{Subject is Hayden Wiseman, amateur games journalist here on the Sprawl. After being tasked with writing about a particular game he began suffering from a peculiar form of dementia and acute paranoia. He'll often start talking about a game that no one here has heard of and when we try and talk to him we can barely get through. Sometimes he just shuts down completely and stares into space. Actual space. His room has a window that faces out towards Saturn. The following is a transcription and documentation of those events.}
Subject: I'm going to be completely honest here. The reason it's taken a bit longer than normal to review this game is because I can't stop playing it. I've finished it once and almost as soon as the credits ended I found myself watching the intro again. When a game is able to grab hold of you and keep you engaged for that long after the credits you know you've found something special. It's designed to be played more than once too. After you've finished it you can carry over all your weapons and items from your first run and continue to upgrade and use them in the next play through.
{2:31pm, 1/15/2511. Subject has stopped writing his review to "play" the game he calls Dead Space 2. These play sessions find our subject sitting on the edge of his cot with his hands in front of him while he stares at nothing. A colleague of mine has noticed erratic twitching in his thumbs and eyes when in this trance-like state.}
{11:45am, 1/16/2511. After a nights rest, subject has resumed his rantings about the non-existent game.}
Subject: I've finished the game again. The contact beam has quickly become my favorite weapon other than the 211-V plasma cutter. Well... I guess it isn't a 211-V since it's fashioned from a flashlight and medical tissue laser. It acts the same though. Great for taking the limbs off enemies. I was unable to find enough power nodes for the contact beam my first time through but by the time I reached the end the second time nothing could stop me.
{A lot of what the subject says about using mining and medical tools to cut the limbs off his enemies is disturbing. When asked who his enemies are he tells us "bio recombinators" or uses the word "necromorph". Neither of which have any weight with the staff here. Director Tiedemann has instructed us to keep our subject under even more scrutinous observation.}
Subject: The atmosphere and lighting are perfect. You'll be walking down a corridor and the lights will flicker a bit and maybe cut out completely for a moment, leaving you with just the light from your RIG to help you through. It all works in conjunction with some of the best sound design I've ever experienced in a game. Say for instance, that after the aforementioned lights went out, that you heard something rattling nearby. With a good pair of headphones or a decent surround sound system the noise you heard may indicate an enemy and you'll want to turn and face that direction. Not only that but because the game takes place on Titan Station and not in the recently thrashed interior corridors of the USG Ishimura you get a lot more variety in the sound and lighting. You'll walk past shops and the neon signs behind the window will still be flickering as though the store were open. Advertisements and station-wide announcements play over loudspeakers and large screens. when passing through residential areas you'll see the inside of apartments and even there a subtle light like that of an alarm clock is accurately represented. It feels like a place that was very recently lived in.
I say "recently" of course because of the outbreak you find yourself witness to right from the beginning of the game. And while I won't spoil the opening for those who haven't played it (it's awesome) I will say that an early portion of the game makes you feel like you're hot on the trail of a whirl wind of destruction. So, what is the story in this game? Why am I so keen on playing it again, even now as I'm telling you about it?
You play as Isaac Clarke, an engineer suffering from dementia. You wake up on Titan Station some time after the events of the first game with almost no clue as to what's happening around you. This works to the games benefit because it kept me going on. I wanted to know more about the characters and the world that the story takes place in. Isaac is a much more developed character in Dead Space 2. He has a voice and a personality. In the previous game, although you see his face twice (no really, you do), he is much more of a husk that the players embody and experience the story through. Here he swears as he stomps on dead necromorphs and its an interesting experience watching him cope with his dementia and interact with the other characters.
Like I mentioned previously, there has been an outbreak on the sprawl and everyone is being killed and turned into necromorphs. I'm going to go ahead and geek out here for a moment. Necromorphs are not space zombies. They're bio recombinators which means that they're a parasitic life form that manipulates and resides in dead tissue. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that dead tissue up and moving around automatically equates zombies. No. The bodies inhabited by the parasite are really more like puppets and each takes a form most suitable to the individual parasite's role. What controls these parasites? An artifact called The Marker. A second marker to be exact. At the end of the first Dead Space, Isaac took a Marker back down to Aegis VII and it was, presumably, destroyed along with the planet when the USG Ishimura's gravity tethers failed and dropped a large portion of the planet back down on itself. Your ultimate goal, like that of the first game, is to destroy the Marker and to survive. To do this you'll have to fight a whole hell of a lot of necromorphs and, because you're an engineer, you'll have to fix things.
{At about this time the subject asked if he could show us a vidlog. We allowed it.}
Combat has been significantly ramped up from the first game with more enemies coming at you and requiring you to think a bit more about the situation at hand. Inventory management is key and I found myself falling back on two weapons to limit the amount of ammo I knew I wasn't going to use. This was my strategy in the first game as well and it works again here. This adds replayability to the game because even though it's wise to use just two weapons you're going to want to play around with all of them. Your arsenal is made up primarily of the mining tools you had in the first game but there are a couple new additions as well. My personal favorites are the contact beam, plasma cutter, pulse rifle and the line gun. At least for now as those are the only ones I've really used. Apart from combat, there are a number of situations were you'll have to repair something or solve a puzzle to progress.
Puzzles were easy for me because I'd played the first game (a number of times) but some of them, latter on in the game, seemed as though they might be a bit more difficult for someone who hadn't played the original Dead Space. The fact I was able to solve most of them quickly might be testament to good game design though, because not once did I get frustrated with a puzzle and quit. I'm really interested in seeing someone who has never completed the first game, and who has no knowledge of the Dead Space universe or lore, play Dead Space 2. I'm curious as to where they'd get stuck and how they'd overcome the various challenges the game throws at the player.
{1:28pm, 1/16/2511. Subject ends his ranting on what sounds like a warped version of our own reality. A lot of my colleagues are distraught and worried that Mr. Wiseman's words, especially those about the Marker, might end up being prophetic. Strangely, the Unitologists on staff are more excited than afraid. I've contacted Director Tiedemann and expressed my concerns. He hasn't yet responded.}
Subject: Dead Space 2 is dark, plays excellently, has what I consider to be some excellent fiction (unless they botch it up in the future) and I'm most likely going to re-visit this one again and again. Maybe even after Dead Space 3 comes out, whenever that might be. Dead Space 2 has atmosphere, combat, and storytelling in spades and I can easily say that it's an early contender for my personal Game of the Year 2511.
{Director Tiedemann has instructed us to hand Mr. Wiseman over to his men in the morning, saying that our subject is a dangerous liability. No word yet of what will become of him.}
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