Dead Space 2 (2011)

After the masterpiece called Dead Space, I was thrilled to see what would come next. When Dead Space 2 was announced, it was one of the few times that I bought the collector’s edition immediately. It came in a nice shiny box with an artbook and, best of all, a toy Plasma cutter with 3 dots of light in it. Epic.

The game itself picks up where the first one ended. You are still Isaac Clarke, that is treated for its declining sanity in a hospital on Sprawl space station on the planet Titan. Then, out of the blue, the Necromorphs attack the station and Isaac starts the second round of fighting for his life, while still in his restrictive clothing that the hospital put on him. I really liked this intro because it made you feel so helpless and vulnerable.

In this game, your mental health is declining fast, and because of this, your dead girlfriend Nicole, that you tried to save so desperately in the first game, but who killed herself when the outbreak started on the USG Ishimura, starts to torment you with hallucinations and even attacks. It is all just an hallucination, but it feels very real.

The rest of the story is kind of the same as the first game, you need to get of the Titan Space Station and, most importantly, stay alive. However, in this game, you also search for the “new marker”, that is apparently in the space station and recreated from the mind and hallucinations from Isaac where he was in the mental hospital by the government on this planet. This thing started the whole outbreak. On your quest, you meet a new character, Ellie, who helps you trough the game and who becomes your new girlfriend later on.

The action is intense and the feeling of the first game is right back. There are, however, more people alive in this game, making you feel less alone and helpless like in the first game.

There are some new enemies introduced in this game and they are even more disturbing than the original ones. You got small kids that turn into bald alien creatures with sharp claws, crawling babies with an explosive tumor on their backs and worst of all, the Stalkers. I found the Stalkers the most annoying enemy in the game. This is mainly because they hide themselves all the time, peek around the corner (in which you cannot murder them), and when you are not looking, they charge towards you, dealing massive damage. You got split seconds to react. Overall, I like the new skins of the Slashers and the added mutations.

The controls are the same and just as fluent as the first game. The game still got the lack of GUI and all your statistics are either on you, on weapons or in your hologram computer.

The graphics are nice but, I did not think it was that big of an upgrade from the previous game. They are also a little bit brighter, and dark places with small beams of light are not present anymore so everything gets less scary. Still, they are nice to look at.

The sound design is still as good as the previous game.

The rest of the mechanics are the same as the first game, you collect some hard cash to buy ammo and health packs in the stores and you collect power nodes to upgrade your gear and health.

The ending of the game is, once again, open for another sequel and like with the first game, you feel that it is not over yet. On one hand, this provides opportunity for a sequel, but on the other hand, I kind of felt that this game should be the last one in the series.

Overall, I had a very much fun with Dead Space 2 and its was a worthy sequel for the first game.