Dead Space is an Action Horror game which took inspiration from Resident Evil 4 and Half Life. The 3rd person perspective was inspired by RE4, whereas Half Life inspired the idea of a silent protagonist, and the physics equipment. In this sequel, the Kinesis power seems stronger and you are encouraged to use it more against enemies - with plenty of objects in the environments to use as knockdown or piercing attacks. Isaac is no longer silent which I think is a good change because his silence seemed strange in the first game.
In the first game, Isaac Clarke and a team go to mining facility Ishimura to investigate what happened to the crew; Isaac is particularly interested in finding his girlfriend Nicole. They find it overrun with an alien species called necromorphs and find that the crew had been slowly losing their sanity. At the end of that game, the “marker” was destroyed, and Isaac escapes after finding out Nicole was dead, but now his mental state has taken a hit.
Dead Space 2 begins with Isaac in a mental ward wearing a straitjacket, on The Sprawl. Necromorphs overrun the facility and Isaac flees. After being released from his straitjacket, he soon finds a Plasma Cutter and Kinesis, with some other weapons and Stasis power following soon after - so then it is business as usual.
The environments on The Sprawl are much more colourful, with the facility having medical, residential and commercial areas among others. I felt this had a strong Bioshock influence. Later on, you return to the Ishimura for a brief period, and this is where the game gets tougher and the darkness seems to increase.
The lighting effects are great and the game makes good use of them to add tenson. The first game featured amazing sound design, but here it doesn’t seem as perfect. The dialogue seems low in the mix, and when you have radio communication or the hallucinations with Nicole, the distortion really affects the clarity. In general, the ambience, the necromorph screams, the squelshing of limbs is all unsettling. The whispering in your head is toned down which seems weird given that Isaac is supposed to be mentally suffering from the start.
There are sections where you step out into space and then sound is limited. In the first game these were tense because you would always be attacked by several enemies, but in this game, the threat seems much reduced. You also have limited air, but I never came close to running out because the sections were small, or there’s air stations nearby.
Instead of cluttering the screen with a HUD, all the info is shown on your equipment. So the health bar goes up your spine on your suit. A radial meter shows your stasis charge. Your gun displays the ammo count, and communications are projected from your visor.
The first weapon you find is the Plasma Cutter. This fires a blast of 3 concentrated energy bolts either horizontally and vertically. It is great for cutting which is the necromorph’s weakness. Instead of going for headshots like in most games, you need to cut off their legs and arms which does more damage and restricts their movement. There’s different types of necromorphs which can have slightly different strategies.
The standard “slashers” are the most frequent enemy, then there’s faster variations later on in the game. I thought the “Lurkers” were another iconic enemy but these are far fewer in number. They often run near to you (even on walls), then raise their tentacles that will fire projectiles at you, so you need to slice these. “Infectors” are also rare, and these try to reanimate dead bodies. There were a few interesting boss fights in the first game, but they have toned that down as well.
I guess they toned down the frequency of the classic enemies to use their own ideas. There’s some crawling baby-looking enemies that explode, there’s some toddlers that charge. Then some exploding sacs, and acid spitting enemies which severely slow you down. My favourite enemy type was the one that peers around obstacles, charges at you then retreats. These are pretty freaky with the way they toy with you, sometimes dashing cover to cover. My only criticism was that it was always predictable when they would appear since you end up in large rooms with crates and it would initially seem deserted.
You unlock and can purchase weapons as you play through the game. I stuck with 3 for most of the game; Plasma Cutter, Pulse Rifle, and Line Gun. The guns are fairly weak until you upgrade them, but the Pulse Rifle seems to have had a damage upgrade from the first game. Each weapon has an upgrade tree which is displayed as a circuit of connected nodes. You have to place a power node into empty slots and not all nodes give you an upgrade, so you may have to use up to 3 power nodes for the upgrade you want.
The Pulse Rifle can fire fast but isn’t too good at dismembering the enemies. Line Gun is like a larger Plasma Cutter and can slice through groups of enemies, but has a slower attack speed and lower capacity.
