Dead Space 2.

Dead Space 2 is no tiptoe through the tulips. Fans of the original game will be more than ready for the experience that awaits them, but people new to the series should really prepare themselves for an intense, disturbing, protracted, but addictive, campaign through some very unpleasant environments and even more unpleasant enemies. The story tends to get muddled after a little while but the characters are sharply drawn and well acted, and the series' trademark visual and audio design really dazzles, even if some of the things you have to look at are stomach-turning.

I might as well get the bad stuff out of the way first, because there's really not much that drags this game down and the rest of it is pretty fantastic. The enemies and environments you encounter in this game are some of the most disturbing, disgusting, nightmare-inducing that you'll probably ever encounter. For new initiates, the enemies are all reanimated corpses that have been disfigured and contorted into horrendous abominations of their previous forms, and they all scream out at you with vaguely human voices that just takes the effect overboard. They are ugly, unnerving creatures that come at you incessantly, sometimes in excessive numbers, throughout the whole game. There's a certain catharsis you experience from disposing of these creatures, but the combat starts to grind on a little bit, especially towards the end game, when they start dropping out of the ceiling every other minute. I can definitely say there's a point at which they stop being horrifying they simply become aggravating and a little tedious. While I can't say it ever felt "fun" dealing with them, I was strangely addicted to the experience.

The addiction carries over from the first game, which I think is a much scarier and tense experience. The setting was much more claustrophobic and unnerving, and the desperation of having to repair the ship caught in a downward spiral while dealing with the Necromorph infestation kept you glued to the game. When you made it to the end, you breathe a sigh of relief as you’ve survived the horror and finally made it to safety. Sadly, a lot of this did not make the transition to the second game, and we’re left with a much more straightforward, action-oriented game where the levels are more start-to-finish type experiences than venturing out and returning to relative safety. The new setting is a huge space station called The Sprawl that contains all the living environments of a functioning city, but they’ve been overrun by a Necromorph infestation. Some of the levels, including an insane asylum, an old gloomy church, and a morgue, sounded pretty good on paper but they seemed to fall a little flat to me because of a lack of imagination or innovation. The game also takes a few cheap shots at the player and require you to trudge your way through a blood-splattered children’s school (complete with disembodied baby cries and creepy children’s music), but there are also a few neat surprises and twists in store that take you places where you’d least expect it. As before, abandoned text and well-acted audio logs chronicle the station’s descent into chaos and give more weight to the bloodstains and makeshift last-stand barricades you encounter on your journey.

The story conveyed in the text and audio logs, the mission objectives that unfold, as well as the handful of NPC’s you encounter, starts out strong but starts to lose its draw about halfway through the game and it devolves into a series of mundane errands like realigning a solar array, repairing an abandoned drill, etc. There is one errand that stands out which, to avoid spoilers, will please fans of the first game immensely. Then along the way you learn that a second Marker, the monolith responsible for all the unpleasantry in the first game, has been constructed on the station and through some obscure and not very scary hallucinations, you are drawn into a quest to track it down and destroy it. Unitology also makes a big appearance in the game, sparking a lot of controversy over its similarities to Scientology, but it doesn’t factor into the storyline as much as you’d think it would. For example, you never once meet a living Unitology member, and most of the subject matter is contained in museum exhibits and a few scattered audio logs of demented church members early on in the game, and then are never revisited later. There is a still-human antagonist that again tries to hault your progress, but he’s nowhere near as satisfying an enemy as Dr. Mercer was in the first game.

