The airlock bursts open. As all matter, sound and humanity is dragged from the observation platform and into the gaping blackness, you feel your artificial oxygen supply kick in and your armored boots begin to lift from the floor. There’s a certain poetry to your struggle – as you tumble toward the vacuum, clawing out for anything to hold onto, the silent and ubiquitous expulsion seems somehow right. Gazing the other way now, at the golden surface of Saturn and the speckling of stars behind it, everything slows down as you imagine just letting go – just letting your torment, your visions and your burden all end.
A corpse floats past you, this one still human. Overtaken again with a sense of duty, you raise your plasma cutter and take aim on the controls of an emergency air seal. The shot connects, and you crash to the floor. Air comes sweeping back into the room, and you can hear your own heartbeat, muffled and whimpering beneath a steel shell. Still alive.
Such is the world of “Dead Space 2,” the monstrous follow-up to Visceral Games’ sci-fi thriller that came out of nowhere back in 2008 and has haunted players’ dreams ever since. The sequel doesn’t do anything revolutionary, but it doesn’t need to: By changing up the setting, fleshing out the cast and packing in plenty of jaw-dropping moments, “Dead Space 2” raises the bar for horror games and sets 2011 off with a bang.
It’s been a few years since our first adventure with space engineer Isaac Clarke, and the iconic man in armor isn’t doing much better since his traumatizing experience aboard the USG Ishimura (an adventure that isn’t required to enjoy “Dead Space 2” but that I’d recommend anyway). He’s racked with guilt over encouraging his girlfriend Nicole to work on a deep-space mining vessel that recovered a mysterious, monolithic object. This “Marker” controls people’s thoughts and unleashes a scourge of infectious “necromorphs” that re-animate corpses. It’s also giving Isaac vivid hallucinations and a wicked headache, and he’s out for answers. Oh, and to shoot monsters.
At first, the story of “Dead Space 2” didn’t keep me on tenterhooks – you’re out to destroy the Marker, bad people want to stop you and there are nasty aliens. It was enough to keep me going, but I was invested in the action more than the plot. Eventually, though, the game focuses more on Isaac’s internal struggles and visions, which become downright compelling.
Like any horror game, “Dead Space 2” has its share of cheap thrills. Enemies burst out of vents and pipes, floors give way and bad guys sneak up and get you from behind. But while it does jump-scares as well as anyone, the game’s real draw is the ambience. As you explore Saturn’s derelict space station, “The Sprawl,” you’ll be awestruck by how flickering service lights and long shadows can keep you on edge, wondering just what happened before you passed through. Objects dance and twirl in a zero-G ballet, and you might see a hand or leg float by with blood freely oozing out.
And like the original, the sound design is really king here: Deep, hollow clangs resonate as shadowy figures slither into service pipes; frantic screams and powerful gun blasts are muffled and cut short in the vacuum of space; an unseen presence whispers “Isaac…” behind dissonant harmonies. The sense of isolation and hopelessness is palpable if not oppressive, and the game is great for it.
In a break from the deliberate, explorative pace of the original game, “Dead Space 2” has one boot planted in the slow-burn realm of intellectual horror and another in the in-your-face world of action movies. Like our dear friend Isaac, that might sound a little schizophrenic at first. But for the most part, this works to the game’s advantage: It’s hard to lose interest when you’re not sure if a quiet, solemn trek through a corridor could take a sudden turn as an enormous, tentacled mutant pierces through the floor, grabs you around the leg and drags you out into the vacuum of space. You might feel bogged down once in a while by repetitive (though mercifully short) puzzles and the occasional trek through a not-so-scary air vent, but on the whole, the game does a great job of taking the action up a notch without losing its identity as an atmospheric horror show.
Like the pace of his adventure, Isaac’s abilities have been ramped up a bit. He moves a bit faster and hits a bit harder, and I felt a little more empowered when I was running low on ammo. His stasis and kinesis abilities are more useful as well, letting you freeze enemies in place or create local zero-G fields around objects and hurl them across the environment. You can even rip the scythe-like limbs straight off enemies, then fire them back and impale them on the wall. Badass, to say the least.
But the meat of combat is still centered on dismembering foes with big, fancy guns. “Dead Space 2” thankfully ups the ante in the weapons department, but that comes with its share of minor problems. Most weapons from the original game are back with welcome improvements – the plasma cutter can set enemies on fire if you upgrade it, and the pulse rifle can fire grenades. There are a few new toys like an electrified spear gun and proximity mines that mix up the combat, but most players will find a few favorites early on and save their resources for ammo and upgrades. And, despite the expanded arsenal, the game suffers from a few balancing issues. If I had chosen to, I could have hacked my way through most of the game using only the chainsaw-like “ripper,” which tears most enemies to pieces as they charge towards you.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the game’s multiplayer component, but frankly, it’s barely worth bringing up. The matches are repetitive, the maps aren’t very interesting and it feels odd to take control of a spindly alien, if you’re on team necromorph. It’s common for big publishers like Electronic Arts to shoehorn multiplayer into games these days, but it really doesn’t fit in the “Dead Space” mythos.
“Dead Space 2” isn’t always an easy game to play. At times it overloads the senses, and at others it’s exhausting on an emotional level. But that’s exactly what makes it great – you never know what’s coming, and, like a masochistic addiction, the pleasure always exceeds the pain. If you can stomach it, “Dead Space 2” is simply not to be missed.
Score: 9/10