Dead Space 2 Review:

Dead Space 2 is a good game. It's got high production value, decent writing / storyline, and is an impressive technological accomplishment. There are few horror/suspense/non-standard shooter games like Dead Space and Dead Space 2, and I appreciate when they're implemented well. I also appreciate science fiction storylines that don't insult my intelligence.

I will, however, probably never play Dead Space 2 again. Much like I haven't played the original Dead Space since I beat it some years ago. This is for two reasons: though additional playthroughs may introduce more frustrating and difficult gameplay, it won't introduce new gameplay, nor will it introduce any new story elements (at least, not without going the completionist route, wasting countless hours of life to get the super-special ending, if there is one, that I can just view on Youtube). At no point in either game are you given a choice about anything, you're either mowing something down, or listening to people going crazy.

The gameplay in DS2 is exactly the same as it was in DS1, except for maybe two or three additional monsters, which show up pretty few and far between. This means that if you had a strategy you liked in DS1, that strategy applies perfectly well to DS2. It also means that the weapons used in the game, while still fun examples of how industrial equipment can be used incorrectly, are the exact same thing. And, because the game has you stressed and frightened and clinging to whatever dear resources you've managed to find in monster's ribcages, you're not likely to explore outside of the standard fare. I played through almost the entire game sawing through horrifying monsters, which while efficient and satisfying, left me wishing I'd been given the opportunity to go at things a different way.

DS2 does, however, have some entertaining sequences. At one point, you have to launch yourself in a rocket-powered ejection seat at a planet, rather than away from it, all the while using your meager suit stabilizers to careen your way around space debris. It's fun as hell, but the sequences like this mostly exist towards the beginning of the game, and leave you at the end with about 3 hours worth of just dismembering room occupants, and then moving to the next room.

I'm not sure I'm sold on how DS2 changed its characterizations from DS1. In the first game, your game character, Isaac Clarke, is a non-speaking protagonist (the "heroic mime (tvtropes.org)," a la the Half-life games, the Dooms, the Quakes, some of the Bioshocks, Chrono Trigger, Portal, etc.), throughout which you never actually see Isaac's face. This works well, because not only does it project the player's own thoughts and feelings (mostly panic and fear) onto that of the protagonist, but because you feel like you're more fully interacting with the game through your actions, even if your game character isn't actually saying anything. It's also all the more unnerving in the first game because all you tend to hear from your character are grunts of pain when hit, labored wheezing when severely injured, and screams when you die.

And for some reason, in DS2, they decided to forego that, giving Isaac Clarke not only a face, but a voice, and considerable dialog. And in a game where you have almost no choice but to go forward, this meant that instead of reacting how I wanted to react to something, I had to instead listen to how somebody else decided Isaac Clarke would respond. The lines were believable, and the voice acting was very good. It's just a weird thing for them to change, particularly when it worked well in the first. I wonder if the non-inclusion of Clarke's dialog in the first game was more from a developmental effort standpoint, rather than a choice of the writers.

DS2 is a fun experience, even if it is extremely linear. As with the first game, it gives me an uneasy wariness around certain sizes of ventilation ducts. But like I said, I'll never be revisiting it.