"Ring Around The Rosie..."
It’s not often that you come across a good survival horror game these days.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent certainly took the cake in terms of bringing gamers a truly terrifying and nerve-wrecking experience, which was especially impressive for an Indie title. However, I may have found my new love:
Dead Space 2 is an fantastic game from start to finish. Admittedly, the focus this time is slightly leaning toward action-horror, rather than psychological-horror like
Silent Hill or
Amnesia, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have you sweating like a pig. Frankly, a good action-horror game is just what the doctor ordered and like its predecessor,
Dead Space 2 is packed to the brim with cheap scares, more monsters than you can shake a plasma cutter at, and Necromorphs bursting out of the nearest vents.
I recommend playing the original
Dead Space before you take on
Dead Space 2, but it’s not essential. Fortunately, you can find an option to re-cap the events prior to
Dead Space 2.
Dead Space is still an excellent game and without giving anything away, a few later segments are much more relevant if you had experienced the initial outbreak with your own two thumbs. After the events of
Dead Space, Isaac Clarke wakes up on The Sprawl, a colony built into a shard of Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. Unfortunately, he doesn’t exactly wake up to a celebration feast and a gold medal. Instead, Isaac awakens in a straight-jacket at the beginning of yet another Necromorph outbreak – Isaac has to be the unluckiest engineer in the Galaxy. To top it off, Isaac is suffering from dementia caused by the religious artifact "the Marker," and suffers hallucinations.
Horrific hallucinations.
"Cross Your Heart And Hope To Die..."
Oddly enough, you'd think that The Sprawl would consist of wide-open areas, but in actuality it's more of the same tight rooms and corridors that made up the first game. Of course, this time the backdrop consists more of shops, churches, apartments, and schools, but it still has the familiar feeling of the first. It's only on a few occasions that you get a real sense of scale: Free-falling toward The Sprawl - though a mechanic currently being overused in video games lately - lets you really see how gigantic the space station is, and with the games updated zero-gravity controls (you move around in a full 360 environment now, as opposed to hopping from surface-to-surface) you find yourself fixing the satellite arrays above the station with a nice view of Saturn. It's moments like these that you get to see how gigantic the city is in comparison to the Ishimura, but then you're back to making your way through confined locations.
It’s nice to see Isaac has finally found his voice, especially after only possessing the capacity to roar when he stomped, melee’d or got munched during his romp through the Ishimura. The voice acting in this game is superb. Gunner Wright brings his voice and likeness to Isaac Clarke, and he does so convincingly. In addition to Wright, Sonita Henry provides her talents for Ellie Langford, and Curt Cornelius as Nolan Stross. Isaac Clarke is properly destroyed after the events aboard the Ishimura: dismembering hundreds of ex-humans, witnessing grotesquely murdered crewmen, and finally discovering his wife Nicole had died before he had even reached the ship. Isaac is worn out and suffering from dementia, and Wright portrays Isaac's emotions expertly.
"Stick A Needle In Your Eye"
Dead Space 2 is thoroughly faster paced and more exciting than its predecessor. Visceral have cut out all the unnecessary backtracking. Although this causes
Dead Space 2 to be a linear journey, it's a hell of a ride to the finishing line.
Dead Space 2 is explosive, exciting and easily on par with any big-budget blockbuster action flick. As Isaac makes his way through The Sprawl, he hangs upside down, falls down elevators, gets thrown into outer space, and fights his way down moving trains. Interestingly, you can blow out certain windows, sucking necromorphs (and you, if you don't shoot the emergency close button quickly enough) out into space. It really shows how reckless Isaac has become, even if it does make you wonder why they installed windows made of sugar-glass into a space station. The overall experience is a lot more cinematic this time around. Unfortunately, the game slows down right toward the end as the ideas run dry and instead handfuls of enemies are thrown at you while you make your way through the same copy-and-pasted room after room.
The entire game will take you about 9-10 hours, depending on whether you pace yourself or not. I managed to get through the story in 9 hours from start to finish without stopping - it was that good- but it could take longer if you took your time. Once the game has been completed, a new difficulty unlocks: Hard Core mode. You're given only THREE saves to use throughout the course of the game and if you die, you go straight back to your last save. Excellent. There's a special reward if you beat Hard Core, but I won't spoil that for you.
Aside from a new level of difficulty for re-playability,
Dead Space 2 also offers a multiplayer mode. Multiplayer consists of humans versus necromorphs in 4v4 matches. It's comparable to
Left 4 Dead's "versus" mode, in which humans complete objectives while the zombies attempt to disrupt their efforts. Once that match is over, the roles are swapped. It's nothing to write home about and I got tired of it pretty fast, but it takes nothing away from the excellent single-player experience so it's better there than not at all. When I played it, I found myself disconnecting often, and disconnection robs you of delicious EXP. This can get a wee bit frustrating if you spend a decent amount of time in a match, and you need to complete two matches to get experience in order to level up, unlocking new weapons, etc.
Not that it has much competition, but
Dead Space 2 could well be the greatest action-horror this year. If you're a fan of horror, action, or fantastic games in general, go pick up a copy right now.
I'm nearly done on Zealot, then I'll do Hard Core. Should be... fun. XD