I contend that Dead Space 2 is the culmination of decades of game development lessons and learning, benefiting from everything game developers have learned over the past thirty years, and all of the knowledge that these digital wizards have collected and stored in their overarching hive mind.

Dead Space 2 is presented in incredible style and you’re never once given the chance to think that what you’re experiencing is anything but the highest quality. Likewise, the third-person action of Dead Space 2 is tuned to expert degrees, ensuring you’re always comfortable with the challenging in-game scenarios and able to overcome these challenges with your own accumulated skill. The world is wonderfully realised, the story is delivered very well, and you’re kept engaged throughout. And there’s multiplayer!

But there’s something a little off about Dead Space 2. Despite all of the visual splendour, gripping action and extremely memorable events, there’s a blandness that I personally couldn’t shake while playing. The game has one note that it plays exceptionally well, and there are even a couple different, interesting notes included in the melody to mix it up… but considering the intense mood and atmosphere of this horror-themed action game, that melody can become all too familiar and oppressive.

Dead Space 2 sees players returning to take on the role of Isaac Clarke, mechanical engineer extraordinaire, but after the events of the original Dead Space and being forced to fight through hundreds of zombie-alien enemies called Necromorphs to survive, all while enduring a living nightmare aboard a giant space-faring vessel, the USG Ishimura, Isaac is a little… changed, and without spoiling anything, it turns out he’s much more involved with the tragedy on the Ishimura than was previously believed.

Also, Isaac has a voice this time so instead of only hearing our main protagonist scream in muffled tones, we actually get to hear him speak in extended cinematic sequences as well as trade chatter and banter with the game’s other cast of characters. While providing an ‘empty vessel’ character in a videogame for players to inhabit is one method of immersing an audience (as seen in the original Dead Space and games like Half-Life), this new approach at trying to flesh out the character of Isaac Clarke by giving him a voice and personality works excellently and we get the best of both worlds – better story and character development, with immersion provided by the gameplay proper.

Dead Space 2 takes place on ‘The Sprawl,’ an enormous metropolis built on one of Saturn’s moons, Titan. Even though there are a number of different environments in the game, the adventure all takes place in what is, essentially, a ‘sprawling’ space station (hence the name), which means that the variety of locations and visuals are a little lacking, and seeing yet another dark, dank metallic corridor or storeroom, and yet another enclosed indoor area can get a little discouraging.

That’s not to say these areas aren’t expertly detailed and varied in and of themselves, but just because it’s a space station don’t expect shiny surfaces and clean rooms. The Sprawl has been around for many, many years and houses thousands of people who have been living here a very long time, in some cases their entire lives. As a result, every room, hall and corridor you traverse in Dead Space 2 has a ‘lived-in’ feel, with some ‘districts’ of the city dedicated to retail stores, nursery schools, domiciles and a cult-like church.

It’s in these rooms and corridors that you’ll encounter the dreaded Necromorphs, horrific creatures of mysterious origin that are neither human, zombie nor alien, but something… else. These tormented monsters will attack on sight and come in many forms, from bipedal wrecks that crawl and lurch towards you with dreadful purpose, to spiny, jagged monstrosities that run, ram, vomit and hack into you as their ghastly extremities flail uselessly about and their unearthly moans and groans echo through the place.

Some of these appalling fiends come in other shapes and sizes with different abilities, too (like the capacity for shooting you with spiked tendrils from afar), and you’ll need to learn to use different strategies for destruction against these beasts if you’re to survive their relentless assault. You may even be forced to outthink them, but that may be giving too much away… Luckily, you’ve got a fantastic arsenal of weaponry (and abilities of your own) to help do just that.

First of all, you can make use of your ‘Kinesis’ ability to pick up and manipulate objects without physically touching them - used to solve light environmental puzzles and throw objects at the Necromorphs to do a little damage - as well as the ‘Stasis’ ability to slow down moving objects - again used to solve puzzles and turn fast-moving Necromorphs into sluggish mounds of flesh, which is handy when dealing with large packs of the wretches.

Then you’ve got a few different weapons to choose from, bought and kept up with money found lying about The Sprawl and collected at special store locations. Weapons like your trusty Plasma Cutter (a handgun-like weapon able to shoot out beams of flesh-cutting energy), the Pulse Rifle (like a regular rifle), the Line Gun (like the Plasma Cutter, but bigger and more devastating), a weapon called the Force Gun (which emits a powerful burst of energy to push enemies away), a flamethrower, a gun that shoots spinning blades, a sniper rifle and the Contact Beam gun (which shoots an enormously powerful charged shot to obliterate Necromorphs). Want more weapons? There are more than even this varied selection.

Each weapon also comes standard with an alternate fire, so your Pulse Rifle can double as an explosive weapon, as can the Line Gun, while other weapons have useful twists on their primary fire. These weapons (as well as your combat suit) can also be upgraded over time with collected upgrade nodes to improve their efficiency, and because ammunition can be scarce you’ll need to be sure to stock up at stores or hunt for deposits dropped by enemies or lying around the world. Health and Stasis replenishments can also be bought, and you’ll likewise need to keep a good number of these helpful items to hand if you’re to stay alive.

Enemy encounters are more often than not very well paced in areas that feel as though they’ve been designed with utmost care, as the space around you has been carved into a fun and dynamic play area. Some encounters are fiendishly difficult, however, and ill-suited to the areas in which they take place, and don’t quite play to the strengths of your available combat abilities – Isaac moves slowly, turns slowly and runs slowly, so getting ambushed by half a dozen enemies at once feels a little cheap. Personally, I would have enjoyed an option (similar to that available in Vanquish) to change different aiming and turning sensitivity sliders for different situations – active aiming can be set to one sensitivity, while turning speed can be set to another separate sensitivity, for example.

