Dead Space 2 (PC)

Oh hey, I've got a blog that I haven't posted in about 7 months. Sorry about that. I'll make it up to my nonexistent loyal readers by reviewing Dead Space 2. Obviously the sequel to Dead Space, which I have previously reviewed.

Dead Space 2 picks up some time after the events of the first one. In the opening cutscene Isaac Clarke finds himself being questioned by some scientist guys on a gigantic space station. They go over what happened during the last game for expository purposes, and then Isaac wakes up in a straight jacket while all hell breaks loose aboard the station. That's right! Isaac's old buddies, the Necromorphs are back and wasting no time slaughtering everyone! Your main objective becomes "get the fuck out of here!"

So DS2 almost literally throws you right into the action, which is not really a bad thing. Recall my rant on DS1's lack of scariness because of how you can kill everything? During the opening of DS2, you're stuck in a straight jacket. It's a very chaotic scene, and it actually manages to briefly make the Necromorphs scary for a while. Even once you're out of the jacket, it's still a while before you get an actual weapon and get back into the routine of "SEE MONSTER, SHOOT ARMS OFF, MOVE ON."

Unfortunately, Dead Space 2 does still suffer from that problem once you clear the first chapter. It's a bit saddening, because it is very obvious that it's at least trying to be scarier than its predecessor. The fact that the game is set on a residential space station gives it some some fairly wonderfully disturbing moments (especially considering that you're witnessing a Necromorph outbreak AS it's happening, rather than just seeing the aftermath), but it's still mostly just jump scares.

If anything, the changes Dead Space 2 has undergone have improved on its already good action game qualities, rather than its few good (if any) horror ones. Isaac has much more personality (also a face) this time, and seems to be fairly good at voicing the player's own opinions of the situation at hand. For instance, stomping on an enemy several times in a row will result in Isaac grunting, "Argh! Die! Fucker!" Barely audible in most cases, but I thought it was a nice touch.

Spoiler warning begins.


Sadly, Isaac is the only character to get any kind of development. The crazy guy just gets crazier until you predictably have to kill him, and the badass chick just stays the badass chick.

 Even the main antagonist throughout the game is never seen in person until seconds before the final boss. Seconds during which you kill him in a quicktime event. You never even really find out what his problem was or why he wants to kill Isaac so badly. Unless I'm just really bad at paying attention.

In fact, the entire ending just seems to come out of nowhere. Suddenly there's a giant marker that Isaac and the crazy guy apparently helped build, all the Necromorphs getting near if causes it to start sucking them in, and Isaac's hallucinatory dead girlfriend needs to kill him to complete the process.  Or something. The characters call it a "convergence event" but nobody ever explains what that actually means or why it's bad!

Spoiler warning ends.

There are several new types of Necromorph this time around, in addition to most of the originals. Most interestingly at first are the Stalkers. If you hear their sound, get a good look at them, and your first thought isn't "velociraptors" then something is wrong with you. These bastards are different from the other Necromorphs and are actually some of the scarier ones in the game for the sole reason that they HUNT YOU.

They seem unnervingly smart until you get their pattern down. They will charge at you, then run and hide behind a corner, and peek out at you. "Ha! What a dumb creature! Giving away his position like that!" You might say, as you go around the corner to dispatch the beastie- OH SHIT HE'S CHARGING AGAIN! Before you know it, you're on the ground and he's run off to hide again around a different corner. Unfortunately they're actually not nearly as clever as their first ambush might lead you to believe. Indeed, that first ambush is the only time I was actually afraid of them. Once you figure out their simple pattern, it becomes all to easy to blast their legs off mid-charge and leave them effectively harmless.

Another new enemy is the Puker. You get exactly one guess as to what he does. Time's up. He pukes acid at you. However, the damaging effects of the acid are the least of your worries, since it doesn't seem to really hurt you all that much. The main problem you will face when going against a Puker is that the acid slows you down a lot. This can cause serious trouble when you're facing a group of enemies, and is the reason a Puker should always be your primary target. They also have probably the most gruesome Isacc-killing scene when you lose a grapple with one. (Incidentally, this was the only enemy I ever lost a grapple with despite seriously trying to win.)

