Journal RogueyWon's Journal: Review - Dead Space 2 1
I'd been looking forward to Dead Space 2 for quite some time. I think this was partly a result of the oddities of the seasonal games release cycle; there were no other releases I was particularly interested in between Gran Turismo 5 at the end of November and Dead Space 2 at the end of January. Even though I have a collection of "never got around to" titles sat on the back burner, I was pretty desperate for something new by the time DS2 hit the shelves.
However, there was more to it than that. The original Dead Space struck me as a flawed masterpiece; there was some excellent fiction driving it, the creature and weapon designs were excellent and the game generally looked and felt "right". However, it was hampered by occasional control issues, a plot that rather lost its way in the final act and issues with the pacing that detracted from the tension in the second half of the game.
Since then, we've had the rather excellent Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii (and now PS3), which is pretty much my favorite rail shooter of all time and far more intelligent than anything I had ever thought could emerge from that particular genre. We've also had the Dead Space: Ignition interactive comic book/minigame collection, about which, quite frankly, the less said the better.
Some of the pre-release publicity for Dead Space 2 had me rather worried; it sounded like they'd shifted some focus towards multiplayer (lacking from the original), which many games allow to undermine the quality of the singleplayer campaign. It also sounded like they'd gone in a more "action game" direction, with big Call of Duty-style set-pieces replacing the exploration and tension of the original.
The game is now out and I've played through the singleplayer campaign in its entirety on the 360, using the middle (of 5) difficulty settings. I've also messed around a little with the multiplayer. In addition, I picked up the PS3 port of Dead Space: Extraction off the Playstation Network, though that's a topic for another post. I thought I'd offer some thoughts - and a review - of DS2, following the same criteria I used for my earlier Gran Turismo 5 review.
Graphics - 8/10
Dead Space 2 is a good looking game. In a purely technical sense, it is on a par with the "best in class" and is as good as we are likely to see from the current generation console hardware. In all likelihood, outside of a small range of PC games, technical standards in graphics are not likely to advance now for several years and DS2 is therefore "as good as it gets" for the time being.
Of course, technical specifications aside, the quality of the artwork and visual designs can have a huge impact on how good a game looks and it's here that current-gen console games have a chance to stand out from the crowd. DS2 stacks up well in this respect. The game uses a broader range of colours and designs for its environments than the original; there's no shortage of grey and brown corridors and storage bays, but there are also more colourful living quarters and
psychadelic neon shopping districts to explore. One particularly effective section has the player exploring an infected elementary school, with the brightly coloured walls and cheery artwork contrasting sharply with the more gruesome signs of infection.
And "gruesome" is a word that you can't get away from when discussing DS2, particularly once you look at its creature designs. Many of the creatures in DS2 return from the original game with only minor facelifts; the overwhelming visual influence is still John Carpenter's "The Thing", with a touch of "Event Horizon" mixed in for good measure. There are a few new additions, however, which tend to be suitably horrifying. It's good to see that the designers have tended away from "writhing masses of tentacles" this time in favour of more defined horrors.
There are a few sour notes; some of the weapon effects look a little lame and the animations for some of the Necromorphs are more convincing than others. However, these are minor niggles; on balance, this is a visually impressive game.
Sound - 9/10
For the most part, DS2 has an excellent repetoire of sound effects and knows how to deploy them. As you make your way through the Sprawl (the gigantic space station that DS2 is set on), it will creak and groan alarmingly. Odd environmental effects combine with half-heard whispering voices and some of the creepiest BGM ever heard in a game to ensure that the sound really ratchets up the tension.
The combat sounds are similarly impressive. The shriek of rage that certain necromorphs emit when they sight you can have a real bowel-loosening effect. Better still, these shrieks don't happen every time; sometimes, your first warning of an approaching enemy is the sound of a footstep right behind you.
Voice acting is consistently well done.
If there's a small negative on the sound front it centres around a particular type of enemy; a strange mollusc like creature which attaches itself to a wall and spits explosive goo-balls at you. These creatures make a loud and irritating sound. This is helpful in a way; the creatures are otherwise very difficult to spot, but the sounds here do tend to emphasise one of the more irritating sections of the gameplay - the hunts for these limpets so that you can walk across a room safely.
Gameplay - 9/10
I'll talk here about the actual shooter aspects of the game, leaving the flow of the campaign for the next section.
