LemonManX reviews "Dead Space 2"

LemonManX reviews "Dead Space 2" Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PCRelease date: US – January 25th, 2010 EU – January 28th, 2010 AU – January 27th, 2010

Visceral Games surprised a lot of gamers when they burst into the survival-horror scene with the sleeper hit of 2008, Dead Space, and proved that games could still make you jump. Here we are in 2011 and we’re sinking our teeth into Dead Space 2. The question on everyone’s lips is can a game like Dead Space stand up to a sequel. The story follows former-engineer Isaac Clarke as he attempts to escape the Sprawl, a large colony on Titan (a moon of Saturn), as it is overrun by a Necromorph outbreak much like the one on the Ishimura. It features more of the same glorious dismembering with enough new stuff to keep you entertained from start to finish. The set pieces are bigger, the Necromorphs are scarier, the weapons are awesome, and Isaac Clarke talks but does it all pay off? Find out in the review.

Isaac, don’t look behind you… really…
Those who played Dead Space 1 will have a fairly good idea of what you can expect from the story. Isaac Clarke is facing off against another Necromorph outbreak again, however Visceral Games have not simply copied and pasted the story across. Whereas in the first game Isaac Clarke arrived to investigate the Ishimura and as a result got sucked into its nightmare, in this title he has been locked up seemingly involved in some sort of twisted research. Those who have watched Dead Space: Aftermath will get to see where Isaac Clarke is and you’ll also learn the importance of Nolan Stross (a character you’ll get to know quite well in Dead Space 2). But if you don’t have much interest chasing down story details in other places, essentially Isaac Clarke was found floating around in space after Dead Space and was bought into the the space station of Sprawl, situated on Titan (one of Saturn’s moons). It is here where the action takes place. The story has a much larger involvement from the infamous Unitologists this time around as well. Once again the story sees the involvement of Nicole, Isaac’s dead girlfriend, who is haunting and tormenting the engineer. Without spoiling the game, she plays a big part however the biggest addition to the story is Isaac getting a voice. No longer is he the silent protagonist that he was in the first title, now he talks back and quite often he is less than impressed with his situation. The story flows a lot better in Dead Space 2 than it did in the first game, mostly helped by not having those jarring tram station sections that may have provided a clear-cut break in the story and an opportunity to save but they also broke the story down and slowed down its progress. In this you might actually miss the chapter progression if you don’t keep an eye down in the corner for the chapter number as it pops up. This new approach allows you to sink hours into a single play session only for you to notice you’ve progressed from Chapter 2 straight to Chapter 6 in hours. The flow is simply a significant improvement over the first game, smoother flow allows for the story to have a greater impact on the player. It definitely helps that Isaac’s goal is not exploration, it is getting the hell out of Sprawl!

The character of Isaac Clarke, whilst not an annoying one now that he can speak, is nothing too ground-breaking. This may have been a decision made on purpose by Visceral Games, as he doesn’t push any limits or show us anything new to the genre. This isn’t necessarily a bad decision to make though; it may have jeopardized the story-telling. He has typical tough-guy reactions to a lot of what happens, as well as a pinch of smart-ass added to his retorts but really nothing out of the ordinary. The support cast ticks all the usual boxes as well, filling in a few stereotypes such as the pretty girl, fellow experiment victim, traitor, etc. Luckily the strength of Dead Space 2 comes from other areas. Ellie plays the part of the pretty face that doesn’t trust Isaac at first, especially when she gets stuck dragging Nolan around with her. Nolan plays the part of the barely sane character that naturally is absolutely suspicious. The traitor is surprisingly dealt with a lot earlier in the game, but this allows Nicole to take centre stage as Isaac’s opposition.

These guys will attempt to overwhelm you with numbers, Line Gun is your best bet.
Visually, Dead Space 2 is a nice game. However, you’ll not really find yourself looking at the environments too long as you’ll find a lot of them are buried in the atmospheric-darkness that Visceral seem to love so dearly. The environment is actually pretty richly detailed, even if it seems like Visceral games have taken several pages out of Irrational Games book. Maybe it was just me, but as I wandered around the earlier sections of the Sprawl my mind instantly drew comparisons to the atmospheric Rapture from the BioShock titles. Ask yourself, though: is this that bad of a thing? It feels like a vast improvement over what you saw in the first game. The drab interior of the Ishimura got a bit dull halfway through the game, so it is a relief that Visceral took this on board and addressed it. The abandoned apartments, kindergartens, civilian walkways are a welcome change to drab space room #4. It adds character to the game, and weight to the action. It might not stun you, as you won’t see too much of it but it looks decent enough.

