE VELOCIRAPTORS IN THIS GAME. If that doesn’t sell it to you I don’t know what will. The less entertaining addition to the bunch are, due to the annoyance they cause, the crawlers. Which are, with all levity aside, exploding babies. Damn Visceral, you messed up.
As any idiot with a basic understanding of the mechanics of horror will tell you, having grotesque monsters prancing around is all well and good but it takes much more than a couple of mismatched appendages to really get your sweat glands working at peak performance. The original was credited for taking heavy influences from films such as the much overlooked Event Horizon and the Alien series for its environments. While these influences are still there, the Sprawl is essentially a direct lift from Bladerunner while some set pieces are very Jurassic Park (you can tell which ones, hint: alien zombie Velociraptors).
Rather unfortunately though, the scariest and most atmospheric areas are the ones with the least sci-fi and more traditional horror, such as the gothic styled church of Unitology and a primary school. The latter becomes probably one of the most tense and morally ambiguous fights in video games to date. While varying in quality, the locales in Dead Space 2 are all still pretty damn freaky, helped of course, by the intense violin shrilled soundtrack.
As with all major game franchises nowadays, a multiplayer has to be thrown in at some point and Dead Space 2 delivers exactly what you would expect a Dead Space multiplayer to be like, humans fighting a seemingly overwhelming onslaught of hideous necromorphs. Whether the execution of such a concept is going to be good was very dubious. But Altman be praised, it works! Sort of. Due to internet problems at my current residence I have only been able to sample a little bit of the multiplayer, but despite losing every game I played, I most importantly had fun.
One concern, that I believe may have been intentional, is that as the necromorphs you will not get impressivekill/death ratios. You are cannon fodder in an overwhelming attack, not some renegade alien Rambo, so you hardcore gamers with your Call of Duty’s and your Battlefield’s might have trouble gelling with this concept. Teamwork is essential if your species is to be victorious. We’re talking near Team Fortress amount of collaboration here people.
Before I wrap up I’d like to point out I was playing the PS3 limited edition of the game, which I was surprised to find contains a port of the Wii spinoff Dead Space: Extraction. Just to reiterate you get a full game for free with this package which I thought was quite generous as it’s thoroughly enjoyable and clocks in at about 4-5 hours.
So there you have it, bigger, better and ballsier than its predecessor, Dead Space 2 is fundamentally more of the same with slight improvements to the core experience, which to be honest, is all that was expected of it.
8.5 - Yum Yum
Robert Stuller
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