I'm here to write about game that has, quote, "taken the normal shooter/zombie killer and turned it on its head".
Quickly becoming a fastly popular series, as well as a growing gaming community hunting for more zombie thrillers, Dead Space 2 delivers with a nice, neat and blood stained package.
First thing to mention would be the utterly gorgeous graphcis. As you make your way through the space station on one of Saturn's moons, the protagonist Isaac Clarke must fight his way through hundreds, if not thousands of Necromorphs, made by The Marker, a Marker, in fact, he and a few selected others made. He has spent the last three years in a sedated state and finds himself being awaken by Franco, the protagonist of the prologue puzzle game Dead Space Ignition.
Tormented by his dead partner Nicole (Voiced by Tanya Clarke) and being driven mad by The Marker, it is up to him to destroy what he had created.
Back on topic, the graphics are very gorgeous in some parts, for example, the shine of the sun atop a glowing Saturn. But these moments are rare, as you spend most of it in total darkness or with flashing warning lights and the moans of Necromorphs beating down on you.
The audio is of excellent quality, not only was the screams of the many enemies rushing my way fantastic, but the tension and emotion in the voice of Gunner Wright (Who is the face and voice of Isaac Clarke) and between his companions Ellie Langford(voiced by Sonita Henry) and Nolan Stross (voiced by Curt Cornelius) who aid, lead and try hard to come together with Isaac to destroy The Marker and escape Sprawl Station once and for all. With both audio, visual and graphic content as you fight your way through the dark, this game became very custom to swearing and yelling at this game quite quickly. Gameplay is extremely smoothe, making the game easy to learn. This, however, does not mean the game is completely easy. While you do start out in baby steps (SPOILER AHEAD) the game thrusts you straight into the mist of it all, as a swarm of Necromorphs attempt to kill you from the get go. While still tied in a straight jacket, you must sprint for your life to the exit. This is an excellent move by Visceral Games, reminding us all how our parents taught us how to swim, by pushing us into the deep end at the pool.
The multiplayer has one of the most accessable multiplayers I have ever seen. Not only do they give you an option on what game mode to play as but no matter how far the players are apart, the connection is near perfect with little to no glitches whatsoever. From what I can gather, the game uses a Main Multiplayer Modem or MMM for short. This is a large computer where a person can host a game, invite his friends or wait for others to join and then as the match is starting, the host is switched to this console, most likely at Visceral Games. This is a brilliant way to decrease lag and allow perfect syncronisation for gamers who live across the world from their opponent.
This brings me to the saddening points.
Although there are not many, while the game itself is brilliant, a few more tweeks here and there would have made it terrific. For example, in some places, the game was too dark, even when lights and such were above my head. I changed the brightness level but this did very little help. Also, while I played Campaign online, very, very rarely, as Isaac had a moment with Nicole, this would make the game skip as well as the audio, making it sound like a scratched CD. Seeing as my discs have yet to have a scratch on them, I have brought it down to a rare episode or possibly Xbox Live automatically doing an update on the game.
While these bad points did discourage me, they only did so ever slightly. I am now currently hooked on all things Dead Space related and I am loving the series. I'm currently halfway through my second playthrough and this is a game that could very possibly be made a candidate for 2011's Game Of The Year
Out of 10, I gave Dead Space 2 an 9/10
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