Dead Space 2 (2011)

The first Dead Space was a stress test, this is a real game where you can stop, recover and play around with different weapons- and it's still extremely thrilling. With this sequel, Visceral Games has masterfully expanded on the first Dead Space. They've revved up the series with tougher guns, a bigger setting, and online multiplayer, but kept the spirit and, most importantly, the scares of the original in tact.

The campaign lasts around 8 hours on Normal, and almost every minute of that is spent enduring this psychological stress that alternates between exhilaration and agitation. I hope someday it gets the same love from the devs like the newly released Dead Space Remake. I haven't got into that yet. Can't wait!

After the masterpiece called Dead Space, I was thrilled to see what would come next. When Dead Space 2 was announced, it was one of the few times that I bought the collector’s edition immediately. In came in a nice shiny box with an artbook and, best of all, a toy Plasma cutter with 3 dots of light in it. Epic.

The game itself picks up where the first one ended. You are still Isaac Clarke, that is treated for its declining sanity in a hospital on Sprawl space station on the planet Titan. Then, out of the blue, the Necromorphs attack the station and Isaac starts the second round of fighting for his life, while still in his restrictive clothing that the hospital put on him. I really liked this intro because it made you feel so helpless and vulnerable.

In this game, your mental health is declining fast, and because of this, your dead girlfriend Nicole, that you tried to save so desperately in the first game, but who killed herself when the outbreak started on the USG Ishimura, starts to torment you with hallucinations and even attacks. It is all just an hallucination, but it feels very real.

The rest of the story is kind of the same as the first game, you need to get of the Titan Space Station and, most importantly, stay alive. However, in this game, you also search for the “new marker”, that is apparently in the space station and recreated from the mind and hallucinations from Isaac where he was in the mental hospital by the government on this planet. This thing started the whole outbreak. On your quest, you meet a new character, Ellie, who helps you trough the game and who becomes your new girlfriend later on.

The action is intense and the feeling of the first game is right back. There are, however, more people alive in this game, making you feel less alone and helpless like in the first game.

There are some new enemies introduced in this game and they are even more disturbing than the original ones. You got small kids that turn into bald alien creatures with sharp claws, crawling babies with an explosive tumor on their backs and worst of all, the Stalkers. I found the Stalkers the most annoying enemy in the game. This is mainly because they hide themselves all the time, peek around the corner (in which you cannot murder them), and when you are not looking, they charge towards you, dealing massive damage. You got split seconds to react. Overall, I like the new skins of the Slashers and the added mutations.

The controls are the same and just as fluent as the first game. The game still got the lack of GUI and all your statistics are either on you, on weapons or in your hologram computer.

The graphics are nice but, I did not think it was that big of an upgrade from the previous game. They are also a little bit brighter, and dark places with small beams of light are not present anymore so everything gets less scary. Still, they are nice to look at

The sound design is still as good as the previous game.

The rest of the mechanics are the same as the first game, you collect some hard cash to buy ammo and health packs in the stores and you collect power nodes to upgrade your gear and health.

The ending of the game is, once again, open for another sequel and like with the first game, you feel that it is not over yet. On one hand, this provides opportunity for a sequel, but on the other hand, I kind of felt that this game should be the last one in the series.

Overall, I had a very much fun with Dead Space 2 and its was a worthy sequel for the first game.

Playtime: 9h50m (Normal playthrough)

Intro

In DS2 you walk/fly around a space station, fight enemies, solve a few puzzles and find/sell/buy/upgrade items.

The Good

• You get to kill kids and even crying babies!
• Stalkers are really neat, especially the way they peak around corners.
• Action is still solid overall.
• Several new weapons.
• Javelin Gun is quite amusing.
• Flamethrower is actually good now.
• More variety in environments.
• Almost no backtracking or revisiting areas.
• You can respec a weapon/module.