Strangely, with all those and more additions to the enemy team, nothing has really been done to make the bosses more interesting. In Dead Space you had a boss fight in zero-g, one you fought using the ship's turrets, and even one that was completely invincible! Dead Space 2's bosses are all just "shoot the big glowing weak spot until it dies," except for one fight which is 95% cutscene until you get a "shoot the explody thing" moment. Definitely a step backwards.

Which is disappointing because one of the bigger steps forward is the new and improved zero-gravity mechanic. Instead of just pointing, clicking and jumping to another part of the room, Isaac can now freely navigate areas with no gravity using little jets on his suit. It's fantastic, to be honest. I loved the zero-g sections of the first game, but the parts of DS2 where you actually fly around in space are just mind blowing, and they could have easily taken advantage of it for a boss fight or two. Instead, you get a couple of admittedly awesome scenes of falling through space at high speeds and carefully maneuvering around broken sections of the space station. They're fairly intense, but still only really serve to push Dead Space 2 further away from the horror genre and into action territory.

It's surprisingly easy to like the Dead Space series if you acknowledge that it sucks at horror and succeeds really well at action. Even if you're very easily scared, you'll come to expect all the jump scares they throw at you, but you'll still have fun desperately fighting off swarms of Necromorphs and running like hell after realizing you just fired your last plasma cutter shot. The story is a bit confusing and most of the characters except for Isaac are dull and forgettable, but Dead Space 2 makes some significant improvements on several aspects of the original, and  manages to be a fairly enjoyable game overall despite its few steps backwards.

8/10

Dead Space (PC)

THIS IS A SPOILER WARNING. I WILL POST THESE IF I INTEND TO GO INTO DETAIL ABOUT KEY PLOT POINTS IN A GAME. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SUCH THINGS, I INVITE YOU TO CEASE READING IMMEDIATELY.

If you've seen any of my past reviews of "horror" games on my DeviantART journal, you would know by now that I've had some issues with managing to fully enjoy certain aspects of them. Namely, the aspects of them that are supposed to be scary (and therefore actually BE horror games). Before I go into this review of Dead Space, I think it important to define what I personally consider to be scary.

Scary is being all alone with no weapons in a dark room hiding from something that is actively trying to murder you. Scary is hearing that thing moving around and having no idea whether or not it is even near you until you step on its toes.

Scary is NOT being armed to the teeth and surrounded by hideous mutated monsters that make more loud obnoxious screaming sounds than the fangirls at an anime convention.

In short, 90% of Dead Space is what I would call "not scary." This is not to say it is a bad game, though.

We begin with a team of people (including the main character, Isaac Clarke) responding to the sudden mysterious loss of contact with a gigantic ship in an abandoned sector of space. Their ship inexplicably crashes, leaving them stranded inside the aforementioned gigantic ship as they investigate the cause of the aforementioned mysterious loss of contact.

If you have to guess where it goes from here, you have no business being involved in any way with any science fiction stories. Ever.

It turns out the entire ship has been overrun by mutant alien zombies known as "Necromorphs,"  which are basically the Flood from Halo, only louder and less vulnerable to shotgun blasts.

The way you have to deal with these abominations is actually fairly clever, though, despite the cliche factor. You see, conventional anti-zombie warfare teaches us that headshots are the way to go. So no big deal, right? You just blast the head off that Necromorph charging at you and he should drop dead-

OH GOD HE'S STILL CHARGING! 

So you unload the rest of your ammo into the body, BUT IT'S STILL COMING OH CRAP!

That's right. Headshots pretty much don't count for shit in Dead Space. You need to remove individual LIMBS from these freaks to take 'em down. Chop off arms, legs, anything sticking out of the main body because anything fired at that main body isn't gonna do jack. And hey! How convenient! You just happen to be surrounded by high-powered mining tools whose SOLE PURPOSE IS TO CUT THINGS.