Things are somewhat improved from the original Dead Space. The controls have been tweaked and now feel substantially more intuitive. It's certainly much more comfortable to go throwing statis blasts around during combat than it was in the original. I do, however, still have some reservations about kinesis. The game clearly expects you to use this during combat, but I found selecting the item I wanted to pick up too imprecise, and aiming too unwieldy, for it to really be intuitive.
Combat follows more or less the same pattern as in the first game; the Necromorphs are relatively slow and unintelligent by the standard of enemies in third person shooters. However, this shouldn't be taken as a criticism; the relatively slow speed of the enemies is offset by the need for highly precise fire, focussed on their limbs, to take them down. Besides, there are a few faster and smarter enemies in there, who stalk you and use hit-and-run tactics to grind you down. These make a good change of pace.
Overall, combat in DS2 is an extremely solid experience, which improves on some of the rough edges that were on show in the original. This is fortunate, because it must be admitted that there isn't all that much variety. The number of necromorph types on display is still quite small, although most of them receive "hardened" upgrades later in the game. The variety of weapons, however, along with their myriad upgrade options, does help to keep things fresh.
Outside of combat, while the game is as fiercly linear as most other third person shooters of this generation, there's a good deal of exploration in search of secrets to be done, with some nice rewards for the more adventurous gamer (as well as some eye-wateringly difficult ambushes).
Difficulty overall is, on the third of five difficulty settings, at the higher end of the spectrum for the genre. Ammunition is never plentiful and the player can't sustain more than a few hits. The game did seem to push health kits at me more often when I was low on health - which may be coincidence, or may be evidence of a Left 4 Dead style director system at work.
Speaking of Left 4 Dead, it's very much obvious that Valve's effort has provided the inspiration for the multiplayer portion of DS2, which features teams of survivors working together towards objectives. However, in my experience, the pacing and the flow of the multiplayer doesn't really work. If you are buying this game, buy it for the campaign and don't expect to get much out of online play. I should note that the game has no co-op campaign options, but I'm not sure that such an option would really "work", anyway.
Structure - 10/10
At the heart of Dead Space 2 is its singleplayer campaign. One thing I should get out of the way now is that, by the standards of the genre, this is a lengthy campaign. My first playthrough clocked in at eleven and a half hours and I'm pretty sure I wasn't even close to finding every secret in the game. Given that I beat the Gears of War games in around six hours apiece, that's not bad going at all.
The story takes the player, once again in the boots of Isaac Clarke, through the midst of a necromorph outbreak on a large space installation known as the Sprawl. A nightmarish opening sequence, in which the player controls a straightjacketed Isaac as he flees waves of attacking necromorphs, sets the scene. From there, the game takes the player through a hospital, living quarters, a shopping district, a school and countless industrial facilities.
I confess that I was worried that, removed from the Ishimura, DS2 would lack some of the sense of "place" that you got from the original game. Yes, backtracking in general is not a good thing, but what is good is to get a feel for a location and see how it changes over the course of the game. This is something that the original did extremely well. Happily, DS2 does it just as well, if not better. Without wishing to spoiler too much, players may find that some of the locations they got to know in the first game are still relevant.
The game's pace is also much better than I had feared from the previews and early reviews. Yes, there are a few set-pieces, but while impressive, they are generally short and do not dominate the experience. The emphasis is still upon tense situations in tight spaces. Moreover, while the onslaught of enemies does pick up pace later in the game, there is one magnificent section, around three quarters of the way through the game, where everything goes quiet for a substantial period of time, which is nerve-wracking stuff.
The plot is generally very good and does a better job of holding itself together than the first game's did. That said, there is a distinct "middle installment in a trilogy" feel this time around.
Longevity - 7/10
I've already noted that the campaign is longer than you'd expect for this genre (almost three times the length of Vanquish). There's a fair bit of replay value to boot. Upgrading all of the weapons just isn't possible on a single playthrough and with the top-tier weapon upgrades often substantially changing a weapon, this leaves quite a lot more to see.
There aren't any branching plot paths or alternative endings, but you can't have everything I guess.
Overall (not an average) - 9/10
For the most part, my pre-release misgivings about Dead Space 2 were unfounded. This is a seriously good horror-themed third person shooter, which, with its lengthy and well designed campaign, provided excellent value for money.
Previous installments in this series have tended to fare better in terms of review scores than sales numbers (particularly poor, neglected Extraction). Given that EA actually seem to have put a bit of marketing power behind Dead Space 2, the series might finally taste the commercial success it deserves. There is mileage for at least one more main-series game in this franchise yet.