The biggest complaint would probably come from the enemy design, granted you are meant to spend most of your time dismembering their various limbs but the game shows its full hand a bit too early, I found. By the time you’ve gotten halfway through the game you have faced every enemy type (except one, which pops up in the last chapter) and from there they just darken the enemies slightly to show you that they are stronger versions. They did this in the first game too, and I’m not really a fan of it. Don’t get me wrong, I thought the new enemies in Dead Space 2 were awesome and very creepy. The Pack (the child Necromorphs) were scary as hell when they’d attack in such overwhelming numbers that you’d find yourself scrambling for the Line Gun. The Stalker (or as I call them the Necro-raptors) was a neat addition, and actually gave you a Necromorph you had to be a bit more careful around. Finally, the Crawlers (baby Necromorphs?!) made me so very sad to have to kill, I at least tried to have enough courtesy to dismember their head from their explosive bodies. But the problem I found was the last leg of the game I was just firing on stronger versions of enemies I was defeating four hours ago. It stole some focus away from any potential of their being horror or even intimidation. Ideally they’d be throwing you new enemies at the end to keep you on your toes, but they never did (except for the one in the last chapter, but I digress).

Necromorph’s do not care about personal space.
The controls are nearly exactly the same as the previous game, except a few button swaps that had me scratching my head at first. Mostly because I had the control layout from the first game drilled into my skull, I was expecting it to change as it worked well enough. If anything I expected them to simply tighten the controls up. I found myself a stumbling over a few of the button swaps, such as the stasis button and the manual reload button. But eventually it was drilled into my memory once again and I was on my way. Apart from that the controls remain largely unchanged. Things feel a bit more responsive but that might be because Isaac feels a little quicker than the lumbering tank he was in Dead Space 1.

How the game plays is probably going to be the make-or-break for a lot of people, which is understandable. So I’ll ask a question firstly: did you enjoy how Dead Space 2 played? If the answer is yes, then you may continue reading. If the answer was no, then you probably shouldn’t look twice at this game on the shelf. You won’t find anything here that you didn’t really have in the first game. Killing Necromorphs is largely the same and the new varieties only mix things up so much. This didn’t affect how much I enjoyed the game because I found it so much fun. That is one thing I did notice though, as Dead Space 2 hurls itself deeper into the Action / Horror mash-up it became less about being scary. Normally I would’ve been annoyed by this but the game was upfront about its nature. Besides, it still had more atmosphere than the likes of Resident Evil 5 could dream of. But getting back to the gameplay, you’ll find yourself seeing some pretty awesome things. One of the biggest improvements was to the Zero-G sections in the game. Previously you had to aim where you wanted Isaac to launch himself to. Now it is completely different, Isaac’s suit has been fitted with several little jetpacks that will help you float and fly freely around the Zero-G sections. The greater freedom in these areas was a big bonus.

Another great thing to note with the gameplay is that backtracking is done away with, which I felt was great. You won’t find yourself re-treading old ground and seeing the same landmark computer room or storage locker you already searched through. The game keeps Isaac moving forward, which the plot helps achieve. You can apply a lot of your Necromorph killing tactics to this game but the Pack and the Stalkers will demand some new ideas. The Pack themselves won’t require any drastic changes to strategy, but they do add a touch of panic the first few times you meet them. Here you are being rushed by about six or seven little Necromorph kids, luckily they can be mowed down pretty quickly. The Stalker on the other hand will require you to be a bit more strategic, you’ll know when you meet them. These guys will try to surround you before you notice and when they do, they’ll use one of them as bait to draw your attention and then quickly flank you. They are capable of more, such as kicking out dead bodies to make trigger-happy jumpers fire away and then flank you. However, they are not incredibly difficult to overcome; they just add a fresh change to the mindless Necromorph masses.

