Dead Space 2 is a pretty nice sequel, but it isn't perfect, and the imperfection mostly lies with one particular area. I'll outline my thoughts in-depth, but there's a TL;DR at the bottom.
1) Story and Characters
The story is also pretty good, and I dont' want to give away anything, honestly, but this does deal a LOT more with Isaac himself as a character, his PTSD from the events of the first game, and his dealing with Nicole's death. Like in the first game, you have two additional characters you're working with to escape this nightmare, but they don't get introduced until a few chapters in. They lend themselves pretty well to the story and neither one of them feel shallow or forced, they're fairly believable in the setting. Isaac being voiced is fine, I don't think it detracts from the experience, and I actually really like it.
2) Gameplay
I should note that the control scheme is a bit switched up from the first game, but it wasn't too much of a bother adjusting, it's just little things like Y refilling your Stasis, Select opening your Rig, and B to use Medkits. I still found myself trying to press Y to open my Rig though, even near the end of the game.
There's a lot of really nice gameplay improvements over the first game. The first thing of note is that your melee swing is actually useful, and you can swing several times in quick succession even. It's much more fluid and has more impact, where in the first game, melee swings were worthless. Another nice change is that Kinesis is more powerful than before. You can even apply Power Nodes to your Rig's upgrade tree to increase damage dealt by items thrown with Kinesis. Another thing I really liked was the changes they made to the weapons carried over from the first game; they changed some of the alt-fires of the guns to be more practical. Of particular note is the Pulse Rifle, which has a grenade launcher for an alt-fire now instead of that really weak AOE attack from before.
All the previous weapons do return, and they added some new weapons as well. The new weapons are the Javelin Gun, Detonator, Seeker Rifle, and the Rivet Gun. The Javelin Gun fires spears at enemies, which you can then press the alt-fire to activate the most-recently fired spear to let out a burst of electricity in a small area around it. The Detonator is just a mine-launcher, where alt-fire disarms the mines that didn't explode for you to be able to pick them up again. The Seeker Rifle is a high-powered rifle that can zoom in some. I found this to be pretty worthless when you're getting swarmed, which is more common than not, so I never really used it. Lastly, the Rivet Gun can fire rivets somewhat quickly, and alt-fire sort of "detonates" them for extra damage in a very small area around your target(s), but I found this gun to be pretty weak and not as good when fighting groups as I'd hoped. However, when you have it in your inventory, you'll almost never run out of ammo for it; the game gives you Rivet ammo much more frequently than any other ammo, only if you have it with you though. There's more to say about the Rivet Gun, but it's in the The Part Where I Complain About EA section of this review.
Like before, you can upgrade your RIG, Stasis, and your Weapons. But now your Weapons with an alt-fire can have their alt-fire damage increased separately from the main fire damage. At first glance, I didn't really like this, but as I got further in the game, I realized it was balanced pretty well around this, to keep you from being an unstoppable Necromorph slaying machine.
In lieu of making the game more action-oriented, there are some action-heavy set pieces in the game that are visually impressive, but almost feel unnecessary, though they are still kind of cool in their own right. I just don't feel like they're quite the best fit for what should be a survival horror game.
It's well worth noting that Dead Space 2 feels quite a bit more difficult than the first game. When I played the previous one on Normal, I was nearly always flush with ammo, medkits, and credits. I almost never needed to buy any ammo or medkits, so I spent those credits on Power Nodes and Suit upgrades. In Dead Space 2, that's not quite the case. They throw many more enemies at you this time around, so even if you momentarily find yourself with a healthy stock of supplies, you'll likely soon find that near-depleted before you get to the next shop. You are forced to manage your resources a bit more wisely, and I wish the first game's Normal mode had been like this as well. Though in this run of Dead Space 2, I still played a bit dangerously and bought Power Nodes whenever I could, even forsaking ammo and medkit purchases for them sometimes.
3) Sound Design
The sound design is just as great if not even better than it was in the first game. All the quiet atmospheric background tracks (or lack thereof) effectively build suspense. When you're in the residential area of Titan Station, you can hear the screams of people fleeing and dying from the Necromorph outbreak as it happens in real-time and it is quite chilling. There are quite a few more cheap jump scares in this game though, and that's always lame.
Meanwhile, the action-y/bombastic parts of the soundtrack are...just kinda there. Y'know? They work fine, they aren't bad and they do their job well; they're just not particularly noteworthy. It's like going to Chile's. It won't blow you away or really impress you, but it's adequate and fills you.
The gross gurgles, shrill shrieks, and raging roars of the various Necromorphs have only improved in quality since the first game, which was pretty necessary considering they added several new types of enemies, but they all still sound quite distinct.
