Review | Dead Space 2

Surely there’s no place more terrifying than outer space. A zillion miles from home, limited food and air supplies, a pressurised metal box the only thing keeping your organs from erupting. And that’s without even mentioning the possibility of monsters crawling around in the limitless dark void.

As anyone who played the original will know, Dead Space takes all the suspense out of that mystery, throwing you headfirst into a blood-soaked, scream-filled, nightmare scenario packed with the most grotesque and dangerous abominations this side of H. P. Lovecraft. Dead Space 2 picks up, more or lessly, where the original left off: Isaac Clarke – the world’s most versatile space mechanic – has just fought through several ships full of mutated human corpses and barely escaped the destruction of Aegis VII.

Waking up three years later, complete with standard video game amnesia, Isaac finds himself on the Sprawl, a huge city situated on one of the moons orbiting Saturn. Before he can admire the view, he sees that the entire city has been overrun with the aforementioned necromorphs, almost everyone is dead or dying, and it’s up to him to fix everyone’s problems. Also, he’s gone completely insane.

Dead Space 2 will feel very familiar to fans of the original, as Visceral have elected not to fix anything that wasn’t broken. The most noticeable change is Isaac himself, who has gained the remarkable ability to speak. Unchained from his previous grunts and facepalms, Isaac now comes across as a real person with serious issues, which helps immerse you in the narrative more than the “go here, do this, turn that off” progression of the first. It also helps sell the mental and emotional struggle of our hero, who – on top of the obvious alien horror invasion – is dealing with a dead girlfriend who keeps screaming and urging him to kill himself. The universe being set up by the series is neatly revealed as the game goes on, with visits to the nefarious Church of Unitology and further information on the infamous “Marker” which is the cause of everyone’s woes.

First things first, the game looks and sounds gorgeous. Although that may be a strange term to use for an experience that paints everything a twisted shade of blood, skin and organs. The Sprawl is a lot nicer than the Ishimura, as you might expect from a thriving city instead of an ageing mining ship. Isaac will travel to various places around the city, including shopping areas, food courts, a church facility and a train station, and all of them look gorgeous. The attention to detail is high, with plenty of advertising posters and the various paraphenalia of human habitation. Titan genuinely feels like it would have been an okay place to live before everyone got turned inside out.

Gameplay is almost identical to the first title, with some notable tweaks and improvements. Isaac still tromps through various areas, fighting necromorph scum in third-person style. All the weapons from the first game return, as well as a few others. Rest assured that the plasma cutter doesn’t take long to appear, and it still manages to be the most useful piece of kit for the whole game. Strategic dismemberment is again the most efficient way to dispose of threats, and the cutter and line gun are still the best for slicing the juicy limbs off. The rest of your arsenal packs a bigger punch, but generally won’t fare well against the persistent menace. A special exception is the javelin gun, which fires large spikes that can pin unlucky creatures to walls and then electrify them with an alternate touch.

Each weapon can be upgraded as you move through the game, using power nodes found scattered in various places. Firing rate, damage, clip size and more can be progressively improved, until your collection is ripping through space zombies like they were made of paper. And if using guns isn’t disgustingly awesome enough for you, improvements to Isaac’s kinesis powers mean that, in addition to throwing chairs and bodies, you can now rip sharp pieces off dead enemies and fire them through live ones. Aside from being very damn cool, this is also a great way to conserve precious ammunition.

Melee combat has been given some welcome tweaks, with Isaac now much more able to fend off close-quarters attacks in a pinch. His infamous boot returns as well, seemingly imbued with the raw power of a thousand exploding suns as it splatters anything underneath it to tiny chunks. While in the first game enemies generally dropped items automatically when dying, now you’re made to stomp each one to make it release its precious ammo or health pack. It does make a little more sense that way, but it starts to feel a little tedious and very sadistic after a while.

To counter all this new fire and foot power, Dead Space 2 also pumps the volume on pretty much everything else. While the first game began with a tense but measured exploration of the USG Ishimura, the sequel has a human being explosively transform into a hulking freak three inches from your face not five minutes in. Where Dead Space had train rides which served as quiet loading screens, Dead Space 2 has Isaac leaping between moving carriages at high speed, blowing pieces off a dozen foes as the train hurtles off the tracks and into a warehouse. Certain rooms have windows that can be broken, depressurising the room instantly and sucking everything – including you if you aren’t quick – into the vacuum of space. An early memorable sequence has a giant beast chase you down a hallway where you are confronted with an angry gunship, at which point the beast punts you through the glass and into the side of the helicopter, before an explosion sends you rocketing into the side of a nearby office building.

Corridors are littered with air vents and doorways, each of which can – and probably will – contain something angry which wants to rip off your arms. Things do settle into a routine later in the game, but thankfully they pick up for the exhilarating climax.

Familiar necromorph types are present on the Sprawl, including the hulking bladed ones, the tentacle babies and the scorpion-like leapers. On top of that a number of new types will be lurking around. Pukers are exactly what they sound like: slow moving humanoids that periodically vomit acidic spit in your direction. Scoring high on the creep-meter are a new type which resembles a small child with elongated claws and a scream cut from a living nightmare. The most interesting new enemy is the Stalker, a fast moving necromorph which looks and acts like a skinned velociraptor. Stalkers are easily the most intelligent enemies in the game, silently flanking and ambushing the player while working in groups. While none of the new enemies are anything new to video games, they do fill specific tactical areas in battles and ensure that you’re forced to continually switch your tactics to survive.

There is, as you might have heard, a multiplayer mode, taking the form of the classic human-versus-monsters competitive team play seen recently in Left 4 Dead and Singularity. Players choose to be a human engineer working to complete objectives, or a necromorph trying to kill. Each necromorph has its own special abilities, such as the speedy slasher or the ability to spit, but they all feel very limited, especially if you’re not working with your team. Humans are much more fun to play as, although still not very fun at all. The problem with the multiplayer is that it strips away all the tension, dread and adventure from the single player experience, leaving little more than a quick run around a map killing things. Dead Space has always seemed perfect for a cooperative multiplayer experience, so to see the developers tack on this instead is disappointing.

Luckily, the single player experience – which will take you around 10 hours on normal difficulty – is strong enough that it doesn’t drag the game down at all. While it isn’t as scary as its predecessor due to a stronger focus on balls-out action, this is still the best action-horror in the business.