Dead Space 2, an Alien-View

The following is by Bo_Fox. As with everything that we publish at AlienBabelTech, the opinions expressed are solely those of the individual writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and the opinions of the rest of the ABT staff. –Mark Poppin, ABT Senior Editor

“This here is not a review, but an Alien-View”

Everybody is talking about Dead Space 2 since Visceral Games released it a month ago.  Is Dead Space 2, an over-the-shoulder third-person shooter genre, a disappointment?  Or, is it going to meet your expectations?  Sorry, no blunt answer will be given here, but this Alien-view will point out the highlights and the shortcomings.  It will also be a guide that gives some hints and workarounds to undertake, for better enjoyment of the game.

First, let’s take a quick rewind to the past.  Since a few years passed after Doom 3 came out, gamers were starving once again for a similar horror-type shooter game.  Dead Space 1 was just the fix that they needed to fulfill this raving hunger.  Its success has contributed a great deal to the anticipation of Dead Space 2.

Dead Space 2 takes place on Saturn’s moon, Titan, 3 years after Dead Space 1 ended sometime in the 23rd century.  A fully-fledged mining city there is rather massive – it makes the game feel a bit more open than the confinement of a single spaceship in Dead Space 1.  Who doesn’t like the future?  Skyscrapers?

It is mostly a dark game that is yet a bit more colorful than the first in some parts.  The element of darkness is totally conducive to spine-tingling, bone-chilling horror.  For me, it raised goosebumps on my neck, arms and legs 23 times the first play-through.  The sound and music really did contribute a lot to the fear.  Oh yes, there is just as much blood and gore as the predecessor.  If you like the gore, make sure to die in every way possible, so that you don’t miss any of the different possible cut-scenes of gory death animations.

Even though it was pretty dark in some places, the main guy that you play as, named Isaac Clarke, is no longer silent, and is now making conversations with some people [NPCs] throughout the game.  This alone makes the sequel have a far less isolated feel to it.  Some gamers might be disappointed, preferring the isolated feel that makes it as grim and scary as possible.

The story is great.  It touched me at the plot’s climax; the voice and cinematic acting really did intrigue me into emotional feelings.  An exception is the very end, which felt rather lame.  I would’ve preferred to just fight some stupid gigantic monster like in Dead Space 1.

A helluva lot of time was wasted searching for ammunition and health packs in every room.  I had to stomp on dead corpses to find randomly-generated ammo and hunt around every corner of the room for power cells hidden like Easter eggs laid by the developer.  At least it’s not as bad as Bioshock where a completionist gamer would spend half of the time searching around and picking objects out of corpses rather than just playing the game the more fun way.

Like in System Shock, Deus Ex, or Bioshock, the weapons can be upgraded.  The interface actually looks somewhat like Deus Ex, with a certain number of slots that your armor has for carrying items.  Also, the rig (armor and health) can be boosted by buying a new upgraded rig suit at a “store” that looks like a virtual vending machine.  Successfully managing your money by wisely buying and selling items is not too challenging.  If the game becomes too hard at any point, you could always change the difficulty on-the-fly.

With a few more new weapons that were not found in Dead Space 1, I just had to play the game over again so I could experience maxing-out every single one of them.  It was just too tantalizing to not know what the upgrades could do with the weapon’s alternate-fire mode.

The artificial intelligence of monsters are what one would expect of semi-dumb necromorphs (zombie-like monsters that use human corpses as hosts).  One new monster that was not in Dead Space 1 does show much improved “intelligence”, acting like a bird-reptile with a long neck so its head can stick above tall objects or lean past the corners to see where you are at, while staying hidden.  If you look carefully, you’d spot them “peeking” at you, and you had be better prepared with weapons when they’re about to attack you.  Watch out! – like in DS1, they still crawl through vents to reach other rooms (although not as often as in DS1).

Sadly, the notion of the monsters jumping out of vents whenever you cross an invisible line in the room (in about half of all the rooms in the game) is a bit reminiscent of the closet-spawning monsters of Doom 3.  Inevitably setting off these “trigger-traps” one too many times makes the gameplay feel kinda dumbed-down.

Multiplayer added almost nothing to the game.  While the necromorphs vs survivors mode, which is the only mode available for multiplayer, might seem exciting at first – a lot like Left 4 Dead – it quickly gets boring with just one repetitive mode and only a few maps.  Perhaps it is the steep $59 price that keeps it from getting so popular yet, or perhaps it will just never take off.

FUN FACTOR: It’s more fun than Bioshock 2 and Quake 4, but playing it twice within a month might change your mind.  Wait a bit longer for a replay and resist the temptation to play the “New Game+” mode where you can carry over your collected ammo and power-up’s into the new game.  That way, it’s almost just as scary and fun the second time around.

Check out the next page for more advice, advanced tips, and if you must have a review score – a number rating squeezed out of me with a gun to my head by the editor.