Dead Space 2 is a good game, but it takes no risks and isn't that interesting after a while.
It's just not Isaac Clarke's day, it seems. In Dead Space 1, he was sent to check up on the USG Ishimura to check up on it, and very quickly found himself in the midst of a horrific scene: dead bodies have been reanimated into Necromorphs, twisted, lethal versions of human corpses that viciously attack living humans. They're the product of an infection whose sole purpose for its existence is self-perpetuation: most Necromorphs kill humans to produce more dead bodies for infection, while Infectors spread the infection to any corpses it finds. Oh, and along the way, he finds out that the girlfriend he thought he was coming to see is dead. Yeah, his life pretty much sucks.
Dead Space 2 fast-forwards three years into the future. Isaac Clarke is now being held in The Sprawl, a large space station near one of Saturn's moons, where Isaac is now considered delirious and delusional and has been committed. He escapes, however, when the asylum quickly becomes completely overrun with Necromorphs, thrusting Isaac back into the fray doing what he does best: chopping limbs off of reanimated, twisted corpses. Throughout the course of the game, he also must deal with various other obstacles, including other humans with a tenuous grip on sanity, his hallucinations of his dead girlfriend, and the Marker, a gargantuan relic that is at the heart of the entire Necromorph terror.
The gameplay in Dead Space 2 is almost identical to Dead Space 1, so if you've played that game, then you'll already know almost entirely what to expect. You play as Isaac Clarke in a third-person perspective, who can hold up to four weapons at any given time. You have control of kinesis and stasis modules, which allow you, respectively, to telekinetically move and throw objects, and to slow objects down to a crawl. You can purchase items and sell unwanted items at automated shops located throughout the world, and can upgrade your weapons, RIG (armor), and stasis module at "benches". Finally, you can also find schematics throughout the game that, when brought to the store, unlock new weapons, armor, or items for purchase.
The combat mechanics are almost entirely unchanged from Dead Space 1, too - Necromorphs' big weakness is still severed limbs, so Isaac needs to use his weapons (which, conveniently, all excel at slicing) to literally rip them limb from limb in order to conserve ammunition. One notable upgrade from Dead Space 1, however, is that the interface used to locate Isaac's next objective can now also tell you where the nearest shop, bench, and save station is, which is always helpful to know. There are also four difficulty levels, ranging from easy to certifiably insane (seriously - I won't spoil the particulars of the hardest difficulty level, but I don't think it's a stretch to call it suicide-inducing).
If it's starting to get a bit repetitive to hear me say how much this game is like Dead Space 1, that's not really an accident. Because it's really, really like Dead Space 1. It has some new weapons, some new faces, and some new places to go, but for the most part it plays just like Dead Space 1.
In fact, that's probably by far Dead Space 2's biggest flaw. Throughout most of the game, I couldn't help but feel as though this was a sequel that was made because people wanted to make it, not because people needed to make it. Dead Space 2 takes effectively no risks, does not depart from what was established in Dead Space 1 in any meaningful manner, and unfortunately becomes increasingly uncreative and predictable as time goes on.
For starters, the game is really not scary at all. It has its share of things that jump out at you and give you a start, certainly, but it has few things in it that are truly scary, and even those that are genuinely scary tend to overstay their welcome by the end. The game has effectively two ways in which it tries to scare you: enemies jump out at you out of nowhere, or Isaac's scary girlfriend with no eyes shows up again. These methods of creating tension and causing fear are effective at the start, but by the end of the game I was honestly correctly calling every single place where an enemy was going to jump out at me before it happened, and, as B.B. King might say, the thrill was gone.
The encounters with Nicole, Isaac's girlfriend, also couldn't help but get tedious by the end, too. The hallucination is at first genuinely unnerving and scary - Nicole is bloody, and light pours out of her mouth and empty eye sockets - but by the umpteenth time it shows up, it too has more or less completely lost any power to frighten that it might have had. Really, as a whole, the way in which the designers of the game seemed entirely uninterested in coming up with new ways to scare the player makes the game seem less of a bona fide survival horror, and more just an action game with horror elements.
That's not to say that the game is bad, though, mind you. Its gameplay is definitely as solid as the first one; it never gets outright boring or anything like that; and it certainly has its moments that keep it from falling below the threshold of "great" in my mind. If someone's looking for a great action game that will hold their interest, then this game certainly isn't one that will disappoint in that respect. The game is just uninventive to a fault - it relies on the tried and true almost the whole way through, without any moments that I would single out as unbridled brilliance. It is what it is, and nothing more.
The graphical and sound design in the game was definitely another highlight, too - although the tension in the game was quite significantly hampered by the utter predictability of sudden enemy attacks, the atmosphere the game created in Dead Space 1 is still very much alive, kicking, and effective in Dead Space 2, right down to subtle, effective touches such as making the sound very muffled when in a vacuum. The musical soundtrack in the game, however, was not as noteworthy; in trying to recall the game's soundtrack, I cannot in fact pick out one single memorable moment.
All in all, Dead Space 2 is a pretty darn good game, one that certainly is likely to satisfy those who enjoyed Dead Space 1. It does little to advance the IP and starts to outstay its welcome by the end, but it's nonetheless a solid action game that certainly delivers plenty of atmosphere and carnage. If you liked Dead Space 1, check it out. If you didn't, then there is likely not a whole lot Dead Space 2 is going to do to win you over. And if you didn't play Dead Space 2, then, well, you should probably start with Dead Space 1, considering how this game is a direct sequel to the plot in Dead Space 1.