Your weapons and effects all sound convincingly impactful, shreddy, explosive, and zappy as they did before. Nothing here sounded out of place. They all sound quite nice.
4) Visuals
The graphical fidelity is much improved over the first game. Funnily enough, this game is also visually much darker than the first, which is a plus for me. Even the darkest sections of the first game weren't ever too dark, but this game isn't afraid to drop you into a black void on a few occasions, and I appreciate that. There weren't really any shadowy visual scares this time around though, while in the first game they utilized them quite a few times.
The biggest visual improvement to me is in the expanded art direction. No longer bound to just an abandoned, dark spaceship, you can tell the art team finally got to really go all-out with some of the architecture and visuals of Titan Station. There are blood-soaked, dimly lit apartment areas, a future-mall area, and of course there's no shortage of grimy, dark industrial areas. One area I have to gush about is the design of the Church of Unitology. That entire section of the game feels like a totally different world altogether, with all the moody lighting, ornate carvings, and stained glass windows. You also get a deeper look into how the CoU operates, which really adds another colorful layer to the story.
4) The Part Where I Complain About EA
The biggest negative mark against Dead Space 2 is that it quite clearly has EA's grimy fingerprints all over it. You see this in the existence of the DLC weapons and outfits with different effects or boosts.
Speaking of DLC weapons, I'm finally back around to the Rivet Gun. This weapon was a GameStop-exclusive pre-order bonus. The Rivet Gun is a new weapon type that cannot be found in-game, while all the other DLC weapons are just variations of already-existing in-game weapons with various buffs/effects applied to them. If I hadn't found the weapon to be so worthless (or the fact that it's free on PC), I'd consider this a big negative. I still consider it a negative, just not quite as harshly due to its current state.
If you're playing Dead Space 2 on PC, ALL these DLC suits and weapon variants and the Rivet Gun are automatically available as soon as you get to the first store, and they're all for free. My suggestion? "Buy" them all, and then shove them in the storage to save for a second playthrough on a higher difficulty. Someone's first playthrough shouldn't be marred by this mess, in my opinion.
There was also a really mediocre multiplayer mode, but I've never heard of anyone actually playing it outside of review purposes.
5) Wrap-Up & TL;DR
It's a pretty great sequel overall. Despite EA's meddling trying to turn this into an action series, Dead Space 2 is thankfully still manages to keeps its horror mostly in-tact and gives a nice ending to Isaac's story (Dead Space 3? What's that?). If you liked the first game, you'll certainly find plenty to like about this one as well. Give it a go!
1) Story and Characters
The story is also pretty good, and I dont' want to give away anything, honestly, but this does deal a LOT more with Isaac himself as a character, his PTSD from the events of the first game, and his dealing with Nicole's death. Like in the first game, you have two additional characters you're working with to escape this nightmare, but they don't get introduced until a few chapters in. They lend themselves pretty well to the story and neither one of them feel shallow or forced, they're fairly believable in the setting. Isaac being voiced is fine, I don't think it detracts from the experience, and I actually really like it.
2) Gameplay
I should note that the control scheme is a bit switched up from the first game, but it wasn't too much of a bother adjusting, it's just little things like Y refilling your Stasis, Select opening your Rig, and B to use Medkits. I still found myself trying to press Y to open my Rig though, even near the end of the game.
There's a lot of really nice gameplay improvements over the first game. The first thing of note is that your melee swing is actually useful, and you can swing several times in quick succession even. It's much more fluid and has more impact, where in the first game, melee swings were worthless. Another nice change is that Kinesis is more powerful than before. You can even apply Power Nodes to your Rig's upgrade tree to increase damage dealt by items thrown with Kinesis. Another thing I really liked was the changes they made to the weapons carried over from the first game; they changed some of the alt-fires of the guns to be more practical. Of particular note is the Pulse Rifle, which has a grenade launcher for an alt-fire now instead of that really weak AOE attack from before.
All the previous weapons do return, and they added some new weapons as well. The new weapons are the Javelin Gun, Detonator, Seeker Rifle, and the Rivet Gun. The Javelin Gun fires spears at enemies, which you can then press the alt-fire to activate the most-recently fired spear to let out a burst of electricity in a small area around it. The Detonator is just a mine-launcher, where alt-fire disarms the mines that didn't explode for you to be able to pick them up again. The Seeker Rifle is a high-powered rifle that can zoom in some. I found this to be pretty worthless when you're getting swarmed, which is more common than not, so I never really used it. Lastly, the Rivet Gun can fire rivets somewhat quickly, and alt-fire sort of "detonates" them for extra damage in a very small area around your target(s), but I found this gun to be pretty weak and not as good when fighting groups as I'd hoped. However, when you have it in your inventory, you'll almost never run out of ammo for it; the game gives you Rivet ammo much more frequently than any other ammo, only if you have it with you though. There's more to say about the Rivet Gun, but it's in the The Part Where I Complain About EA section of this review.