If enemies get close you can melee them to push them back, and if they are on the floor, you can stamp them. This is quite risky because these techniques are slow and don't have much range so it is easy to miss and your enemies will also be trying to attack. Even if the standard enemy has no legs, they will have their scythe-like arms to slice you.
Enemies drop ammo, health-packs and cash, and you can also find them in lockers and crates. For enemies to drop them, you now need to do additional damage to their corpses. There’s a type of crate that can be smashed, so you can also use your stamp to open these, or Kinesis to slam it to the ground. You can also buy ammo from the shop which is an electronic terminal.
Your abilities; Stasis and Kinesis are very useful in combat but you will need them to navigate through the environment at times. Stasis slows things down, so if there’s a malfunctioning door that repeatedly opens then slam shut, you use stasis to slow their movement down so you can go through. Kinesis can pick up objects and you can then fire them to use as improvised weapons. It’s used in puzzles so it can drag large objects into position, or pick up energy blocks and reposition to power doors. Stasis is limited use so you need to use an item to replenish it or find a charging station. For “puzzle rooms” there will always be a charging station so you cannot get stuck.
In the first game, the zero-gravity sections were disorienting as you leaped from surface to surface. These have been changed so now your suit is inspired by Iron Man, so you can just hover or fly where you want. The navigation is much faster and you feel more agile. Isaac is more agile when on foot too so he seems more proficient at combat.
The game does use a lot of jump scares, intentional or otherwise. Some scripted sequences occur where you will see aliens move under the floor or ceiling, or run across your view when you open a door. There’s plenty of grates on the walls that enemies can pop out of. In the “arena”-type fights, these are used as their spawn positions. There’s a few “Arena” fights where you are in a large room with waves of enemies. This usually involved locking the doors and turning off the lights for “quarantine” then things will go back to normal once you defeat all enemies.
You save the game at dedicated save points and I found these to be very frequent. When you die, you don’t necessarily get placed back at the save point, because there are also checkpoints in many sections. When you die, you usually get a brutal death scene with Isaac being gibbed.
It’s easy to find your way around because you usually navigate through fairly linear areas, with locked doors guiding your way. You can also press the B key which draws a line towards your destination. I’m not even sure if you have a map in this game, but you don’t need it since there’s no backtracking. The chapters are now joined together rather than returning to the Tram and have a loading screen like the first game.
Some cinematic fights weren’t clear when I was in control so I ended up dying. Much like the first game, the difficulty ramps up towards the end, and there seemed to be far too many enemies which deplete your ammo very fast. The final boss was very underwhelming though.
There’s a simple hacking mini game, where you move the mouse to control a segment in a circle. When the segment lights green, you click and repeat this process 3 times. It seemed pretty pointless because there was no danger apart from one section at the end where you have to unlock a door before a necromorph gets to you.
I played the game via Origin - EA Play on the PC. In the in-game shop, there’s loads of weapons and suits with various perks for 0 credits which I assume is some kind of DLC pack. If you want to play the game properly, then ignore all the free items in the shop.
I don’t play many horror games because being constantly on-edge doesn’t really appeal to me. I played the original Dead Space after seeing it being covered in various YouTube videos (some on game design, some top 10 Horror games, top 10 games that need to make a comeback etc), and one of my friends recently revisited it. It’s easy to see why people rate the game highly - I had a great time with Dead Space and it really surprised me how well the game holds up. By playing Dead Space 2 directly after the first game, I completed it quickly as I was very used to the game mechanics and found the horror aspects far more predictable. I think the original game might be scarier due to the better sound design and the additional dangers in the “puzzle” rooms, and outside areas where there is a lack of sound. If you start with this game, then you will probably find it scary.
Dead Space 2 is a great game although I think I preferred the original game due to the aesthetic and it had the benefit of being original. There’s a slight shift to be more action-focussed which you could say is a bad thing, but I hear they go further in that direction for the 3rd installment.