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If you can hear me, run
The original Dead Space introduced engineer Isaac Clarke, a man who probably wishes he’d picked a different profession. For those who haven’t played it, the story is set several hundred years into Earth’s future. A dystopian tale, it’s a place where continuously growing populations have extracted all the natural resources possible from the planet.
Discovery and subsequent derivation of the unified field theory granted control of gravity itself to humanity, and the concept of planet cracking was born. Huge ships find planets ripe with raw materials, split them into huge chunks and process the resultant ore, bringing it back with them to Earth.
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The USG Ishimura, out on a routine planet cracking mission, goes unexpectedly dark. A crew is sent to find out what happened and, if necessary, repair the issue. Isaac is a member of this maintenance team, eager to get to work - his/your girlfriend is stationed aboard the Ishimura, and she’s there mostly thanks to prodding from Clarke.
You can probably tell how things go.
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When the crew gets on board, the situation spirals rapidly from bad to worst (this is not a typo) as horrific creatures known as necromorphs attack.
Necromorphs, which are the main encounter in both Dead Space games, are perversions crafted from the dead crewmembers. Created by a discovered alien artifact, the Marker, they’re tough, crazy, and out to do one thing: kill you.
EA launched an effective - if critically panned - advertisement
campaign that used moms' disapproval to showcase the game.
Rise and shine
Dead Space 2 opens with our unfortunate engineer waking on an unknown space station three years later. One of the best parts of Dead Space 2 is Isaac Clarke’s humanity: he isn’t possessed of some kind of superhuman sanity. The events of the first game have broken him, leaving him infected with a progressively worsening dementia that threatens to kill him if he doesn’t receive treatment.
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As the game moves forward, the dementia manifests with auditory and visual hallucinations, seeing creatures that aren’t there, hearing people talk when rooms are empty and, least comforting of all, nightmarish recollections of his dead girlfriend mixing with guilt over effectively - and completely unintentionally - sending her to her death.
From the first minutes of the game, Clarke is trying to reach a mysterious woman who promises that she can cure him. The dementia plays an important part of the story; only you, as the player, gets to see just how crazy he becomes. You soon discover that you’ve been kept mostly unaware for three years as a scientist tries to cure you.
Instead, he succumbs to the madness himself and builds a new Marker - bringing the necromorphs.
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Necromorphs attack when you most - and when you least - expect it. Anyone who’s played survival horror mainstays such as Resident Evil has had that moment, happily playing the game...
...alone...
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...in the dark...
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...when all of a sudden, a creature comes flying out of the darkness and it’s very scaRY AND YOU SHRIEK A LITTLE BIT.
Not that that ever happened here, of course, but it’s worth keeping in mind if you have a faint constitution or perhaps a heart condition.
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Joking aside, the game gets a bit scary at times, in all the best ways. Visceral Games, Dead Space 2’s developer, did an excellent job at filling in all the little details. The walls have posters, charts, medical graphs and clipboards. The labs have centrifuges and other realistic equipment.
[click to view image]In other words, Dead Space 2 feels like it could be a real setting - minus, thankfully, that whole necromorph thing - and that just makes it creepier.
Being an engineer comes in handy
Weapons and armor are often collected as plans, which Clarke can then build out when he reaches a shop kiosk somewhere on the station. At a bench station, equipment can be modified or upgraded with power nodes collected from various locations. Being an engineer comes in handy, as Clarke can slot power nodes into a predefined chart reminiscent of some of the level up tables from newer Final Fantasy games.
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New suits and weapons can be unlocked at various stages throughout the game - and these bonuses are kept upon completion, which adds a great deal to the game’s replayability. Speaking of replayability, once the game is beaten on any difficulty level, the Hardcore option is unlocked - and is it ever apt. Everything is tougher, upgrades and health packs are few and far between and if you die, you start over from wherever you last saved.
In this mode, you can also only save three times. In the whole game. That’s pretty hardcore.
Of course, no good survival horror game is complete without its horrible inhabitants, and the previously mentioned necromorphs fill that role admirably. Unexpectedly tough, these guys can’t be brought down with a crack head shot, or a couple of rounds delivered to the chest.
Instead, the necromorphs have to be brought down with speed and guile, as players proceed to rip them limb from limb[click to view image]. Once a necromorph goes down, Clarke must run and stomp it to goo - or risk having it get back up and attack again.
Some of the best moments of the game come with the myriad and creative ways to kill the things, ranging from steadily picking off each limb from afar before going and stomping it to death, to telekinetically lifting a projectile that hurtles through the air to pin one to the wall.
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