Isaac, Nolan and Ellie in one shot. Who’s crazy? Who’s the pretty face? Who’s crazy?
The Dead Space games have never really stood out musically for me, and Dead Space 2 doesn’t really change this much. The Collector’s Edition came with the CD soundtrack which I’ve listened to a few times and unlike other horror game composers (such as the legendary Akira Yamaoka) it didn’t really resonate with me. That isn’t too say the game is poorly scored, it just doesn’t feel like something I could listen to as a standalone soundtrack. The high-pitched swells and crashes work well when you have an army of lumbering Necromorphs cornering you and the soft, eerie moments work well when you are traversing an abandoned kindergarten. But I just couldn’t find myself interested enough to listen to it separately from the game.

Visceral have created another brilliant soundscape though, this doesn’t come as a surprise after the previous title ran away with various audio-related awards. The sound is the other key element to creating the brilliant atmosphere that Dead Space 2 uses as its centerpiece. You can come into this game as prepared as you want with all of the experience from the first game, but that moment you walk into the mess hall and the TV screen suddenly flicks on with loud fanfare then you will probably jump. At the same time, the sound starts to become a bit of a non-factor towards the end of the game where it becomes somewhat too self-absorbed in the action. You won’t find yourself wandering through dark corridors listening for the slightest crash or movement, and I missed this towards the end. The first few chapters in the game really suck you in with the sound and spit you out beaten and bruised with the action, I felt the combination worked so well. It was a shame to see it fade away as the game progressed.

Dead Space 2 falls a little bit short as far as length goes, luckily there is so much fun packed into the single-player campaign that you won’t notice the hours fly by. Especially the last few hours of the game that will have the blood rushing through you as you fight off Necromorph’s from all angles and attempt to drag Isaac to his resolution. However, it features many difficulty levels and you can take your equipment through to various difficulty levels, except one: Hard Core. Hard Core needs an explanation; imagine the hardest difficulty with the strongest enemies and less ammo and health pick-ups. Okay, got it? Now imagine you can only save three times throughout the entire game and any death will consequently return to the last save. For example: if you die in chapter seven and hadn’t saved since chapter two, then the game will send you all the way back there. That’s right, no checkpoints. There is a very awesome reward for finishing the game under these insane conditions though, but if you are brave enough to try it then I wish you the best of luck.

Just hope you never see a Stalker this close-up more than once.
This section of the review also brings me to the game’s multiplayer. It is the flavour of the month at the moment, with many games having multiplayer modes attached to them to get some extra playtime out of them. Some notable examples are Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, considering the caliber of these titles and how well-received the multiplayer components were you cannot blame EA for trying to muscle in. On paper, the multiplayer sounded interesting but unfortunately it wasn’t executed quite as well as I had hoped. My early experiences were marred by disconnects and dropped games, but when I finally got some games I didn’t find myself enjoying the action. Basically you will be assigned to either Humans or Necromorphs. If you are a Human, then your goal is to achieve and objective while fending off Necromorphs and your best chance of survival comes from bunching up and moving slowly. If you are a Necromorph you have one goal: kill everyone, you will spawn via vents and have several varieties to choose from each bringing their own advantages to the table. The lack of modes and restricted amount of players limit the fun that can be had here, but it doesn’t hurt to take it for a spin if you are curious.

Overall, Dead Space 2 is an impressive sequel and a fantastic game in its own right. It improves on a lot of the flaws that were present in the original title and takes the action and set pieces to a whole new level. The Dead Space franchise could easily become our new premiere action-horror titles, shoving Resident Evil out of the way with little error. I anticipate Dead Space 3 and cannot wait to see how far this franchise can go before it starts to lose speed, but so far Visceral Games are onto something special here. Don’t be a Marker-head, play the game for yourself.

PROS
+ Bigger action on bigger set pieces
+ Familiar controls and weapons allow you to ease into the action
+ A few fantastic new enemies
+ Story flows significantly smoother than the first game
+ Zero-G sections are greatly improved
+ Isaac’s chatty nature is not a negative
+ Sprawl feels very Rapture-inspired but in a good way
+ Nostalgia loaded trip to a familiar locale
+ Nice balance of action and atmosphere
CONS
- Every enemy type is revealed by the halfway point
- Characters a touch too stereotypical for some
- Definite difficulty spike in the last few chapters
- Only one true boss fight in the whole game
- Score somewhat underwhelming
- Multiplayer feels unnecessary

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