However, there was more to it than that. The original Dead Space struck me as a flawed masterpiece; there was some excellent fiction driving it, the creature and weapon designs were excellent and the game generally looked and felt "right". However, it was hampered by occasional control issues, a plot that rather lost its way in the final act and issues with the pacing that detracted from the tension in the second half of the game.
Since then, we've had the rather excellent Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii (and now PS3), which is pretty much my favorite rail shooter of all time and far more intelligent than anything I had ever thought could emerge from that particular genre. We've also had the Dead Space: Ignition interactive comic book/minigame collection, about which, quite frankly, the less said the better.
Some of the pre-release publicity for Dead Space 2 had me rather worried; it sounded like they'd shifted some focus towards multiplayer (lacking from the original), which many games allow to undermine the quality of the singleplayer campaign. It also sounded like they'd gone in a more "action game" direction, with big Call of Duty-style set-pieces replacing the exploration and tension of the original.
The game is now out and I've played through the singleplayer campaign in its entirety on the 360, using the middle (of 5) difficulty settings. I've also messed around a little with the multiplayer. In addition, I picked up the PS3 port of Dead Space: Extraction off the Playstation Network, though that's a topic for another post. I thought I'd offer some thoughts - and a review - of DS2, following the same criteria I used for my earlier Gran Turismo 5 review.
Graphics - 8/10
Dead Space 2 is a good looking game. In a purely technical sense, it is on a par with the "best in class" and is as good as we are likely to see from the current generation console hardware. In all likelihood, outside of a small range of PC games, technical standards in graphics are not likely to advance now for several years and DS2 is therefore "as good as it gets" for the time being.
Of course, technical specifications aside, the quality of the artwork and visual designs can have a huge impact on how good a game looks and it's here that current-gen console games have a chance to stand out from the crowd. DS2 stacks up well in this respect. The game uses a broader range of colours and designs for its environments than the original; there's no shortage of grey and brown corridors and storage bays, but there are also more colourful living quarters and
psychadelic neon shopping districts to explore. One particularly effective section has the player exploring an infected elementary school, with the brightly coloured walls and cheery artwork contrasting sharply with the more gruesome signs of infection.
And "gruesome" is a word that you can't get away from when discussing DS2, particularly once you look at its creature designs. Many of the creatures in DS2 return from the original game with only minor facelifts; the overwhelming visual influence is still John Carpenter's "The Thing", with a touch of "Event Horizon" mixed in for good measure. There are a few new additions, however, which tend to be suitably horrifying. It's good to see that the designers have tended away from "writhing masses of tentacles" this time in favour of more defined horrors.
There are a few sour notes; some of the weapon effects look a little lame and the animations for some of the Necromorphs are more convincing than others. However, these are minor niggles; on balance, this is a visually impressive game.
Sound - 9/10
For the most part, DS2 has an excellent repetoire of sound effects and knows how to deploy them. As you make your way through the Sprawl (the gigantic space station that DS2 is set on), it will creak and groan alarmingly. Odd environmental effects combine with half-heard whispering voices and some of the creepiest BGM ever heard in a game to ensure that the sound really ratchets up the tension.
The combat sounds are similarly impressive. The shriek of rage that certain necromorphs emit when they sight you can have a real bowel-loosening effect. Better still, these shrieks don't happen every time; sometimes, your first warning of an approaching enemy is the sound of a footstep right behind you.
Voice acting is consistently well done.
If there's a small negative on the sound front it centres around a particular type of enemy; a strange mollusc like creature which attaches itself to a wall and spits explosive goo-balls at you. These creatures make a loud and irritating sound. This is helpful in a way; the creatures are otherwise very difficult to spot, but the sounds here do tend to emphasise one of the more irritating sections of the gameplay - the hunts for these limpets so that you can walk across a room safely.
Gameplay - 9/10
I'll talk here about the actual shooter aspects of the game, leaving the flow of the campaign for the next section.
Things are somewhat improved from the original Dead Space. The controls have been tweaked and now feel substantially more intuitive. It's certainly much more comfortable to go throwing statis blasts around during combat than it was in the original. I do, however, still have some reservations about kinesis. The game clearly expects you to use this during combat, but I found selecting the item I wanted to pick up too imprecise, and aiming too unwieldy, for it to really be intuitive.
