GAME: DEAD SPACE 2
Review By Anthony O’Sullivan
Developer: Visceral games
Publisher: EA
Platform: Xbox360, PS3, PC
Review: Dead Space was without doubt one of the best games of the current generation, the low budget available to the development team meant that they had to employ every trick in the book to create a game in which the fear of the unknown was far more terrifying than anything they could have produced on screen. The tight dark endless corridors created an atmosphere of claustrophobic panic and the brilliant use of surround sound really created a game that was very uncomfortable to play. In fact I didn’t really enjoy it until I finished it and knew I was safe.
The sequel Dead Space 2, now very visibly armed with a far larger budget, sets out to build on the story of the hero Isaac Hayes, who has been recused after escaping the horror of Dead Space 1 and the mysterious “Marker” which is a weird artefact belonging to an even weirder religious cult. Three years have passed and Isaac is no better than when he was picked up, in fact due to the tinkering with his brain the scientists have done he is left in quite a fragile mental state. The game starts with Isaac bound in a straight jacket and all hell breaking loose on the space station. He is once again faced with being torn apart by Necromorphs while trying to piece together what is happening to him while at all times battling his own faltering consciousness.
The game play is largely the same; you still have your iconic suit, most of the same weapons although some new items are brought in later on in the game. But from the get go you will feel right at home with the controls and tempo of Dead Space 2.
The game takes place on one of Jupiter’s moons which has been colonised to act as sort of a research and development lab and a base of operations to run the mining business of planet cracking. Now freed from the tight corridors on the spaceship Isaac is faced with a much larger more open living area. As the location is much larger the tight spaces that made Dead Space 1 such a creepy game are not as frequent but they do still make up a large portion of the latter half of the game.
The graphics are simply stunning a lot of effort has been put into polishing this game, making it look unbelievable. It is really setting high standards and goes a long way to explain why the game comes on two disks. Initially this seems to be where most of the budget has gone, as the first few stages in the story do little to re-create the panic ridden fear of the first title.
This is until you reach chapter about six and then things really start to crank up a notch, time is running out the sense of panic is re injected although the scares don’t manifest to such a degree as they did in DS1, the action comes thick and fast, and the story really starts pumping and the player really begins to feel for Isaac.
As a stand-alone title this game would be amazing but it’s actually being held back by how good the first dead space was, a touch of the difficult second album syndrome. How do you make something bigger and better without giving up what made it so great in the first place? Well you have to evolve and that’s what the developers have done. True it has lost a lot of the panic and fear the first game had, but this is still a very solid title in the Dead Space franchise.
Conclusion:
It has lost a little from what made DS1 great in terms of the atmosphere but it has gained in other sections namely the graphics and action departments. The story holds strong throughout and really builds to an exciting climax. They have removed the doubling back elements that ruined DS1 too which makes the game flow a lot better. Running at about nine hours long which does feel about right as I’m not sure how much more my heart could have taken anyway.
They also introduce a Multiplayer element and while fun it doesn’t really suit the game, This is still a very solid title and if your purchasing on PS3 the limited edition does come with a HD remake of the Wii game Dead Space extraction.
I feel like the writing in this review is much improved over the Killzone 3 review. I felt like the tone of the K3 review was a bit too casual, but this one has a nicer balance with regards to formality. That said, it could still do with some editing polish in regards to comma use and sentence structure.
I haven’t played the game itself yet, but the review did make it sound worth a look. I would have liked to hear a little bit more about the quality of the writing and the story (which I think is paramount in a horror game). I also could have done with a little more detail on the mechanical side of things, as a gamer who never played the original Dead Space.