Dead Space 2 Review (PS3)

In space, no one will clear up the mess you made in your trousers

Like a vast majority of science fiction produced, Dead Space 2 is a prime piece of propaganda attempting to sway boffins at NASA from exploring the deep reaches of the galaxy and find a lovely innocent hobby. If we can’t sort out the problems with our own planet now, we’re not exactly prepared to enter realms where a majority of things are going to be much more slimy, veiny, bitey, stabby and hell bent on complete eradication of life. Still, that seems to be nothing to a ticking mental time bomb of an engineer, a true underdog of any workman whose idea of a rough day consists of cannibal infestation.

Poor, poor Isaac Clarke is back. Rudely awoken from a coma upon the Sprawl, a massive interconnecting city one of the moons of Saturn, he comes out of a nightmare and straight back into one. The horrors that have occurred and the emotional stress Isaac has experience still infests his brain and the memories of mutilation are just as vivid as they were when they scraping at his limbs, yet his transition from secluded mining craft to pristine metropolis is non-existent. Of course, the sequel to one of the biggest survival horrors of all time doesn’t simply consist of a shopping list regaling on the last 3 years of lost memory, but a list that is torn asunder in the midsts of yet another Necromorph outbreak, and when you start the fight for survival in a straight jacket, you just know it’s going to go downhill from there.

All the greatest parts of Dead Space have come back to haunt us, except bigger, badder and a hell of a lot gorier than memory recollects. Laying on the punishment in panicked flurries of plasma will result in a lost arm and a quick death Decapitation is still the name of the game here, and only by blasting of limbs will result in any successful deaths. Yet when faced with unexpected ambushes of spike coated monstrosities all gunning for a large intestine necklace, controlling your bladder is more of a priority than your trigger finger.

All the Necromorphs don’t feel like they have exceptionally tight AI, they feel like true predators.

Despite the years in hiding, the Necromorphs have evolved in such ways that forces the average engineer to buck up their ideas about survival. The standard cast of limb stretched aliens, razor tailed crawlers and spike shooting lurkers are now accompanied by more intelligent breeds of splicers. Elegant ‘Pukers’ will mimic shadows in the distance, gobbing vile acid-like vomit at you till you’re gargling it down and die in your own innards. Suicidal babies lurch towards you for a snuggles before latching on and exploding both themselves and their victims. The grotesque aesthetic of all the monsters is definitely something to be admired in a stomach turning way, yet beauty is only skin deep and these beasts now come with the brains of the greatest blood thirsty maniacs when they’re not being splattered about with a Plasma Cutter. The horrid screech of the ‘Stalkers’ indicates you should be on your guard, but the buggers decide to play with you like a rat in a cage. Usually occupying massive labyrinths of rooms, they hide behind surrounding landscapes, peering their heads over every so often to spy upon you. If you’re not quick enough to catch their peeping eyes, they barrage into you with their stegosaurus like head and are all too keen to give you a nosebleed. All the Necromorphs don’t feel like they have exceptionally tight AI, they feel like true predators. If one sees it’s fleshy brethren being blasted to pieces, it may decide to get exceptionally sneaky and pretend it was caught in your death rays. Then when you step your smug self over the piles of bodies, it’s all too easy for the lazy caucus to get the last laugh by launching itself up and adding some sliced Isaac for the kids sandwiches tomorrow lunchtime.

Thankfully, the oncoming onslaught can be met head on with an arsenal of amateur surgical equipment to wipe the silly little face off any skull. All the weapons disturbingly available from any easily accessible shopping network provide a vast array of ligament splattering joy. A standard array of domestic power tools provide tactical dismemberment in controlled circumstances. The ‘Javelin Gun’ provides a more creative rampage of destructing, skewing Necromorphs allowing Isaac to smack their arms off. And for those who hold a serious vendetta against a certain limb twitcher, a solid ‘Contact Beam’ to the torso ensures more particles of your enemies will end up on yourself than the surrounding area.

The action is remarkably tense, especially as the Sprawl seems to adapt around you as you play, constantly offering only just enough ammo and health supplies to survive. Yet when the battle takes on the brain, the environmental puzzles aren’t anything to write home about. This is way some of them are set in zero gravity segments, an ace up the sleeve which can break up the boredom that could be through pushing about blocks by forcing you to fly through space with your boots. It feels slightly gimmicky a move to pull, but is always masked under a satisfaction of drifting through space.

The terror doesn’t just come from the killing machines you face, but the location you visit. The Sprawl, as heavily coated in blood and organs as it is, bears remnants to a futuristic wonderland to us that still feels close to our own metropolises. Peering out the windows allows you to see the massive technical spectacle that’s awesome to behold, yet the inside consists of a world gone to hell. Malls, apartments and even kindergartens have succumb to the Necromorph menace, yet all harbour that certain something that still keeps it human. It’s only when you’re admiring these technical and artistic merits that it launches some truly cliché scares at you. Air vents unexpectedly decompressing, toilets flushing by themselves when walked past, the melancholy tones of a child’s mobile slowly turning in the shadows. They’re frustratingly Hollywood scares, only in the sense that their dotted about so intelligently that they can easily scare the bejesus out of you. If the frights are too subtle, however, There’s always going to be the moment where Isaac accidentally shoots out a window of the space station causing everything to vacuum outwards. That usually guarantees a potty mouth.

The eerie silences that haunt every corner are never sure to remain that way for long, with huge cinematic sequences sledge hammering their way into the game unexpectedly and turning the title from a creepy ghost train to an emotional thrill-ride. Some truly epic set pieces ensure that Dead Space 2 has received a much more cinematic treatment compared to its predecessor, and fuels some of the most adrenaline packed sequences seen in a while, whilst the isolation clawing upon Isaac’s shoulders is ever present. Isaac is no longer a silent protagonist, and although his dialogue can only occasionally slip into the cliché smartarse leader, his fragile persona is realised well and even through the psychological crushing of the new outbreak, the personal intimacy and loss felt by Isaac can still be felt throughout. This isn’t just an insight to yet another alien infestation, this is a trek into the personal downfall of one exceptionally unlucky man.

Although the loneliness experienced in the story can last for up to 8 hours, the inclusion of multi-player encourages you to survive/slay with your pals. The premise is lifted straight out of Left 4 Dead. Two teams have the chance to live as both humans and Necromorphs, both with different objectives. Humans usually have to survive against a time limit, completing objectives around maps in order to escape from the area as soon as possible. Necromorphs must tear them apart. Despite basing itself around an already successful gameplay formula, it’s not exactly a balanced one, with Necromorphs being a clearly more fun faction to fight along side whilst the humans are left without the true essence of survival that Dead Space is all about. A survival horror title could’ve done a hell of a lot worse in terms of multi-player, yet the existence of such a mode isn’t exactly justified here.

Be you a fan of survival horror or not, Dead Space 2 is a must play game that is forcing a franchise to gain momentum incredibly quickly. With challenging gameplay, beautiful and sickening visuals, a storyline that juggles both sci-fi and psychological thriller and set pieces which can stun you before killing you, it eradicates the cons and reinforces the pros that made the predecessor such a hit. Buy it, rent it, steal it, it doesn’t matter, just play it. What are you afraid of?