It's genuinely incredible seeing the amount of influence this clearly had on horror games for years to come, but it's not hard to see why. This is absolutely packed full of raw atmosphere and dread, memorable imagery, and classic survival horror gameplay. It's also legitimately frightening at times, despite the hilariously awkward dialogue (another beloved hallmark of survival horror for me). It's impressively ambitious, with these huge wide-open sections that set it apart from the tightly controlled smaller environments in older resident evil games, for example. However that ambition did naturally lead to a few issues for me. While the player direction was generally surprisingly good, it's very difficult to tell which buildings you can and can't enter in the overworld, and what items you can and can't interact with in the environments, making it easy to miss important optional areas or just run straight into an unusable door while trying to run from enemies. The map system was extremely cool, with realistic maps that get annotated as you explore areas, but a little inconsistent; sometimes important items/interactables were highlighted on the map, and sometimes they weren't, especially in the later game, which made navigation a lot more difficult. The dynamic camera was another mixed bag; while it was often well used and allowed for larger and more complex areas, it was often frustrating during combat, leaving enemies offscreen or awkwardly pivoting at the wrong times. The final boss especially came down to just firing at what little of it was onscreen and hoping you got a hit in. Still, this is a remarkable achievement for early horror videogames, and more than good enough to get me to play the next few games in the series.

must've been pretty fucking embarassing to be capcom when this dropped, they were trying so hard to innovate on RE's new gameplay style and hitting walls at every step putting out the worst games in the series, meanwhile DS2 is out here effortlessly expanding on the survival action horror format in so many fun ways. Pretty much every aspect of the first game has been improved on massively, it looks better, plays better, sounds better, the story is better, it's far more tense and exciting and every mechanic feels smoother and more polished. Full of unique and distinct environments with fun gimmicks, from the claustrophobic intro scenes to the beautifully designed Unitology Church to the trap-filled ANTI section to the relentless tension of the last chapter that barely leaves room to breathe. It's easy to see why this is is considered such a classic. I do still have my issues with this game; I think the core combat, progression and enemy designs are almost identical to Dead Space 1, and I never really felt the need to experiment with the different weapons. Tiedemann and Dana also continue the series trend of extremely unmemorable human villains, which lets down the plot in places (although Nicole's presence is consistently creepy and enjoyable). Still, this was a blast to play, it's a shame I've heard only bad things about Dead Space 3 because this was clearly a franchise with a lot of potential.

have some nostalgia for this from watching youtubers play it when it came out and i came back to it because of a recommendation from a friend. And I don't really know how to feel about it. I think the gameplay is very well designed, the individual character writing is really solid, and some of the moral choices are well set up, for example after finishing the first day and seeing that my entire family had trackers for if they were fed and healthy that depended on how much money I made I was like damn so it's going to be THAT kind of game. At the same time I think there's only so far you can go with this gimmick before it becomes too complicated and annoying so the complexity of the systems kind of plateau near the end. My biggest issue of all is that as a political statement it just has nothing to say, it uses this vague "eastern communist state" setting as set dressing and not much else. All it really had to offer was "this is a bad country and the border system turns lots of people away" repeated in different ways across 31 days; a reminder of that weird time in the mid 2010s where the american internet was obsessed with the soviet union for some reason. And I know that you're not supposed to feel like a good person but putting people in a scanner because they don't match up with the gender on their passport felt Very Bad to me, especially since it wasn't interrogated morally by the game the same way that other bad actions were. Idk, I can see why it's well liked but I don't feel especially motivated to try and get the rest of the endings.

Really solid! Didn't get it at first but it didn't take long to see why this game has the reputation it does. Still looks good by modern standards, the movement is fairly smooth (although I would've loved a quick turn button) and the atmosphere is top notch. The fully diagetic UI is such a cool gimmick, as is the use of mining equipment to dismember Horrific Abominations! Definitely more of an action horror with survival horror elements in the vein of RE4 or bioshock, as there are very few puzzles and enemy encounters are usually mandatory for progression, although that's more of an observation than a complaint. I think my biggest real issue is that you're constantly being talked at by characters, explaining the situation and telling you where to go, which just kills the kind of isolated feeling you need for a game like this. The exploration and combat are genuinely fun, but when you're constantly getting locked in a room for a few minutes so a character can exposit at you it feels like wasted time. Although I hear that's a problem they more or less fix in the sequel so i'll have to play that at some point. Overall a really cool sci-fi horror action game, it's easy to see why it had such an impact on the genre.

i've known for a while that this game is precisely and exactly My Shit; pixellated mixed media asthetic, tight classic survival horror gameplay with a sci-fi twist, and a cryptic story about robots with identity crises and space lesbians filled with memorable imagery and incredible music. And it pretty much lived up to my very high expectations by delivering on all fronts. I definitely think I'm going to replay at some point with my Lore Brain (TM) on and try and get all achievements/the hidden ending and attempt the much harder goal of understanding the story but honestly I was pretty happy with the ending I got. An expected masterpiece, not an all-time fav just yet but one that I won't soon forget.

genuinely one of the coolest, most original and most beautiful games I've ever played. Because of the premise it's the kind of game you can only really play once in your life, and as sad as that is it made the whole experience of playing it feel so much more precious and singular. Usually when playing games I will unashamedly look things up from time to time, when I get completely stuck or I want to double check that I'm not missing anything important, but I committed to not doing that for this game and I'm so glad I didn't. The difficulty was perfectly balanced for me, there was enough challenge especially in the late game to keep me engaged but i never found a problem I couldn't solve with a little time and effort. ooooo i love this game so much

played the demo for this a while ago because it looked really unique and interesting and that's exactly what it is! The visuals are beautiful, the music and sound design are beautiful, and each level is a satisfying puzzle to figure out. I usually get frustrated at games like these once the difficulty starts to ramp up but even when this was tough I was always having fun with it, figuring out different routes and strategies and trying to work in each level's hidden challenge. It's fairly short but I can see a lot of replay value here in optimising each level and getting all the challenges, it's absolutely worth your money and your time either way.

i think my original review for this game is already long as fuck and my opinion hasn't changed that much after replaying it 6 times so I'll just say that I still wish they put this much time and effort and polish into a game that wasn't already a masterpiece, but this is so tight and well-made it's hard to get mad about it. I don't really get the complaints about the tone either, I think this game retains the insane goofiness of the original while grounding the characters for a better story and remaining relatively in line with 2 and 3's vibe. It's a different game, and it should be a different game otherwise we'd all be wasting our time. Not my fav, but if capcom can keep up this quality for whatever comes next I'll be in heaven

well with 1 2 and 4 remake capcom made a good game good, with 3 they made a good game bad, and with this they made a bad game(mode) good which gives me at least a little hope for 5 remake. This is basically the best RE dlc by default because it's not a complete piece of shit, it's actually more of what's good about the main game. I do think they went a little too hard on bringing back fan favourite parts from 4 that weren't in the remake; I'd rather this be more new content, I can just replay og 4 if I want those old sections again (because it still rules). Still this was the least painful DLC to get all achievements for, because even when it was hard it was pretty fun.