The original Dead Space was a nice sleeper hit back in 2008, probably the closest a game has come to Resident Evil 4, one of my favorite games of all time. Dead Space had a little less emphasis on over-the-top wackiness and instead went for some serious scares, but it worked very well. Probably the most interesting thing about the game was the new style of combat- rather than gunning for headshots (Halo, Call of Duty) or wildly spraying bullets (Left 4 Dead), the way to get through the game is by de-limbing the alien/zombie hybrid enemies known as necromorphs. Blowing their heads off is rarely effective, they'll still come at you and do plenty of damage. I found my strategy for the most part being to shoot off both legs at first, leaving the necromorph to slowly crawl your way using its hands- at this point blowing off an arm should be enough to put it down for good. Anyway, Dead Space 2 finds our protagonist, Isaac Clarke, in a more interesting story. While the original Dead Space had Isaac only speak a few grunts and the main objective was simply to get off of the necromorph-infested ship, Dead Space 2 fleshes out a much better story. The memories of a main character who died in the first game continue to haunt Isaac, and he quickly learns that the only way to stop his descent into madness is to destroy The Marker- a huge monolith that holds immense power but mostly makes people go crazy. The gameplay for the most part was just like Dead Space, but that's no problem. The original Dead Space didn't have any glaring flaws that needed to be fixed in its sequel, so the point here was simply to go bigger and better. And Visceral Studios did just that. While the journey did feel a bit more linear, there were many more memorable moments (alliteration, hey-oh) in 2- the first encounter with the dinosaur-like Stalkers, the deep-space fight with the Tormentor, the frenetic penultimate battle with the Regenerator (Fuck the Regenerator, that thing will haunt my nightmares. An all-powerful enemy who literally can't die? Scary!) and the final boss fight, a much more interesting battle than the one found in the original. So yeah, Dead Space 2 really worked great as a sequel, and I can't imagine anyone who enjoyed the first one would be let down at all.May 18, 2011
Dead Space 2
The original Dead Space was a nice sleeper hit back in 2008, probably the closest a game has come to Resident Evil 4, one of my favorite games of all time. Dead Space had a little less emphasis on over-the-top wackiness and instead went for some serious scares, but it worked very well. Probably the most interesting thing about the game was the new style of combat- rather than gunning for headshots (Halo, Call of Duty) or wildly spraying bullets (Left 4 Dead), the way to get through the game is by de-limbing the alien/zombie hybrid enemies known as necromorphs. Blowing their heads off is rarely effective, they'll still come at you and do plenty of damage. I found my strategy for the most part being to shoot off both legs at first, leaving the necromorph to slowly crawl your way using its hands- at this point blowing off an arm should be enough to put it down for good. Anyway, Dead Space 2 finds our protagonist, Isaac Clarke, in a more interesting story. While the original Dead Space had Isaac only speak a few grunts and the main objective was simply to get off of the necromorph-infested ship, Dead Space 2 fleshes out a much better story. The memories of a main character who died in the first game continue to haunt Isaac, and he quickly learns that the only way to stop his descent into madness is to destroy The Marker- a huge monolith that holds immense power but mostly makes people go crazy. The gameplay for the most part was just like Dead Space, but that's no problem. The original Dead Space didn't have any glaring flaws that needed to be fixed in its sequel, so the point here was simply to go bigger and better. And Visceral Studios did just that. While the journey did feel a bit more linear, there were many more memorable moments (alliteration, hey-oh) in 2- the first encounter with the dinosaur-like Stalkers, the deep-space fight with the Tormentor, the frenetic penultimate battle with the Regenerator (Fuck the Regenerator, that thing will haunt my nightmares. An all-powerful enemy who literally can't die? Scary!) and the final boss fight, a much more interesting battle than the one found in the original. So yeah, Dead Space 2 really worked great as a sequel, and I can't imagine anyone who enjoyed the first one would be let down at all.
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Seems a lot like the "growth" - or lack thereof - between Uncharted and Uncharted 2. "There's nothing WRONG with the first game, but how can we make the second one better in every single way?" The Dead Space franchise is somewhere on the cusp of my wish list, but that still places the games somewhere around 100th in my overall priority. Someday!
ReplyDeleteThe thing with Dead Space is that it's worth it to play the whole franchise- DS1, Extraction, then 2; whereas with Resident Evil you really only need to play 4, maybe 5 as well. It's tough to go back to the old ones.
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