The Bad

• Respeccing costs 5000 credits, so you won't want to use it.
• You will use the same weapons for most of the game, again.
• The Detonator sucks. You can't aim at a mine to disable it (always disables the last placed) and half the time mines explode right away because they were on an "invalid" surface (zero indication of that).
• Cysts aren't a threat, they just kill the pacing.
• You have to crawl through tubes/ducts for no reason at all.
• The puzzles suck.
• Triggers (story/enemies) remove items you are holding with kinesis.
• Utterly pointless hacking minigame that is just annoying.
• Annoying scripted boss battle (The Tormentor).
• The story is barely there and it sucks.
• Inventory bullshit is still there.
• Save point crap is still there.
• Even with all the time wasting DS2 clocks in under 10 hours.

The Ugly

• They added QTEs, even during fucking combat. Go fuck yourself Visceral Games.
• There's a battle on a lift that is just 100% unfair and nonsensical. Enemies come from all sides and you can't reliably shoot them before the attack.
• Generally speaking, even compared to DS1 the way enemies sneak up on you is awful. They love spawning behind you. The game is often too dark to spot the black upgraded enemies too.
• There are many other instances where death is almost unavoidable if you don't know what's coming (e.g. breaking windows).
• You constantly get interrupted by the annoying "story" elements. At some point i started shouting "fucking let me play already" and that almost never happens.
• Two awful space flight sequences. They fail to indicate you have to use boost.
• One of the suits gives a 10% discount so every time you want to buy something after getting the final suit you have to switch and watch unskippable cutscenes for both...

Conclusion

Dead Space 2 takes one step forward and four steps backward. It retains many of the flaws of the original, including the weapon upgrade system that discourages you from trying out different weapons. DS2 is infinitely more "gamey" with its hacking minigame, QTEs, story interruptions and such. The game absolutely loves taking away control from the player and to kill them in bullshit ways.

If Visceral Games had just "Kept It Simple, Stupid" and made an expanded version of the first game with new weapons, enemies and locations this could've been solid or even good. Now it's just a victim of typical AAAssholery, combined with a pathetic attempt at copying the Iron Man suit.

5/10

Dead Space 2 is a clearcut example of how ungrateful making a sequel can be. In a lot of respects, it is objectively a better game than the original with several improvements and QoL additions: it plays much more fluidly, it looks even better, it offers superior gunplay, it has much improved Zero G navigation, and on consoles it added a very welcome quick button for refilling your stasis. It even introduced stalkers, a velociraptor type enemy that, at least to me, is the scariest one in the entire franchise. There isn’t all that much I can criticise Dead Space 2 for, and I had an absolute blast playing it for the first time recently. Yet for all its accomplishments, it was a less magical experience than Dead Space 1.

To me this simply highlights how novelty is such an important trait in certain types of games: the first game in the trilogy was this tight, meat packed sandwich where everything felt new, exciting, uncertain and consequently very tense. And while Dead Space 2 is definitely a more polished experience than its predecessor, when it comes to the wow factor, there wasn’t much more it could’ve done while staying true to the feel of the original title. However, there was also a conscious change to let the gamer breathe a little more. The Sprawl isn’t the Ishimura, at all. I actually prefer it in terms of scenery - it’s wildly more varied, and at times its neon tones and shopping centre vibes actually reminded me of Bioshock’s Rapture. But with this came a much less claustrophobic setting made up of massive halls, wider corridors and markedly open battle arenas, meaning you spend a big chunk of the game without an important part of what made the Ishimura feel so special to begin with. This is a subjective take and I know a lot of people probably preferred DS2 partly because of this, but even though I also really liked it, it didn’t resonate with me as well as the first one did in that regard. Ironically, I think one of the things in which they could’ve innovated more in relation to the DS1 and ended up falling short was the story: the broad strokes to me felt very similar to the story we had heard in the first one, and there wasn’t really anything in there to make it stand out in an obvious manner.

