HEAR YE!!! HEAR YE!!! My followers, I have fallen ill with the fever. It claims a gamer at one point in their life, usually after completing a game. Their senses begin to dull. Food and drink taste as dry as the desert sun. Their minds are driven completely mad as if their brains were melting within their own skulls. Rhyme nor reason can sate their appetite. Only one thing can calm the fever: more. More of the game we just finished. More DLC or expansion packs. We simply lust for more of that game that brought us so much joy in a short time. We don’t want it; we just need it. The fever consumes us. I, the Video Game Doomsayer, have fallen ill with this fever.
No doubt it set in as I finished the Dead Space remake. As the credits rolled by, I felt it creep in. I simply wanted more Dead Space. I wanted more crawling around in the deep dark corners of space. I wanted my heart to race as I was carefully cutting away at necromorph’s limbs only to see more creeping in behind me. I needed that horror game rush. It was at that moment I knew the only thing that could quell the madness. So join me, my loyal followers, as I tell the tale of Dead Space 2.
The story of Dead Space 2 begins in an asylum aboard Titan Station, a space station located on the Saturn moon, Titan. Having been rescued after destroying the Marker on Aegis VII, the government has thrown Isaac into an asylum to cover up the previous game’s events. Upon learning there is another Marker somewhere on Titan Station, Isaac breaks out of the asylum as a necromorph outbreak strikes. Vowing to avoid a similar event to the one on the Ishimura, Isaac ventures through the desolate streets of the Titan Station to find and destroy the Marker.
Dead Space 2 is certainly looking to expand on the Dead Space mythos, trading the Ishimura’s quiet isolated feeling for the panic of the Titan Station’s hectic streets. Dead Space 2 certainly feels like it needs to be a bigger and bolder sequel. Fortunately, the primary gameplay of slicing off limbs of the necromorph like a sci-fi surgeon is still as satisfying as it is nerve-wracking. Much like my complaints with the original and remake, I enjoy so much of the Dead Space formula that most of the complaints I am planning on laying at Dead Space 2’s feet are more nit-picks than serious grievances.
The lighting has received a huge upgrade from the original. Gone are the vast well light rooms that were all over the Ishiruma. Titan Station has much more pitch-black corners, and some are even lit by small candles giving a cult feeling to some of the creepier locations. Unfortunately, the recent remake has shattered the illusion with the lighting in Dead Space 2. The lighting in the Dead Space remake isn’t great because it shrouds the Ishimura in darkness. Its strength lies in the few light sources still working on the ship. Small emergency lights flickering on and off. You think you catch a glimpse of a shadow, but it’s just the lights playing tricks on you. You don’t get this with the candles lighting the dark halls within Dead Space 2. Certainly, it is unfair to compare the lighting engine of these two games, especially since one is twelve years old. I applaud them for their efforts to push the lighting as far as they could.
The various puzzles also seemed to be more impressive than I remembered. The story only vaguely touches on the fact that Isaac is an engineer, but there are a lot more puzzles that play into his previous line of work. There is a hacking mini-game that asks you to line up a rotating triangle within three octagons which makes it look like Isaac is trying to reroute the wiring. You have to align fuses with a specific pattern within a giant circuit room. The puzzle that certainly impressed me the most was unplugging the life support system to put out a fire and then scrambling to plug it back in before Isaac’s oxygen ran out. I have a sinking suspicion that the puzzles within Dead Space 2 did not get the love they deserved back in the day.
The environmental design of the space station might have gotten too much credit. Now I am not saying the locations within Dead Space 2 are bad, just not as memorable as the ones from Dead Space. Even before I played the remake, I always remembered every location within the Ishimura. This might be due to Dead Space’s slower pacing and backtracking to previous levels. Dead Space 2 feels like a rollercoaster whipping by the church, the preschool, back on the Ishimura, and so on. The second I try to get immersed in these spaces I am hurried along like a child on a field trip to the museum.
Thankfully, I am here to cut off the limbs of necromorphs, not worry about environmental design. Most of the old cast of enemies make a return for the sequel with the exception being the Twitchers, who I won’t miss after the remake. However, Dead Space 2 is under the obligation as a sequel to add new enemies into the mix. Let’s start with the puker, a ranged enemy that spits at you from afar. I see where the Dead Space remake pulled him from. I still think this enemy fills the same role as the Lurker and is nowhere as interesting.
