Dead Space 2

Game Info

Dead Space is a fairly new survival horror series set in the future with its first entry released on 10/13/08. The original game took place in the year 2058 from the perspective of a man named Isaac Clarke, a ship system specialist traveling with a crew aboard the shuttle Kellion to investigate a distress signal from the mineing craft starship, USG Ishimura. As in many survival horror games things don’t go exactly as planned and our protagonist is taken on one hell of a roller coaster ride ripe with scares and grotesque environments.

Now chances are your reading this review having beaten the original, bearing this in mind lets go ahead and jump to were the plot of the sequel unfolds. Isaac  awakes on the sprawl, a densely populated space station with no recollection of the previous  3 years. It seems he has seen better days and is haunted by disturbing images of past events and is slowly loosing his perspective on reality. Things start to go amiss on the sprawl and yes you guessed it, time for another necromorph outbreak with all its limb dismembering and corpse stomping goodness!

Yes that’s right, necromorphs! A human body that has ben infected by an alien life form, and these baddies are ripe for exterminating. The game provides you with many weapons to do just that and it all takes place from a third-person perspective in the vain of Resident Evil 4. The game itself controls great with a few improvements from the original title(some of the biggest being improvement on the melee system, which is now useful!) and there is definitely more variety in the weapons with there primary and secondary fire, these range from a standard assault rifle with grenade launcher alternate fire to a devastating buzz saw shooting weapon. But what this game really brings to the table(and its core shooting mechanic) is the ability to shoot, slice, and rip foes limb from limb, literally, and is the best way to kill the necromorphs quickly and efficiently.

Other than the weapons provided you also have the ability to slow time threw a technological benchmark called “stasis” and the ability to manipulate(move/throw/push) objects called “kinesis”. Both of these tools are vital in use of solving puzzles and killing necromorphs in ammunition conserving ways, such as using stasis to slow them down, shooting off one of there bladed limbs, and then using kinesis to shoot it back at them! But the newest addition to Isaac’s arsenal is free range of movement in zero gravity situations threw use of thrusters on his suit. All the tools in the game start to come together to make one seamless experience which provides a solid third person shooter with satisfying and scary gameplay.

Now lets talk about Dead Space 2’s newest addition, online multiplayer! To be honest having being a fan of the series in the past I didn’t know how Visceral games was gonna pull this off, but they do in a very fun way. The multiplayer pits two teams of four, one side being a team of humans with all the fun tools Isaac had at his disposal and the other a team of grotesque necromorphs. Each match plays out with the human players having to complete certain objectives with the necromorphs having to stop them until the time runs out, what results is a fast-paced heart thumping fight for survival. Playing games also nets you experience which builds towards better weapons and customizable skins for the humans, and buffs to the attacks and overall health of the necromorphs.

And now its time for the final verdict! The overall gunplay is extremely satisfying and the controls work very well, and now melee plays a bigger part in the combat. The story is very cool with a good supporting cast, well done voice acting, and awesome set pieces that would make Call of Duty blush. The multiplayer, while being nothing new or innovative, is definitely a good time with friends. If there is any legitimate complaint I could have it’s that the game is starting to loose its fear-factor a bit with tons of monster closets(cheap jump-out monster scares) and other less than stellar(no real build-up) moments, not to say it isn’t scary though, I definitely jumped a few times!