Dead Space 2

Is a shark attack survivor lucky because they got to live, or unlucky to be attacked in the first place? This question might have crossed engineer Isaac Clarke’s mind when he wakes up in the middle of another necromorph outbreak, this time on ‘The Sprawl,’ a huge space station orbiting one of Saturn’s moons, three years after his first nightmare on the mining ship Ishimura.
The player might wonder what has been happening with Isaac over the last three years, and the game neatly averts this by making sure Isaac doesn’t remember either. He’s been kept on mental lockdown by the inevitable sinister government forces and therefore both Isaac and player will find their experience in Dead Space 2 following on directly from the end of the previous game.

That’s not all the follows directly on because Dead Space 2 is fundamentally Dead Space: Episode 2. The first game’s basic mechanics are expanded on hugely but hardly anything new of note has been added. Most of the weapons return, as do telekinetic and stasis manipulation and zero-g environments. Isaac’s suit now allows him to fly about in zero-g (an ability he apparently forgot about in the previous outing) and this allows some interesting multi-level exploration, while the stasis and telekinetic powers are used occasionally for puzzles but are now mostly necessary parts of combat. As in his first adventure, Isaac also spends a lot of time repairing broken systems and travelling on trams (apparently the 26th Century’s regular form of mass transit).

That Dead Space 2 is a direct update is not necessarily a fatal flaw because what the game does it does very well. Combat is tense and exciting and the weapons are satisfyingly meaty with plenty of opportunity for customisation. The enemy range is a little bland with only a few new types appearing, but these new opponents are well designed and introduced in exciting ways. The damaged space station conveys a damaged fragility with constant explosions and breakages. Windows can occasionally be shot out leaving a desperate scramble to lower the seals and stop Isaac from shooting off into space (it's also a good way to clear a room of enemies). There’s a tangible sense of danger from all around and this adds to what Dead Space 2 does best of all: atmosphere.

The game’s lack of a HUD makes for an immersive experience, as do the multiple layers of narrative: text and audio logs dotted about the rooms give insight into the well-created and well-explored background involving sinister religious movements and government shenanigans. The voice acting is excellent and the audio cues and score are creepily energising: screams and metallic clanks punctuate your exploration, and the space station has a variety of environments which all have nice audio details. The puzzles, while a little bland and simplistic, are all well conceived within the game-world. Isaac fixes or reprograms things for relatively well explained reasons. It certainly beats Resident Evil’s ‘place random item in convenient slot’ dynamic.

The game uses perhaps too many dirty tricks in trying to ramp up the suspense (Isaac tramps through far too many children’s bedrooms, for example), and this tries to hide Dead Space 2’s primary flaw: it’s not very scary (always a minor bugger for a horror game).

Partly this is the fault of the plotting, which in the middle section is extremely slow. It also owes something to Isaac’s re-invention as a talkie hero; he is now a bit too sarcastic and unflustered, nothing like the anonymous and helpless engineer from the first game. Gravel-voiced and laconic, he’s too badass to seem truly vulnerable. In the end, though, Dead Space 2’s failure to be frightening stems from the basic running of the game itself.


The weapons are all perhaps a little too effective in defeating necromorphs and though ammo is often scarce the ability to telekinetically hurl torn-off limbs means you never really run dry (a gimmick the game makes laboriously sure you know about).The enemies themselves are too numerous and ultimately too squishy to be terrifying; the fear diminishes each time you see and defeat them and you will be doing that a lot. The game is at its most terrifying in the very early sections where Isaac is disorientated, unarmed and on the run. The ability to fight back so effectively saps some of the suspense: this is Aliens rather than Alien or Event Horizon. Finally the plodding nature of the level design means that fatigue and repetition set in during the middle third, and it is this repetition that kills the fear.

At first glance Dead Space’s multiplayer might be accused of cribbing from Left 4 Dead’s online notes but the difference in play styles is enough to save it from cries of plagerism. Although the set-up is the same (humans versus monsters, with humans comparatively durable but less manoeuvrable and with fewer respawns), the difference between L4D’s smooth first-person flee-fest and Dead Space’s slightly clunky third-person view, with its focus on dismemberment, keeps the experience feeling fresh. It requires teamwork enough to breed some sense of achievement and has enough unlockables to stave off repetition. Like the single-player game it’s hardly revolutionary but competent and diverting enough that fans will probably keep a decent community going for a long time.

It would be a little unfair to criticise Visceral Games for their choice in essentially updating the first game, seeing as for the most part they have done very well. Newcomers to the series will find probably the most competent over-the-shoulder third person shooter available. Fans of Dead Space will probably find enough new content to keep them involved (although are unlikely to find the game particularly challenging except on high difficulties). It seems as if Visceral have listened hard to the reviews of the first game and then done their best to address the criticisms. It is their decision to avoid trying anything new that handicaps Dead Space 2, leaving a fantastically polished experience that lacks true terror. In engineer parlance: the first Dead Space was hardly broke, and this is about as fixed as it’s going to get.