While I did mention that you’ll be edging your way through indoor areas, there are a few opportunities to take a break from solid footing by going for adventures out in space and in zero gravity rooms. These sections provide a much-needed break in pace and go a long way to remove any creeping claustrophobia or stir-craziness threatening to set in, allowing you to use your combat suit’s built-in flight capabilities to travel great distances without once stepping foot on a metal surface. The sequences out in space proper are particularly memorable as you’re exposed to visions of beautiful nebulae, while enduring increased tension as a result of the dampened, stifled sound effects and the need to keep your oxygen levels up.

More welcome pace-changers come in the form of high-speed space dives as you hurtle through nothingness to reach your next destination, and thrilling, edge-of-your-seat battles with colossal creatures hell-bent on tearing you limb from limb. While these moments are unfortunately controlled with those dreads Quick Time Events, they’re still incredibly tense interactive set-pieces, the likes of which you would expect to see in a blockbuster movie.

By now you’re aware that Dead Space 2 is a horror-themed game (I hope) and injects massive doses of atmosphere into every scene you might encounter. You can’t walk down a corridor without feeling as though something’s going to jump out at you, and that’s just the problem – things do jump out at you, many times, to try and capitalise on this built up tension and sneak in a quick cheap scare. Unfortunately these moments didn’t work on me (I’ve got a penchant for horror games, you see) and they ended up being nothing more than ‘monster-closets’ in similar style to DOOM games – kind of annoying.

The thing is, Dead Space 2 needs some artificial scaring tactics, like the fact that the world is so dark, forcing you to rely on your flashlight (activated whenever you aim a weapon) to stumble through the murk – the horror element ebbs and flows and I believe it has something to do with the game’s checkpoint system, funnily enough. You’re never required to play through more than a few minutes of the game if you die before reaching the next checkpoint, which drastically deflates the tension. If you know you’re just going to respawn and get back to your current position in no time, then death in a game becomes much less fearsome a prospect.

The developers may have been caught in a bit of a quandary during the creation of Dead Space 2: They needed to create a game that could appeal to a wide audience, keep in line with developers’ year-to-year tendency of being increasingly lenient on players to get them through a game, while also providing a hardcore experience with deep horror elements. I think Visceral still has a few questions to answer in order to strike a better balance between punishment and leniency to retain tension in the game. I’m all for good checkpoints, for example, but maybe finding some other way of making players better value their virtual lives is still required.

This plays into another issue I had with Dead Space 2, and its pacing in particular. While the third-person action on hand is excellently satisfying and you’re required to keep your brain engaged during combat to execute different strategies with different weapons (and execute Necromorphs), there is… a lot of this kind of action. As mentioned, there are a couple pace-changers in the form of space walks and a few specialised sequences, but running and gunning (or walking and gunning, as is the case) can get tiresome and repetitive no matter how good it is at its core.

I definitely could have done with a few more set-piece moments, and perhaps a couple opportunities for catharsis. I’m the last one in the world to actually ask for a turret sequence to mow down enemies for twenty seconds in-between hours of play, but even including something along those lines might have helped clean my gameplay palate.

One method of palate-cleansing in Dead Space 2 is to take a break from the singleplayer and try out the game’s online multiplayer. In this mode, you choose one of two sides – Humans or Necromorphs – and then proceed to perambulate around enclosed arena-like spaces to complete different objectives. As a human (and provided with all of the combat abilities that Isaac Clarke has in the singleplayer campaign) you’ll need to retrieve and carry important objects and activate devices, but as a Necromorph, you’ll need to stop the humans from completing any current mission by killing them. Over and over again.

You can choose to play as one of four different Necromorphs, namely the Spitter, Puker, Pack or Lurker, each of which has its own ‘unique’ ability including climbing walls and ceilings, running and ramming humans before wailing on them with a flurry of arms and fists, projectile vomiting, and basically wrecking the humans with acid and physical attacks. If you time combinations of attacks just right, you can go for an instant kill move, too, which results in a frantic button-mashing mini-game to determine who wins… and who dies.

As is de rigueur for online multiplayer games nowadays, you earn experience points for performance during timed, round-based matches, and at the end of the match you’ll rank up in order to unlock new combat suits and weapons for the Human character to customise your load-out.

The multiplayer in Dead Space 2 really isn’t anything astounding or groundbreaking, but it’s a great distraction from the singleplayer game and will ably suck you in and trick you into playing many more rounds than you intended. Like the singleplayer, then, it’s simply a very well executed game mode, but unlike the singleplayer, there aren’t any added frills.

I wrestled quite a bit with Dead Space 2 and what I thought of it (as this waffling text can attest), but I ultimately believe it to be a game of incredible quality and production values, imbued with a gripping story and an expertly realised world, some fantastically memorable moments, and that magical factor of ‘gameplay satisfaction.’ Plus multiplayer.

But the pacing is slightly off (which for a horror game is a bit more serious than other genres) and extended sequences of gameplay are more often than not rewarded with more of the same, and while that ‘same’ gameplay is very well executed, I personally needed the action to be mixed up a little more than it was. If I think back to my time with Dead Space 2 as a whole, however, from beginning to end, it’s an incredible romp and once my mind has gained enough distance I’ll definitely be back again to take on the role of Isaac Clarke, slice and dice some Necromorphs and indulge in the universe of ‘Dead Space’ once more.

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