Like before, you can upgrade your RIG, Stasis, and your Weapons. But now your Weapons with an alt-fire can have their alt-fire damage increased separately from the main fire damage. At first glance, I didn't really like this, but as I got further in the game, I realized it was balanced pretty well around this, to keep you from being an unstoppable Necromorph slaying machine.
In lieu of making the game more action-oriented, there are some action-heavy set pieces in the game that are visually impressive, but almost feel unnecessary, though they are still kind of cool in their own right. I just don't feel like they're quite the best fit for what should be a survival horror game.
It's well worth noting that Dead Space 2 feels quite a bit more difficult than the first game. When I played the previous one on Normal, I was nearly always flush with ammo, medkits, and credits. I almost never needed to buy any ammo or medkits, so I spent those credits on Power Nodes and Suit upgrades. In Dead Space 2, that's not quite the case. They throw many more enemies at you this time around, so even if you momentarily find yourself with a healthy stock of supplies, you'll likely soon find that near-depleted before you get to the next shop. You are forced to manage your resources a bit more wisely, and I wish the first game's Normal mode had been like this as well. Though in this run of Dead Space 2, I still played a bit dangerously and bought Power Nodes whenever I could, even forsaking ammo and medkit purchases for them sometimes.
3) Sound Design
The sound design is just as great if not even better than it was in the first game. All the quiet atmospheric background tracks (or lack thereof) effectively build suspense. When you're in the residential area of Titan Station, you can hear the screams of people fleeing and dying from the Necromorph outbreak as it happens in real-time and it is quite chilling. There are quite a few more cheap jump scares in this game though, and that's always lame.
Meanwhile, the action-y/bombastic parts of the soundtrack are...just kinda there. Y'know? They work fine, they aren't bad and they do their job well; they're just not particularly noteworthy. It's like going to Chile's. It won't blow you away or really impress you, but it's adequate and fills you.
The gross gurgles, shrill shrieks, and raging roars of the various Necromorphs have only improved in quality since the first game, which was pretty necessary considering they added several new types of enemies, but they all still sound quite distinct.
Your weapons and effects all sound convincingly impactful, shreddy, explosive, and zappy as they did before. Nothing here sounded out of place. They all sound quite nice.
4) Visuals
The graphical fidelity is much improved over the first game. Funnily enough, this game is also visually much darker than the first, which is a plus for me. Even the darkest sections of the first game weren't ever too dark, but this game isn't afraid to drop you into a black void on a few occasions, and I appreciate that. There weren't really any shadowy visual scares this time around though, while in the first game they utilized them quite a few times.
The biggest visual improvement to me is in the expanded art direction. No longer bound to just an abandoned, dark spaceship, you can tell the art team finally got to really go all-out with some of the architecture and visuals of Titan Station. There are blood-soaked, dimly lit apartment areas, a future-mall area, and of course there's no shortage of grimy, dark industrial areas. One area I have to gush about is the design of the Church of Unitology. That entire section of the game feels like a totally different world altogether, with all the moody lighting, ornate carvings, and stained glass windows. You also get a deeper look into how the CoU operates, which really adds another colorful layer to the story.
4) The Part Where I Complain About EA
The biggest negative mark against Dead Space 2 is that it quite clearly has EA's grimy fingerprints all over it. You see this in the existence of the DLC weapons and outfits with different effects or boosts.
Speaking of DLC weapons, I'm finally back around to the Rivet Gun. This weapon was a GameStop-exclusive pre-order bonus. The Rivet Gun is a new weapon type that cannot be found in-game, while all the other DLC weapons are just variations of already-existing in-game weapons with various buffs/effects applied to them. If I hadn't found the weapon to be so worthless (or the fact that it's free on PC), I'd consider this a big negative. I still consider it a negative, just not quite as harshly due to its current state.
If you're playing Dead Space 2 on PC, ALL these DLC suits and weapon variants and the Rivet Gun are automatically available as soon as you get to the first store, and they're all for free. My suggestion? "Buy" them all, and then shove them in the storage to save for a second playthrough on a higher difficulty. Someone's first playthrough shouldn't be marred by this mess, in my opinion.
There was also a really mediocre multiplayer mode, but I've never heard of anyone actually playing it outside of review purposes.
5) Wrap-Up & TL;DR
It's a pretty great sequel overall. Despite EA's meddling trying to turn this into an action series, Dead Space 2 is thankfully still manages to keeps its horror mostly in-tact and gives a nice ending to Isaac's story (Dead Space 3? What's that?). If you liked the first game, you'll certainly find plenty to like about this one as well. Give it a go!