AustinL
2011
This review contains spoilers
Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens, are two completely different movies, and should be judged accordingly, in my opinion. Alien is an atmospheric, perfectly paced horror classic, and Aliens is a bombastic action movie. I adore both of them equally, but for different reasons, and the same applies to Dead Space 1 and 2.
Dead Space was a humble game, it didn't have any previous source material to live up to, all it sought out to do was give the player a Resident Evil game in space, and it succeeded with that, and then some. The foreboding atmosphere, the feeling of loneliness and solitude, the contrast between the paranoid silence and choas, all of those things combined with the art direction and genius UI helped separate it from It's contemporaries and give it a unique identity.
Dead Space 2 on the other hand, is a high octane, set-piece filled follow-up, that at times, feels more like Part 2 than a regular sequel. I played this game right after finishing the original, and it very much plays like one 16 hour narrative divided into two parts, one part the survival horror game, the other a horror action game.
Nearly everything from the first game has been improved, the zero-gravity sequences, the graphics and textures, the controls, everything is a massive step up from the original, for better or worse.
Giving Issac a voice this time around is bittersweet, it makes sense to give him voiced lines this time around, it serves the purpose of the story, but the issue is that Issac never has anything interesting to say, it's almost always him saying to the effect of "I need to do this, I need to go here, what the heck is that?" I think this game's story would have functioned exactly the same if Isaac was a silent protagonist again, and that's a huge problem.
The reason I love this game though, is twofold, one is the really creepy and varied location of The Sprawl, and the emphasis on action and set-pieces.
The original game's location, The Ishimura, is iconic, but I always found myself getting tired of the identical looking hallways and hangars, the Sprawl is so much more interesting, with a ton of varied looking areas. No two levels look the same in this game, and there's very little backtracking, which I love. Even when you return to the Ishimura towards the end half of the game, they found a way to make it look and feel different than the first game, by changing the layout, and disabling the tram system.
The inclusion of set-piece action was a bit controversial when this game first came out, and I can kind of see why. It's a massive departure from the original, and it empowers the player as opposed to handicapping them and making them feel helpless. But just like Alien/Aliens, I like that this game does something different than the original. The halo jump, the high-speed tram sequence, the nail-biting final gauntlet, all of these moments make you feel like a superhero, they make Issac into an expert Necromorph killer, who's done all of this before. It's very different than the horror centric first game, but I love it for essentially being a scary Uncharted game in space. And man, that halo jump sequence, is just the best, it's one of my favorite video game moments. It comes right at the end of my favorite level of the game, the satellite station, which on it's own is a really unique looking setting. When I first played it, I wasn't expecting Issac to just shoot himself out of the station and skydive back to the Sprawl, but when he did, I was ecstatic.
In conclusion, I think this is a great sequel. Much like Aliens or Terminator 2, it pushes the franchise in a new direction and does it's own thing. It departs from what made the first game special, which could be seen as a negative, but it succeeds in something else entirely, while also not being completely devoid of scares or tension. RIP Visceral Games.
Dead Space was a humble game, it didn't have any previous source material to live up to, all it sought out to do was give the player a Resident Evil game in space, and it succeeded with that, and then some. The foreboding atmosphere, the feeling of loneliness and solitude, the contrast between the paranoid silence and choas, all of those things combined with the art direction and genius UI helped separate it from It's contemporaries and give it a unique identity.
Dead Space 2 on the other hand, is a high octane, set-piece filled follow-up, that at times, feels more like Part 2 than a regular sequel. I played this game right after finishing the original, and it very much plays like one 16 hour narrative divided into two parts, one part the survival horror game, the other a horror action game.
Nearly everything from the first game has been improved, the zero-gravity sequences, the graphics and textures, the controls, everything is a massive step up from the original, for better or worse.
Giving Issac a voice this time around is bittersweet, it makes sense to give him voiced lines this time around, it serves the purpose of the story, but the issue is that Issac never has anything interesting to say, it's almost always him saying to the effect of "I need to do this, I need to go here, what the heck is that?" I think this game's story would have functioned exactly the same if Isaac was a silent protagonist again, and that's a huge problem.
The reason I love this game though, is twofold, one is the really creepy and varied location of The Sprawl, and the emphasis on action and set-pieces.
The original game's location, The Ishimura, is iconic, but I always found myself getting tired of the identical looking hallways and hangars, the Sprawl is so much more interesting, with a ton of varied looking areas. No two levels look the same in this game, and there's very little backtracking, which I love. Even when you return to the Ishimura towards the end half of the game, they found a way to make it look and feel different than the first game, by changing the layout, and disabling the tram system.
The inclusion of set-piece action was a bit controversial when this game first came out, and I can kind of see why. It's a massive departure from the original, and it empowers the player as opposed to handicapping them and making them feel helpless. But just like Alien/Aliens, I like that this game does something different than the original. The halo jump, the high-speed tram sequence, the nail-biting final gauntlet, all of these moments make you feel like a superhero, they make Issac into an expert Necromorph killer, who's done all of this before. It's very different than the horror centric first game, but I love it for essentially being a scary Uncharted game in space. And man, that halo jump sequence, is just the best, it's one of my favorite video game moments. It comes right at the end of my favorite level of the game, the satellite station, which on it's own is a really unique looking setting. When I first played it, I wasn't expecting Issac to just shoot himself out of the station and skydive back to the Sprawl, but when he did, I was ecstatic.
In conclusion, I think this is a great sequel. Much like Aliens or Terminator 2, it pushes the franchise in a new direction and does it's own thing. It departs from what made the first game special, which could be seen as a negative, but it succeeds in something else entirely, while also not being completely devoid of scares or tension. RIP Visceral Games.