Over the Edge + February 23, 2011

arts Ill

Dead Space 2

The most in-depth video game review you will ever read

JACOB EZEKIEL
CONTRIBUTOR

Isaac Clarke always does what his mother says

“Even in the depths of space, you can_ still hear your mother nag.”
Electronic Arts has been known to host some peculiar ad campaigns to gain publicity for
their games. Dante’s Inferno was possibly the strangest, where the company mailed various
packages or staged various activities containing moral dilemmas between various seven
deadly sins to popular figures of the video game industry. The results were mixed: some
applauded at the audaciousness of EA and their attempt to encapsulate the struggles of
Dante; some did not. With Dead Space 2, the publicity stunt hit far closer to home, allowing
early access to the game to those considered to be one of the video game industry’s
biggest enemies: Mothers. EA invited over two hundred mothers to watch various scenes
of the game and record their reactions. Suffice it to say the reactions were obvious:

disgust, horror, and revulsion not only to the game, but again video games in general.

In 2008, Electronic Arts released Dead Space, an extremely graphic and violent
survival horror game, which had a standard horror story structure, but was no less
enjoyable as a game. By standard, | of course mean the standard B-list horror structure
where you have an assortment of characters, some well characterized, some not,
and they all get dropped into a horrifying scenario where they get chopped to pieces
one by one, until the sole survivor defeats the evil-du-jour, and makes a speedy and
dramatic escape. In case you didn’t play the first Dead Space, here is a quick recap.

The year is 2508, interstellar travel is a reality, but the human race has yet to discover any other
sentient life. In this future, the human race makes a profit by strip-mining planets that have
been deemed uninhabitable via a process referred to as “Planet Cracking” where a designated
space vehicle and its crew literally pull a chunk of solid earth out of a planets surface, much like
how one removes a cork from a bottle, and empty the contents therein. The game takes place
on one such Planet Cracker ship; the USG Ishimura. Throughout the course of the game,
and the straight to video prequel movie Dead Space:Downfall, you learn that the Ishimura
was performing an illegal dig in a forbidden sector, and soon uncovers an artifact related to a
religious cult that has control over nearly 50% of the human population known as Unitology.
After bringing this “Marker” aboard the ship, something goes horribly wrong, the planet side
colonists start going crazy, and kill each other, and a mutant form of alien life has made its
way onto the Ishimura. The chaos that ensues leads to the eradication of the crew, severe
damage done to the ship, and creates the wonderfully macabre setting that Dead Space is set.

Now enter Isaac Clarke, a rugged and mute engineer named after two renowned writers
of science fiction and horror; Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Issac is sent to repair the
Ishimura after a distress call is received and serves as the games protagonist. Issac is a
prime candidate for a player character of a survival horror game due to his lack in military
tactics, and girlish flailing response to a monster gnawing on his ear, but is completely straight
faced (or probably would be if he removed his helmet more than once) as he goes about
dismembering monsters and even other humans with a plasma cutter as if he moonlights
as a serial killer. He and his crack team of repair men/woman fly in to the Ishimura, or rather
crash in, to discover that it is abandoned, and ignoring the massive lack of life aboard the
ship, decide to continue with their task. Literally minutes aboard the ship, the unnamed of
Isaac’s crew mates are killed by a pack of “Necromorphs’, a race of mutant aliens from the
planets surface that reproduce by killing living beings, and reanimate their corpses with a
parasitic mutagen. Separated from the remainder of his crew, Isaac sets out to complete his
task, silently going along with the yelling in his ear from other survivors throughout the ship.
After series of successes and failures, including the repair of the Ishimura, the destruction
of a nearby military ship, the return of the Marker to the planets surface, the betrayal of
and the obviously inevitable death of all remaining allies, the game reaches its climax with
Isaac heroically subduing the Necromorph hive mind, and speeding away in a escape pod.

Three years later, Isaac finds himself once again facing the Necromorph threat in Dead Space
2, set aboard the “Sprawl” a colony built on the “cork” section of the planet cracked Titan. The
first thing you notice upon starting the game is after battling the obvious mental problems
that you would suffer after witnessing the events of Dead Space, Isaac’s mental state has
oddly gotten better, for he is no longer mute. This is an rather interesting improvement, as
in the original Dead Space, Isaac acts like the embodiment of all the characters in horror
movies that you find yourself yelling at not to doing things, but since he cant hear you, so
he does it anyways and ends up in another bad scene. Now adding a voice to a previously
mute character can be a hit or miss choice, as it can change how fans relate to their hero,

ONLINE SOURCE

see Metroid Other M. Adding a voice to the heroic and appropriately silent Samus, and a
rather whiny and emotional voice at that just ruins the mystery and intrigue of the hero. The
lack of personality from Isaac in DS1 made it difficult to connect to him or his companions,
making it all more difficult to care when they are eventually killed. In Dead Space 2, Isaac’s
personal opinion is rather welcoming, as he no longer acts like a mindless drone in a horror
set blindly wandering around and following orders, and narrowly avoiding horrific death.