Next on the surgeon’s table is The Pack: a small child-like necromorph that usually hunts in, you guessed it, a pack. During my younger years, I thought these enemies intimidating as they barrel down towards you screeching and howling, but now, I think they are just dull. The Pack doesn’t show signs of body horror that the necromorphs are known for. They just look like every other pale child enemy pulled from the dozen of other horror games. To add insult to injury, the Pack doesn’t require any strategic dismemberment that’s core to the series. You just shoot them once and they die. Use an explosive and they fall like bowling pins.
At least the Pack’s younger sibling, the Crawlers, are more in line with the core of Dead Space. The Crawler’s explosive sac on its back at least gives you a target to aim for. Again, like the Pack, I initially thought these enemies were eerie at first, but as I got older they don’t have the same body horror as other necromorphs. The Lurker remains the superior necromorph baby.
What could be worse than these enemies? The Cyst. The flesh walls of The Corruption have reached their teenage years as the Cyst act as both pimples and explosive mines. They hide in dark corners hoping a crazed engineer will walk next to them so they can spit an explosive at them. Thankfully, they make this loud groan giving away their position and they are mostly found in empty hallways. They mainly test to see if you are paying attention but doesn’t this highlight the issue with these newer enemies? These enemies aren’t new pieces on a chessboard like previous necromorphs. They aren’t pawns; they are just fodder. Fodder that you don’t even want to waste precious plasma cutter ammo on. I got to the point where I was only using my pulse rifle on these enemies and that weapon is the blandest weapon in the Dead Space series.
I will give Dead Space 2 some credit, these aren’t the only new enemies on display. An enemy inspired by Jurassic Park’s velociraptors has been added; appropriately named the Stalker. The raptor-like creatures will try to get the flank on you and charge at you like a raging bull. There is certainly some tension as you pan around the environment trying to spot the Stalkers peaking its head out from cover. Unlike our other adolescent-like enemies, you can shoot off the Stalker’s legs and watch as they viciously crawl at you like other necromorphs. However, most of the time, I just lay down a mine from the new mine detonator weapon and watch as the Stalker barrel right into the explosion. A bit anticlimactic if I am honest.
There have weirdly been a lot of new weapons added to Dead Space 2 that seemed focused on doing mass area of effect damage rather than pin-point dismemberment. The Mine Detonator is a prime example, but we also have weapons like the Javelin gun. Rather than surgically remove limbs from necromorphs, simply fire the Javelin gun to pin a necromorph against the wall. You can also use the Rivet gun secondary fire to launch a shrapnel bomb into a group of enemies. Folly is this ambition to turn Dead Space 2 into every other mindless shooter. Am I not here to cut off the limbs of the necromorphs as many of the characters suggest in the first few chapters? So why give me tools unfit for such a job?
This is probably the main issue with Dead Space 2 as a whole. It so clearly wants to move away from its eerie isolated feel of the first game for something more tolerable for mass audiences. A mere shooter with horror-themed imagery draped over it. We have traded the quiet unnerving hallways for the ghost of Nicole screaming in Isaac’s face every other minute. Some of these moments are well done such as Nicole ambushing us, trying to stick a syringe in our eyes; only for us to realize she is not there and Isaac is only fighting himself. Only this moment is undercut by the four other times she tried to scream in our faces earlier. Dead Space 2 is competent enough to realize the first title carried a similar atmosphere to the first Alien film. Naturally, it would make sense to build Dead Space 2 in a similar fashion to Aliens. Unfortunately, this feels more like Alien 3.
Want more proof? Go check out the marketing campaign for this game called “Your mother hates Dead Space 2.” I love the Dead Space series, but my god is this hard to watch. The pure definition of tone deaf.
As the credits rolled on Dead Space 2, I can’t help but feel my fever to play more Dead Space fade. Dead Space 2 is certainly not a bad game. Nor is it a bad Dead Space game unlike the bastardized Dead Space 3. The skeleton of the game I loved is still in there. It has just gone the way of most horror stories as they desperately try to appeal to more fans. The quiet chilling moments are subbed out for more monsters screaming in your face. The original Dead Space only had Nicole jump-scare you once toward the end. I have lost count of how often she’s done it in Dead Space 2. It doesn’t make Dead Space 2 an ill-forgotten game, more just crass and crude. A lot of that early video game immaturity is coursing through Dead Space 2.
I know EA is wondering if people are interested in a remake of Dead Space 2 and 3. Personally, I think Dead Space 2 would need a lot of work to be brought up to par with the Dead Space remake. Honestly, it is time to pull a page out of Capcom’s book and start over the way they did for Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 7. Let someone take a fresh stab at Dead Space 4 rather than try to fix everything that has cursed this sequel.
