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Dead Space 2

Started by Big Jack McBastard, February 11, 2011, 01:55:18 AM

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Big Jack McBastard

'What's this, a colony full of Necromorphs? Hang on I'll grab me welder and get fucking stuck in!' - Issac 'Arsey' Clarke.

He's gone a bit mental after the events on the Ishimura and it shows, once a lovely opening section of fleeing flesh hungry dead gits (while straitjacketed!) is over, he's all set for another round of shooting the limbs off the admittedly quite spry, dead folks (including kids and oh yes, babies). This time he's on Titan and there's a bit more life in the colony than in the previous installment. Right off the bat his suicidey missus from the first game gives him all kinds of grief in his mashed up noggin and does so up until.... well I'll leave it at that. Fellow loonies of one sort or another again vie for his attention through his snazzy watch/mp3 player/video projector. The Unitology mentalists have a man made Marker stashed there and surprise surprise it's causing bother, naturally Issac is just the chap to piss on their chips.

It's pretty damn stark and brutal [nb]
Spoiler alert
though the first exploding baby did make me laugh a little
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[/nb], along with the standard fare of grimy blood soaked bodies littering the place, some new Necros and the visceral deaths of other, less able survivors; there's the sounds of trapped and barricaded people warning you away from their rooms or begging for help, a Doom-esque moment with a crying baby locked in a room and who I assume was it's mother
Spoiler alert
desperately dragging her mutilated body across the floor outside only to die before making it to the door
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. A throat cutting suicide with a scalpel early on, eyeball surgery a fair bit later, which can go hideously wrong leading to one of the more charming new death animations. Others of note include loosing arms in airlocks, being beheaded with a speargun and-shooting-yourself-through-the-face, suicide.

Looks 'lovely' as ever and plays pretty much exactly as the first, the zero-g physics is fun, punching panels, bodies etc and seeing them fly and ricochet quite convincingly was satisfying and the transition scenes from one chapter of the game to the next are bloody beautifully done no loading screens means it's seamless for the most part and even gives you a bit of control while the madness plays out. I found that I shat myself roughly the same number of times as in the first, but in a few cases the developers have a cheeky pop and shit you up in ways you might not think are coming[nb]
Spoiler alert
the alarm clock was a favourite
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[/nb], some nice misdirection and ever so many; 'Oh fuck there's something behind me!' moments. My abiding memory of DS1 was that it was the loudest game I'd ever played and while it's toned down a little in this one, a decent sound system will doubtless give the impression of hell opening up all over again.

Oh yes, there's
Spoiler alert
another one of those bloody regenerating bastards stalking you
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in the penultimate section of the game too.

It's no Assassins Creed 2 in terms of it's story, but it does do well and ramps up the horrible factor quite nicely, it has Mulitplayer too, apparently, not sure if that's any cop as my piratey ways preclude me from such things it seems.

bitesize

loving this game at the mo. playing on PS3, i'm on about chapter 10 (i've just
Spoiler alert
got back on board the Ishimura, which i had no idea was coming and is awesome. love seeing all the environments from the first game all taped up and deserted.
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). dripping with atmosphere again, although i generally preferred the stark loneliness of the first game. fantastic sound design as well - i work as a sound designer for videogames, and it's great to see people really get creative with it, and even better to see people actually taking notice of it (it's very rare that sound design even gets a mention in a games review).

where i work, we made the spinoff Dead Space: Extraction game that came out on Wii last year, and is included as a bonus on the PS3 version - great game to work on, lovely to get to work with their audio assets from DS1 and to create our own stuff too. give it a try if you like Dead Space - it's an on-rails shooter but like no other (this one's actually good). got really well received by the critics but no bastard bought it (which is i guess why they got us to do a PS3 version to try + get people to actually play it).