Dead Space 2 gets off to an exciting start. Isaac wakes aboard the Sprawl, bound in a straight
jacket and already running for his life from a necromorph swarm. After freeing himself, and
equipping himself with his trusty plasma cutter, Isaac sets off to get himself some answers.
Dead Space 2 does everything a sequel should do, improving what was good, and doing
away with what wasn’t, and adding the right amount of new to make things fresh. The over-
the-shoulder third person camera returns as does the unique HUD from DS1 where there is
no ammo counter or mini map in the bottom right or a paused inventory screen, but instead
a holographic projection in front of the player to convey any and all important information.
The standard weapons from DS1 also have returned, with some new features, and some
new guns one of which is capable of pinning an enemy to a wall, or if you are feeling really
vindictive, an airlock. The telekinesis and stasis have also returned with minor changes.
The most enjoyable addition is to the Zero-G environments, where Isaac now has thrusters
in his suit to float freely, instead of having to line up a perfect jump from surface to surface.
New baddies have also been added, including two new styles of mutant child, one loud
shrill and “swarmy”, the other fat, explosive and really over the edge in creepiness. All these
additions make the enjoyment of dismembering hordes of slavering aliens all the sweeter.

A major flaw DS1 had was, even though it was very violent and gruesome, there was little in
the respect of “true” horror. A true horror scenario will have you dreading every opportunity
of advancement, not wanting to face whatever is ahead, and giving you the least amount of
supplies needed to possibly survive. It is that feeling of absolute terror of everything around
you, even a shadow that is missing from mainstream games today. The Silent Hill series
is the only set of games that has truly hit on this level of horror, and Silent Hill 2 is still
being hailed even a decade after its release as the champion of “true psychological horror’.
Dead Space 1 offered very little in a horrifying atmosphere, while monsters jump out at you
fairly often in a startling fashion, it doesn’t take long to learn the rhythm, and with a store at
nearly every checkpoint you will have all the supplies you need to combat the horrors. DS2
remedies this by reducing the amount of stores, adjusting the eeriness of the ambiance,
allowing the difficulty settings to also affecting health and ammo drops from monsters.
All of this coupled with the aforementioned mutant children, make any section where a
monster does not appear for more than a minute becomes a rather unsettling scenario.

The interactions between the characters also seems to be somewhat more appropriate for
the genre. There is little romantic connection between Isaac and the female companion he
befriends. They act as they should in this genre, two people finding themselves in a dangerous
situation, and work together to escape as necessary without the far overused male hero
machismo that plagues many action games today. While their banter between tense moments
is somewhat humorous, it is rather cliché, almost as if the writers forced the dialogue in, see
any Resident Evil game. The cut-scenes where most of the interactions happen are also
quite intense in most cases. Sometimes when you think the action is over, something else
explodes or dies to keep you on the edge of you seat until control over the game returns.

Dead Space 2 has all the markers of a well made game, even as a sequel has avoided a
myriad of diseases that affect sequels of excellent franchises, such as game length being
far under done, or the story writing to be sub-par compared to its predecessor who set
the bar too high, or the most disappointing of all; pathetic end boss. Fable and Bioshock
are most notable in contracting this disease in their successors. Both the originals had
final encounters with epic, well characterized villains, with appropriately long health bars
and phase changes with new abilities to exemplify their status as villain numero-uno.
Sadly the final bosses in both sequels were far below expectations; an old man who gets
shot during his monologue in Fable 2, and a minor wave of splicers in Bioshock 2. Dead
Space 2 suffers the latter problem, its final encounter being not very challenging or long,
but visually active and its resolution is no less enjoyable, culminating in a victory over
governmental, religious and personal madness. So if you enjoy a 7-12 hour journey through
a futuristic hell with buckets of blood and limbs with terror at every turn, or a Dead Space
themed Left 4 Dead multiplayer mode, then Dead Space 2 is certainly worth your time.