When I was younger, I thought Dead Space 2 was the usual case of a horror game starting incredibly strong and then weakly limping to the finish, but this most recent playthrough has totally inverted my opinion; while the first half gets all the nicest areas and flashiest setpieces, it’s the second half, where you’re funneled through the metal guts of the station, that the encounters start to pick up, with a wider range of enemies to deal with and a playful sense of meanness to the combat design- like a memorable room where the game spawns an explosive enemy right next to a breakable window that’ll send you out into the vacuum of space if you so much as touch it. The final section is amazing as well, chased by a regenerating necromorph that gets the best use out of your busted kit out of all the challenges in the game, forced to push through hordes of enemies while this unstoppable enemy is constantly shadowing you.
But all this should be couched in the fact that many of its best moments here hover around the opening 30 minutes of RE4- you’ll be really lucky if you’re fighting multiple waves of enemies or have to make meaningful decisions of who to prioritize first in combat, the designers seemingly all too comfortable to throw the standard melee and acid-spitting necromorphs at you and a haphazard assortment of the other enemy types as a little bit of flavor. Some of this flattening is due to how powerful your Stasis ability is: because so many of the encounters take place in this tiny corridors and cramped hallways, it’s really easy to negate the threat of an ambush or poor positioning by freezing an enemy and dismembering them with little thought on your part, aided by how generous the game is with dropping stasis packs and doling out recharge stations. It’s something especially felt with the Stalker enemies, a standout addition deemed so important that they get their own dedicated rooms, but they end up being some of the simplest in practice- boiling down to hunkering in a corner and waiting for them to run at you, a cool enemy type that feels unfinished when fought on their own. (The fact that you never fight these guys while dealing with your O2 meter is a massive shame, something that might’ve curbed how easy it is to passively engage them.)
Maybe the most damning thing here is that the weightlessness of the new additions to the bestiary highlight just how well-considered the original’s enemies were, testing you on the applications of the dismemberment system and on third-person shooting in a way none of the new creatures do- the frantic, vertical movement of the scorpion-like Leapers or the surgical precision demanded for the Pregnant necromorphs, diluted here with a lot of stuff that swarms you and that can be beaten out more simply with direct damage. A lot of the discussion about the two games centers on the weakening of the survival horror elements from the first entry to the second, but I think this less defined mechanical identity is probably the bigger loss for the series.
Still, a hard game for me to really dislike- nails the feedback for combat (even reloading looks cool!) and I’m not sure if another game has had a better justification and visualization for the combat tunnel/amazing skybox/combat tunnel structure than working your way through the various sectors of a dystopian mining station. Was ultimately reminded a lot of my time going through Titanfall 2 a few years ago, a strong string of setpieces and a great-feeling avatar not able to shake the feeling that the encounter design never really pushed the mechanics far enough.
Extra thoughts:
- Played through the game on Zealot, and got about halfway through on the limited-save Hardcore difficulty before losing a couple of hours of progress when I clipped through the floor of a tram and opted to call it there. Otherwise, I think these are pretty admirable difficulty modes, the increased lethality and reduced ammo of the former and the endurance needed for the latter do a nice job at recontextualizing the game. Granular bits of optimization, like being able to use random kinesis objects to slowly bludgeon enemies to death and getting a free refill on ammo and health when you upgrade their capacity, turn into run-saving maneuvers when you're under so much pressure. Good stuff.
- The Severed DLC is slightly more respectable than I remembered- the stasis enemies from Dead Space 1 aren’t a super-noticeable addition, but going backwards through old areas is far less egregious than it sounds, both due to some nice enemy arrangements (probably has the best Stalker encounter in the game) and for the fact that the player character comes with a predefined loadout that might get you to see a different side of the arsenal. Would never have used the Seeker rifle otherwise, for instance.
But all this should be couched in the fact that many of its best moments here hover around the opening 30 minutes of RE4- you’ll be really lucky if you’re fighting multiple waves of enemies or have to make meaningful decisions of who to prioritize first in combat, the designers seemingly all too comfortable to throw the standard melee and acid-spitting necromorphs at you and a haphazard assortment of the other enemy types as a little bit of flavor. Some of this flattening is due to how powerful your Stasis ability is: because so many of the encounters take place in this tiny corridors and cramped hallways, it’s really easy to negate the threat of an ambush or poor positioning by freezing an enemy and dismembering them with little thought on your part, aided by how generous the game is with dropping stasis packs and doling out recharge stations. It’s something especially felt with the Stalker enemies, a standout addition deemed so important that they get their own dedicated rooms, but they end up being some of the simplest in practice- boiling down to hunkering in a corner and waiting for them to run at you, a cool enemy type that feels unfinished when fought on their own. (The fact that you never fight these guys while dealing with your O2 meter is a massive shame, something that might’ve curbed how easy it is to passively engage them.)
Maybe the most damning thing here is that the weightlessness of the new additions to the bestiary highlight just how well-considered the original’s enemies were, testing you on the applications of the dismemberment system and on third-person shooting in a way none of the new creatures do- the frantic, vertical movement of the scorpion-like Leapers or the surgical precision demanded for the Pregnant necromorphs, diluted here with a lot of stuff that swarms you and that can be beaten out more simply with direct damage. A lot of the discussion about the two games centers on the weakening of the survival horror elements from the first entry to the second, but I think this less defined mechanical identity is probably the bigger loss for the series.
Still, a hard game for me to really dislike- nails the feedback for combat (even reloading looks cool!) and I’m not sure if another game has had a better justification and visualization for the combat tunnel/amazing skybox/combat tunnel structure than working your way through the various sectors of a dystopian mining station. Was ultimately reminded a lot of my time going through Titanfall 2 a few years ago, a strong string of setpieces and a great-feeling avatar not able to shake the feeling that the encounter design never really pushed the mechanics far enough.
Extra thoughts:
- Played through the game on Zealot, and got about halfway through on the limited-save Hardcore difficulty before losing a couple of hours of progress when I clipped through the floor of a tram and opted to call it there. Otherwise, I think these are pretty admirable difficulty modes, the increased lethality and reduced ammo of the former and the endurance needed for the latter do a nice job at recontextualizing the game. Granular bits of optimization, like being able to use random kinesis objects to slowly bludgeon enemies to death and getting a free refill on ammo and health when you upgrade their capacity, turn into run-saving maneuvers when you're under so much pressure. Good stuff.
- The Severed DLC is slightly more respectable than I remembered- the stasis enemies from Dead Space 1 aren’t a super-noticeable addition, but going backwards through old areas is far less egregious than it sounds, both due to some nice enemy arrangements (probably has the best Stalker encounter in the game) and for the fact that the player character comes with a predefined loadout that might get you to see a different side of the arsenal. Would never have used the Seeker rifle otherwise, for instance.