What took the first game to extraordinary levels for me was an abundance of well designed gameplay systems and technology that made the game a lot of fun to play, and they’re thankfully all present in the second game too. The design of the game incorporates all the HUD elements into the back of the player’s suit, so that there’s no overlaid information displays.. your life meter is a column of light along the spine of your suit, the ammo counters for weapons are all projected as holograms off to the side, inventory screens and text logs all project from your helmet and your character appears to be viewing them as you do. The game does not pause when accessing these screens, so there’s an ever-present feeling of vulnerability that’s hanging over your head. Also returning is the rather genius system for upgrading your weapons, which require the use of rare and expensive components which can also be used to unlock certain doors, so you have to ration out what weapons need to be bumped up as well as carry a spare one with you in case you find a locked door later in the level. Then there’s the awesome zero-gravity sequences that are appropriately disorienting and complex to maneuver, vacuum areas that require you to act quickly so you don’t run out of air, and a few straightforward environmental puzzles. There’s even kenesis powers which allow you to pick up and move large objects easily, and stasis which can slow down uncontrollable objects (and enemies) to solve other puzzles. There’s just a huge variety of gameplay involved in the game, making it one of the most interesting and mechanically satisfying games to play. Finally, the genius objective locator system returns, which helpfully displays the path to your next objective with a beam of light that trails along the floor.

All this technology is backed up by superb graphics and sound design, some of the best you’ll experience today. Graphically, it’s everything you’d expect from a modern AAA game, with beautiful textures, complex models, and realistic lighting effects that make the already foreboding levels even more dreadful. The visual design takes a lot of cues from the Aliens film series, giving the space station a very “blue collar,” well-worn scifi look. Characters are well designed and animated, and again takes a cue from the Aliens series where movement of an alien creature can sometimes be just as effective as their appearance in conveying danger. Sound design is also a crucial part of a horror game, and Dead Space 2’s never disappoints... there’s clanging of malfunctioning machinery, crumbling rock falling in the mines, zapping sounds of electrical short circuits, buzzing of flickering overhead lights, and of course those godawful screams of the Necromorphs as they sneak up behind you for the kill. When you enter a vacuum, there’s a really neat muffling effect that drowns out the sound and makes you feel isolated and cut off. Then there’s the shrill musical cues when a monster jumps out at you, causing you to whip the camera around to find the new threat.

Which brings me to what I think is the biggest improvement over the previous game, which is a much tighter control scheme. Most of the buttons and actions are the same, but they’ve really tightened up the camera movement so that it’s easily two to three times faster. This ironically makes the game a lot less claustrophobic and scary, because you feel more in control than before. I still think the game is better for it, because the first one tended to feel clumsy during intense fights and now it feels a lot more manageable (which could be explained by Isaac being less experienced in combat in the first game than he is in the second game),. Which is a good thing, because there’s many, many more enemies in the second game and some more difficult fights to survive. There’s still an emphasis on hoarding ammo and health packs and being judicious with shot placing, but with every enemy dropping at least some kind of loot you’ll eventually amass quite a bit of inventory (often too much to carry, so you must decide what to drop, based on how far away the nearest store is), or enough credits to buy any deficient supplies in the stores that conveniently appear typically at the beginnings and halfway points of levels.

The store placement is another improvement. Whereas before the stores and upgrade benches were placed more or less in the “lobby” of the current level (which also served as sort of a “safe zone” for each one), they’re scattered more organically throughout this game in places where you might expect them to be. The map system, which I never used in the first game due to it being to cumbersome to navigate in 3D, has been replaced with a more intuitive waypoint system that incorporates with the smartly-designed objective locator system. New weapons, like the javelin gun are a welcome addition, but I found myself using the old standbys like the pulse rifle and line gun the most often. New RIG suits are also on tap, which all add different perks and advantages, although there’s a definite progression to follow, where later suits have more inventory slots and better armor, but some give you stuff like store discounts and damage buffs on certain weapons. There are also a handful of new necromorph types that change up the action a little, and make for some interesting new fights that are well conceived.

All in all, the game is an improvement, with a new story and settings that don’t quite measure up to the first game, but the mechanics of the gameplay have been really polished up. Stuff that didn’t work before has been reworked, and the tighter controls make the game a lot more responsive and satisfying to play. It still looks great and sounds even greater, and delivers the scares despite being a more straightforward action game. New players will enjoy it, but it’s a real treat for returning fans to see how much this great series has evolved after only two games.