Back in 2008 EA started a brand new IP, ‘Dead Space’, and despite lacklustre sales and lukewarm critical reviews (myself included) EA vowed to stick with the series…and there was much rejoicing. While Dead Space wasn’t anything original it had something many publishers and studios fail to understand, potential. So even though the Wii game ‘Dead Space: Extraction’ bombed, in terms of sales, EA have got Visceral Games to make Dead Space 2…and there was much rejoicing throughout the land.

 

The game takes place three years after the events of Dead Space and Isaac having been found drifting through space has been brought to an insane asylum on the space station Titan orbiting Saturn. We begin the game having just been busted out of our padded cell in the middle of a necomorph infestation. Isaac (and the player) has no more information to go on as they run for their life trapped in a straightjacket. Isaac must break out, find out just what the hell is going on and attempt to battle with his insanity all while cutting the limbs of monsters. Sometimes you wonder if Isaac is really insane and it’s all just in his head.

 

 

At the start of the game the story is compelling; all the player knows is there are monsters on the loose; ‘runaway’. Then throughout the game we get contacted and meet up with various characters that each hold another piece of the puzzle, filling us in with information they want us to know or teasing us with some very fussy foreshadowing…”oh so that’s what he meant about crawling into the dark machine” you’ll monologue right before the end of the game. However for all the faith everybody had in the franchise it’s clear it was a bit rushed; as the story does start to suffer towards the end, with plots left hanging or tied up with vague conclusions. I guess in a way the botched ending is a blessing; allowing the fans to interpret the events in different ways but when you complete the game you can’t help but feel a bit cheated.

 

This is also the feeling you get with the general game itself. The early chapters are brilliantly designed filled with an eerie suspense after the initial opening shock; with the game carefully probing you with random noises, steam firing off, toilets flushing and glimpses of something in the shadows. The corridors and rooms of the vast, highly detailed space station actually looks lived in and the many logs you find throughout the game helps you imagine the people who lived here and what it was like when the necromorphs hit. Then just when you thought it was all smoke and mirrors you’re getting stabbed in the chest by twisted corpses or pounced upon by demonic children. The game does this on and off for at least the first three quarters of the game, raising the tension, making you jump at the slightest sound, then follows up with surprise attack from behind. It seems like the perfect horror game but then at the end, perhaps out of boredom or an attempt o increase the difficulty the devs decided that the rooms should be chock full enemies. You’re often going to enter a room and have to fight off wave after wave of enemies making it less horror and more action.

 

 

The game is a lot more action orientated than the first game, there are loads of set pieces throughout that are very impressive; being blown out a window and forced to fight on a gunship springs to mind. The one thing that I’m really happy that is returning is the Zero-G sections of the game and this time you’re not limited to launching yourself off of wall, no Isaac Clark now has a jetpack of sorts that allows you to fly around, good fun. Fighting in the vacuum of space is also back and as with the first game top-marks for Visceral once again for giving us no sound outside the ones Isaac makes or the vibrations of the platform he’s standing on; it creates a fantastic isolated quality that is pretty much unique to this franchise.

 

If you played the original game then you’re going to be in very familiar territory gameplay wise. Your weapons aren’t the bog standard pistol, shotgun, rifle, RPG affair and dispatching the various types of enemies won’t rely on your ability to perform a headshot. In this game the weapons are a bit more, shall we say, eclectic. Filling in for your pistol you’ve got your Plasma Gun and for the Shotgun you get a Line Gun, both of which fires off a stream of plasma that will cut anything in twain. This is especially handy because to defeat the enemies in the game you’ll have to cut off their limbs, not shoot them in the head or unload a mag of ammo into their chest. Then you’ve got the more interesting weapons like; the javelin gun that fires an electrically charged javelin; the buzz saw that hovers a spinning blade in front of you for a few seconds; or the force gun that blows enemies’ limbs off with a blast of pure kinetic energy. With 11 standard types of weapons, each with a primary and secondary fire, you’ll have plenty of variation on dismembering your many foes.