Let's get the good stuff out of the way first, as that isn't as interesting. Yes, it's good. I'd even say really good. The atmosphere is great, the story and acting are good, the visuals are very good, the sound is excellent, the combat and action are entertaining and the great variety in the weapons helps it from becoming stale. If you like 3rd-person shooters or story-driven games I would recommend you check it out. You could certainly do a lot worse.
A little more indepth: You are once again Isaac Clarke, and you once again have to fight off loads of monster called Necromorphs with a variety of interesting weapons and a combat system that both allows and demands that you dismember your foes before they will stay down. You also have to attack their dead bodies to get loot out of them, which seems excessive, but technically they were dead to begin with.
The interesting twist this time around is that Isaac is slowly going mad from his Marker exposure in the first game. The game usually does an obvious tonal shift whenever he has an episode though, so you don't really have to worry about what is real and what isn't. Which is a shame, because if you had to constantly second-guess what you were seeing, hearing and doing it would make a much more terrifying experience.
The plot is basically that Alien plot. Monsters invade, people/soldiers are useless and die a lot and/or get turned into monsters themselves, some pillock thinks he can control the monsters, the authorities have bad intentions, and a group of people worship the monsters. But it is for the most part well written and well acted, so it's good. Good enough, at least.
Now for what we're really here for; the nitpicking. At least I am. If you aren't, you can stop reading now.
I much enjoyed the 10 hours or so it took me to get through the game, and I might even go for a second playthrough. But since I'm me I built up a list of complaints and nitpicks to nag at. What is life if you don't have anything to complain about? Boring. So without further ado; away we go!
First and foremost:
There are too many monsters. As I briefly mentioned; the game has a great atmosphere and it projects a sense of unease upon you almost constantly, but it never quite becomes horror because the game throws monsters at you in hordes all the time. They help diffuse the tension quite nicely by giving you something real to shoot at. Plus they are very noisy which also helps spoil the eerie moments. As Yahtzee so eloquently put it: a monster is scarier the less you see of it.
There was one section in the game where it was quiet for a prolonged period, to the point where it was getting quite unnerving as I constantly expected monsters to come jumping out, but they just didn't. I was actually quite relieved once the monsters finally came, and I will admit the first one managed to spook me quite nicely. But instead of letting the tension build again it started throwing the slavering hordes at me again and the game fell back into its non-scary normality.
For a game that wants to be survival horror it's like it's just trying too hard.
Secondly:
In some of the cutscenes it could be difficult to determine whether or not you were supposed to do something. I was actually killed a couple of times because I didn't realize the game suddenly demanded interaction from me. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it did annoy me enough to make my list.
In other situations I really wanted to interact, but the game felt I couldn't be allowed to mess with its precious script. Luckily these situations were extremely rare.
Thirdly:
Where are the bosses? Dead Space 1 had some huge and intense boss battles that provided great entertainment. In Dead Space 2 however I only ran into one, maybe two, creatures I'd describe as bosses, and both were fairly early on. Otherwise it was just more and more of the regular monsters, and while there is more variety of them this time I still felt a bit cheated. Oh, and there are these slightly larger monsters that come charging in sometimes, but they're all the same and not that tough if you know how to aim so I don't feel like they even qualify as mini-bosses; more like the Hunters in Halo.
Fourthly:
I felt like the story was falling apart at certain places, especially towards the end, and even more especially when the game's course of progress forced you to make some really stupid "choices". It is a very linear game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when the only way to progress was to do something I understood right away was a dumb idea... I got a little miffed. You're supposed to be a pretty clever guy, right? Surely you could come up with a better plan?
Other small issues... the whole "trap you in a room and throw a horde of monsters at you for you to kill before letting you out" thing was old and annoying already in the first game and really didn't need to be repeated here. It was always so obvious when it was going to happen as well that the few times where it looked like a sure thing, but didn't happen, surprised me way more.
In the first half of the game you can run into rooms which have windows that can be blown out to violently decompress the room. You usually find this out by accident. If you're too close you have no chance and you have to watch a lengthy and gory death animation before the game reloads to last checkpoint. If you're far enough away you can try to hit a small red target above the window to bring down a blast door and save yourself. I'm happy I played the game on a PC, because doing that kind of precision aiming with a gamepad would have been excruciating. While they add a nice touch to the authenticity, it still feels like a cheap way to get killed, especially with the lengthy death animation.
And a slight spoiler...
Why did another immortal Necro show up? Where did he come from and why? At least in DS1 there was an explanation, but here he just shows up and basically forces you to run through that part of the game instead of exploring your surroundings. I felt like the game was just griefing me at that part.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Despite all its issues, I still give the game my recommendation. It was entertaining and enthralling, it just wasn't that scary. I will end this article with a few pro-tips:
-If something has a blue light on it, you can interact with it 95% of the time.
-If you are in an elevator that can fit more than two people squeezed together, monsters will pop in to see how you are.
-If you're riding something and your helmet is on, monsters will pop in to see how you are.
-If you're crawling through a vent, you're strangely enough safe until you come back out.
-If a monster is lying on the ground unmoving and you're not sure if you killed it, then shoot it again. If it jumps up it was faking it, and if it drops loot it's definitely dead. If it doesn't drop loot or move, you already looted it.