Combat follows more or less the same pattern as in the first game; the Necromorphs are relatively slow and unintelligent by the standard of enemies in third person shooters. However, this shouldn't be taken as a criticism; the relatively slow speed of the enemies is offset by the need for highly precise fire, focussed on their limbs, to take them down. Besides, there are a few faster and smarter enemies in there, who stalk you and use hit-and-run tactics to grind you down. These make a good change of pace.
Overall, combat in DS2 is an extremely solid experience, which improves on some of the rough edges that were on show in the original. This is fortunate, because it must be admitted that there isn't all that much variety. The number of necromorph types on display is still quite small, although most of them receive "hardened" upgrades later in the game. The variety of weapons, however, along with their myriad upgrade options, does help to keep things fresh.
Outside of combat, while the game is as fiercly linear as most other third person shooters of this generation, there's a good deal of exploration in search of secrets to be done, with some nice rewards for the more adventurous gamer (as well as some eye-wateringly difficult ambushes).
Difficulty overall is, on the third of five difficulty settings, at the higher end of the spectrum for the genre. Ammunition is never plentiful and the player can't sustain more than a few hits. The game did seem to push health kits at me more often when I was low on health - which may be coincidence, or may be evidence of a Left 4 Dead style director system at work.
Speaking of Left 4 Dead, it's very much obvious that Valve's effort has provided the inspiration for the multiplayer portion of DS2, which features teams of survivors working together towards objectives. However, in my experience, the pacing and the flow of the multiplayer doesn't really work. If you are buying this game, buy it for the campaign and don't expect to get much out of online play. I should note that the game has no co-op campaign options, but I'm not sure that such an option would really "work", anyway.
Structure - 10/10
At the heart of Dead Space 2 is its singleplayer campaign. One thing I should get out of the way now is that, by the standards of the genre, this is a lengthy campaign. My first playthrough clocked in at eleven and a half hours and I'm pretty sure I wasn't even close to finding every secret in the game. Given that I beat the Gears of War games in around six hours apiece, that's not bad going at all.
The story takes the player, once again in the boots of Isaac Clarke, through the midst of a necromorph outbreak on a large space installation known as the Sprawl. A nightmarish opening sequence, in which the player controls a straightjacketed Isaac as he flees waves of attacking necromorphs, sets the scene. From there, the game takes the player through a hospital, living quarters, a shopping district, a school and countless industrial facilities.
I confess that I was worried that, removed from the Ishimura, DS2 would lack some of the sense of "place" that you got from the original game. Yes, backtracking in general is not a good thing, but what is good is to get a feel for a location and see how it changes over the course of the game. This is something that the original did extremely well. Happily, DS2 does it just as well, if not better. Without wishing to spoiler too much, players may find that some of the locations they got to know in the first game are still relevant.
The game's pace is also much better than I had feared from the previews and early reviews. Yes, there are a few set-pieces, but while impressive, they are generally short and do not dominate the experience. The emphasis is still upon tense situations in tight spaces. Moreover, while the onslaught of enemies does pick up pace later in the game, there is one magnificent section, around three quarters of the way through the game, where everything goes quiet for a substantial period of time, which is nerve-wracking stuff.
The plot is generally very good and does a better job of holding itself together than the first game's did. That said, there is a distinct "middle installment in a trilogy" feel this time around.
Longevity - 7/10
I've already noted that the campaign is longer than you'd expect for this genre (almost three times the length of Vanquish). There's a fair bit of replay value to boot. Upgrading all of the weapons just isn't possible on a single playthrough and with the top-tier weapon upgrades often substantially changing a weapon, this leaves quite a lot more to see.
There aren't any branching plot paths or alternative endings, but you can't have everything I guess.
Overall (not an average) - 9/10
For the most part, my pre-release misgivings about Dead Space 2 were unfounded. This is a seriously good horror-themed third person shooter, which, with its lengthy and well designed campaign, provided excellent value for money.
Previous installments in this series have tended to fare better in terms of review scores than sales numbers (particularly poor, neglected Extraction). Given that EA actually seem to have put a bit of marketing power behind Dead Space 2, the series might finally taste the commercial success it deserves. There is mileage for at least one more main-series game in this franchise yet.
will work for Steam... (Score:2)
Thanks for the review. I'm just now playing through the first Dead Space, since Steam had a big sale on it a few weeks ago. Somehow it didn't hit my radar the first time around. I put great stock in your reviews, RogueyWon, so now I'm comfortable springing for DS2.
Thank goodness for that. I really had a problem getting comfortable with Dead Space's controls. I generally hav