There were, however, a few niggling changes I didn’t particularly like, such as the need to (not always) stomp on dead enemies to get them to spit out loot, the somewhat more obtuse puzzles, and a - at least perceived - lesser clarity in terms of what the player was supposed to do at times. Additionally, the lack of O2, which in the first game could be a real source of stress sometimes, was never an issue here. I also noticed that non-lootable objects would disappear the second you dropped on the floor quite frequently (though I’m not sure if this was also a thing in DS1 and I simply missed it). And that last boss was really not good at all in my opinion. Interestingly, one of the things people seem to have had a harder time with, the change from a voiceless Isaac to a very vocal one, did not bother me one bit. It actually reminded me of the difference between Outlast 1 and 2, and just like in those games I didn’t have an issue with it here either. It was nice to see Isaac get a bit more personality.

But none of this taints the experience in any meaningful way. When all is said and done, Dead Space 2 stands as one of the best, most enjoyable sequels I’ve ever played, and I would certainly recommend to anyone who loved the first and game never got round to playing what came after. Just maybe don’t expect to be wowed in the same way. 8.5/10 for me.

A continuation of a great game that just feels more of the same but not in a good way.

In general Dead Space 2 feels and controls the same way as the original game. And in most cases I would considered this a good thing as the original game was great but sadly it's not.

The story here takes place in asylum on some planet or moon or something like that. You awake with no memory of what has happened since you destroyed the marker on Ishimura. The asylum is overran with Necromorphs and here we go again.

You start with no weapons but quickly you'll acquire the standard to the series plasma cutter and off you go cutting of limbs of familiar monsters.

And that's the problem. You'll get to use all of the familiar weapons that you would have used in the first part of the game to kill the familiar monsters that you've already seen in the first game. Following the same arc of getting new weapons and suit upgrades along the way. There are some new guns and monsters, but they're very few of them. Definitely too few to make an impact.

The game slightly shifts it's focus in this installment. While the original was more of a horror game focused on exploration the new one feels more like a shooter. More enemies are thrown your way - at many times it gets turned into arena combat - when they close you off until you kill all the enemies. There is no sense of exploration or mystery - if you played the original you basically know all the monsters, understand what's going on and you just follow along the trail of dead bodies to destroy yet another marker.

It's not all that bad though. As it's more of the same of a great game. The combat mechanics are fine as in original - it forces you to use the stasis more than in the first game which makes combat a bit more challenging and more fun at times. The story gets also more interesting toward the late game.

Worth noting that game comes with free DLC - this adds special weapons and armors from the get go to the store for free - so unless you consciously ignore them - which you should if you don't want to brake the game - you can get quite powerful too quickly. No way of turning it off I'm afraid - and just picking up a gun can affect ammo drops from dying monsters - quite annoying.

Overall if you've not played the first one - do that instead. If you want more of Dead Space - get this as well - just don't expect an amazing sequel - but more in lines of re-imagination of the first one.

Finally beat Dead Space 2 (in survivalist mode) after starting the game years ago. Got this bad habit. So pretty much I had to relearn the whole game play (which it would be fine if it wasn't in survivalist mode). DS2 is a very good game, it has good graphics, nice scary atmosphere but the only let down is part of its game play. The camera is too near the character + he is too slow + very fast enemies + very dark. Don't get me wrong, I like a good challenge (that's why I played in survivalist to start) but DS2 get to the point that it gets frustrating. Maybe I had a bad strategy throughout the game, I don't know. I don't mind how hard the game is but the checkpoint system is what really pisses me off. Repetition, repetition, to the point you get sick of playing. The last boss, damn... I had to go back to the last store and change my weapons and even then it was hard to beat. When I finally made it, I could barely enjoy the follow up cut scene. That final challenge drained my whole energy. That's actually good for the game experience as a whole (after a while, in hindsight). All that tension, either by the game scary atmosphere or by the fact you don't want Isaac to die so you don't have to do it again and again really ads up to the experience.

DS2 still manages to be better than Resident Evil has been recently (who gets scared playing?), being a great choice of survival horror. DS3, here I come.