That's all for this time, folks. Hope you enjoyed it. If not, then no biggie.
~Wulfy
A little more indepth: You are once again Isaac Clarke, and you once again have to fight off loads of monster called Necromorphs with a variety of interesting weapons and a combat system that both allows and demands that you dismember your foes before they will stay down. You also have to attack their dead bodies to get loot out of them, which seems excessive, but technically they were dead to begin with.
The interesting twist this time around is that Isaac is slowly going mad from his Marker exposure in the first game. The game usually does an obvious tonal shift whenever he has an episode though, so you don't really have to worry about what is real and what isn't. Which is a shame, because if you had to constantly second-guess what you were seeing, hearing and doing it would make a much more terrifying experience.
The plot is basically that Alien plot. Monsters invade, people/soldiers are useless and die a lot and/or get turned into monsters themselves, some pillock thinks he can control the monsters, the authorities have bad intentions, and a group of people worship the monsters. But it is for the most part well written and well acted, so it's good. Good enough, at least.
Now for what we're really here for; the nitpicking. At least I am. If you aren't, you can stop reading now.
I much enjoyed the 10 hours or so it took me to get through the game, and I might even go for a second playthrough. But since I'm me I built up a list of complaints and nitpicks to nag at. What is life if you don't have anything to complain about? Boring. So without further ado; away we go!
First and foremost:
There are too many monsters. As I briefly mentioned; the game has a great atmosphere and it projects a sense of unease upon you almost constantly, but it never quite becomes horror because the game throws monsters at you in hordes all the time. They help diffuse the tension quite nicely by giving you something real to shoot at. Plus they are very noisy which also helps spoil the eerie moments. As Yahtzee so eloquently put it: a monster is scarier the less you see of it.
There was one section in the game where it was quiet for a prolonged period, to the point where it was getting quite unnerving as I constantly expected monsters to come jumping out, but they just didn't. I was actually quite relieved once the monsters finally came, and I will admit the first one managed to spook me quite nicely. But instead of letting the tension build again it started throwing the slavering hordes at me again and the game fell back into its non-scary normality.
For a game that wants to be survival horror it's like it's just trying too hard.
Secondly:
In some of the cutscenes it could be difficult to determine whether or not you were supposed to do something. I was actually killed a couple of times because I didn't realize the game suddenly demanded interaction from me. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it did annoy me enough to make my list.
In other situations I really wanted to interact, but the game felt I couldn't be allowed to mess with its precious script. Luckily these situations were extremely rare.
Thirdly:
Where are the bosses? Dead Space 1 had some huge and intense boss battles that provided great entertainment. In Dead Space 2 however I only ran into one, maybe two, creatures I'd describe as bosses, and both were fairly early on. Otherwise it was just more and more of the regular monsters, and while there is more variety of them this time I still felt a bit cheated. Oh, and there are these slightly larger monsters that come charging in sometimes, but they're all the same and not that tough if you know how to aim so I don't feel like they even qualify as mini-bosses; more like the Hunters in Halo.
Fourthly:
I felt like the story was falling apart at certain places, especially towards the end, and even more especially when the game's course of progress forced you to make some really stupid "choices". It is a very linear game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when the only way to progress was to do something I understood right away was a dumb idea... I got a little miffed. You're supposed to be a pretty clever guy, right? Surely you could come up with a better plan?
Other small issues... the whole "trap you in a room and throw a horde of monsters at you for you to kill before letting you out" thing was old and annoying already in the first game and really didn't need to be repeated here. It was always so obvious when it was going to happen as well that the few times where it looked like a sure thing, but didn't happen, surprised me way more.
In the first half of the game you can run into rooms which have windows that can be blown out to violently decompress the room. You usually find this out by accident. If you're too close you have no chance and you have to watch a lengthy and gory death animation before the game reloads to last checkpoint. If you're far enough away you can try to hit a small red target above the window to bring down a blast door and save yourself. I'm happy I played the game on a PC, because doing that kind of precision aiming with a gamepad would have been excruciating. While they add a nice touch to the authenticity, it still feels like a cheap way to get killed, especially with the lengthy death animation.
And a slight spoiler...
Why did another immortal Necro show up? Where did he come from and why? At least in DS1 there was an explanation, but here he just shows up and basically forces you to run through that part of the game instead of exploring your surroundings. I felt like the game was just griefing me at that part.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Despite all its issues, I still give the game my recommendation. It was entertaining and enthralling, it just wasn't that scary. I will end this article with a few pro-tips:
-If something has a blue light on it, you can interact with it 95% of the time.
-If you are in an elevator that can fit more than two people squeezed together, monsters will pop in to see how you are.
-If you're riding something and your helmet is on, monsters will pop in to see how you are.
-If you're crawling through a vent, you're strangely enough safe until you come back out.
-If a monster is lying on the ground unmoving and you're not sure if you killed it, then shoot it again. If it jumps up it was faking it, and if it drops loot it's definitely dead. If it doesn't drop loot or move, you already looted it.
That's all for this time, folks. Hope you enjoyed it. If not, then no biggie.
~Wulfy