So yes. We revisit my main issue with every horror game ever: YOU CAN KILL EVERYTHING THAT WANTS TO EAT YOU, SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

No monster can be scary when all you need to do is blow its arms off. They don't even bother sneaking around or making quiet nerve-wracking noises. They just jump out screaming and start running at you. This is not scary, this is startling until it is done so often you expect it every time you open a fucking door! That decidedly non-human "corpse" on the ground? It's gonna attack you when you get close. Those other human corpses? Stomp them apart before an Infector comes along and brings them back. (Which will happen if there's more than 2 in a given area.)

One thing that does make them a bit interesting is that each type of Necromorph has a special "death scene" if they attack you in a certain way. Some of the enemies will start grappling with you, initiating a  button-mash quicktime event to free yourself. If you succeed, you kill it instantly (sometimes) in a short little scene. If you fail, IT kills YOU instantly in a short little scene. I suggest failing each one at least once for the entertainment value. In a particularly disturbing one, a small tentacle monster decapitates you and implants itself in your neck to take control of your body.

Dead Space's main problem is in its predictability. Anyone with a basic knowledge of horror storylines is going to be able to predict with uncanny accuracy what is going to happen next. Oh, one of your teammates is a badass black soldier guy? Guess who's not gonna make it off the ship? What's that? One of the scientists on the ship has survived and he knows how to stop the Necromorphs before they inevitably consume humanity? "Not if I have anything to say about it," says the plot.

In fact, the main character being an ordinary guy with no military training should clue you in that he's gonna be the only survivor of this incident.

Also, expect a major attack any time you complete a main objective. Do NOT pick up that key card unless you have ammo. They can sense when you've done something plot-relevant.

The only predictable plot twist I actually didn't see coming, but in hindsight really should have, was a certain character's betrayal. Scientist guy gets shot and the ship we were gonna take starts leaving before I even know what's going on. Then...

"Sorry, Isaac."

OH, YOU BITCH!

"Blah blah blah, conspiracy, blah blah, experiment, blah blah can't let you screw it up."

Oh, and Isaac's girlfriend you're supposed to be rescuing was a hallucination the whole time.

But enough about what the plot does wrong. Let's talk about what the game does right.

Dead Space actually has a very nice difficulty curve. You start out tripping over ammunition and facing relatively weak enemies. As the game progresses, you find yourself facing new enemy designs, and lamenting your sudden lack of ammo. This leads to some very intense situations and often barely making it out alive as you limp to the nearest save point.

And now, I fondly recall my most badass moment in Dead Space: One certain type of Necromorph has an explosive sac on its arm that self destructs when it gets close to you. This explosion also damages other enemies in the immediate area. I found myself near the end of the game, having just fought off another massive wave of Necros and considerably light on ammo. Another wave decided to attack, headed by one of these suicide bombers. I dismembered his explosive arm and it rolled over to me. I ran out of ammo and was getting slashed from all directions when I noticed it on the ground. Seeing that I still had a reasonable amount of health, I stomped it. Boom. No more Necros. I like a game that encourages this kind of desperate creativity.

Part of your equipment is the "stasis module" which is basically a toned-down version of the bullet-time effect in F.E.A.R. I think it's actually more useful here, though because it only slows down what you aim it at, rather than everything around you. It's used to slow down malfunctioning machinery, and of course some of the faster Necros.

In addition to the stasis module, you're equipped with the "kinesis module" which is basically the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2, or the telekinesis Plasmids from Bioshock. It allows you to pick things up and throw them.

There are also sections of the game that require maneuvering in zero gravity. These are very well designed and fairly disorienting (in a good way.) One boss fight takes place in zero gravity, and is extremely difficult if you forget that fact. You can't outrun massive tentacles, but you can jump to the other side of the room.

Dead Space is an enjoyable action game with decent atmosphere. It's just that the enemies, while somewhat uniquely designed, lack all pretense of subtlety and therefore are incapable of producing anything more than occasional heart-stopping jump scares. The level designs are linear enough to easily figure out where to go, but with enough side paths and alternate routes to have fun exploring. The story is cliched beyond all reason, but it's hard to think about it when your legs are being torn off.

In the future, when mankind is out exploring the galaxy, if we ever "mysteriously lose contact" with a ship, just send in the guy you brought along to fix the comm systems with no weapons. He'll fix everything intentionally or otherwise.

Dead Space gets a 7.5/10