Nichole, is that a lighbulb in your mouth or are you just pleased to see me?
So it felt very humbling when I loaded up Dead Space 2 and found myself greeting Mr Clarke as he was awakened from dreams of Nichole by a terrified nurse frantically shining a pen torch into his eyes in the way that a crazy person might stir a cup of tea with a dead bird. And there was something else. Isaac can't move so well, I was thinking. After I'd brought him to the end of the first Dead Space a second time I'd made him into this single-minded killing machine. He'd become a cold killer of monsters. So what had gone wrong here? What could have happened? I know the movement of Isaac in the first game was slow, but this was impossible. And what the hell was he doing in a strait-jacket? In a hospital of some kind?
Then I started to notice things. It was the little stuff at first, like the blood on the walls behind the nurse. Weirdly, it took me while to even consider this as 'odd' and - is that a corpse in the corridor? Smashed furniture, damaged lighting, gore stains everywhere. So what's going on? Where the hell is Isaac now?
And then it kicks off. Right before my eyes a spike pushes up through the nurse's face and his body rips and tears in a familiar yet still blood-curdling way, and in seconds I'm being screamed at by some flesh-stretched bony arsed motherf****r and it's all I can do to get Isaac up off the table and force him stumble to away and head into what's left of the hospital as the vents burst open and familiar monstrous screams ring loud and clear through my headphones once again (yes, headphones. I've got kids asleep you know!).
"Your rig is red! Your rig is red!" one of the medics cries as Isaac stumbles away through the hospital not knowing what the hell is going on. Still trapped in his strait jacket. Bizarrely, coming in straight off a replay of the original game, it felt absolutely right to be surrounded by body-twisting necromorphs again, but wonderfully and ironically wrong to be stumbling through it all with no weapon and just an ounce of red stuff in your rig. From hero to zero in one deft change of a BluRay disc. The same. But different.
For me, Dead Space 2 is a more dynamic and fluid than the first Dead Space game. When you eventually do manage to get Isaac fully suited and booted (and it's not that far into the game when that happens), you're already knee deep in the mystery of where you are and what the fluppin hell happened while you were having nightmares about your girlfriend. The story unfolds at a rattling pace and you, my friend, are right in the thick of it. It moves pedal to the metal from one sequence to another, but far more naturally than before. No more tram sequences between levels to catch your breath in. In Dead Space 2 Isaac moves into a new space, and whether he has time to look around first or needs to dish out a plasma supper to a bunch of flesh-hungry toddlers (yes, really!), it doesn't make any difference to the caption that slowly fades up and out at the bottom of your tellybox screen. This, as you're moving, is the only indication you have that another chapter in this grizly tale is about to unfold around you. Ironically there is a tram/ train sequence. And it's f****ng Awesome!
Which brings me to the game's cinematics. Make no mistake, the set-pieces in Dead Space2 are Massive (*lots of Capital Letters here, just to really Hammer it Home how Awesome these Really Are). I thought the glasshouse bridge of the Ishimura was pretty darned cool in the first game, but let me tell you it's nothing compared to the vistas you move through and interract with in DS2.
Moving the action to the wider arena of this city on Titan means that yes, there is a slight shift away from the constant, gut-wrenching claustrophic tension of the original, but what you receive in return is a whole new sense of scale and authenticity. And it changes as you walk, run, stumble, trip and scream your way through it. Sometimes you can't remember how things changed from shopping centre to Unitology church, it just happened subtly around you and now hear you are and.... What was that chirruping/ screeching sound? Haven't heard that one before. Just think how you felt when you first looked across to the other side of the Extraction crater at the end of DS1. Sometimes the sense of scale is a bit like that. There are still some narrow corridors, darkened walkways and tight corners to negotiate. You still need to access elevators down to rooms in which you know Isaac's gonna take some hurt, but there are also places with big windows looking out onto BladeRunner type towers, where military gunships hover menacingly, blinding you with lights. A shopping centre, a day school and a theatre. There's a dirty mineshaft and the uber-cool future-smooth corridors of EarthGov's offices to fight through. There's a battle with an artificial intelligence and a VERY nervy sequence involving lasers making sweet love to Isaac's twitchy eyeball. So there's more to this game than knocking the nufty out of necros.
And what about those bad boys? They are much tougher this time round. They move like they're high on WD40 and they're tough to see in the dark. Whatever you do, don't fumble your reloads on Dead Space 2 when surrounded by screams, slashing shadows and exploding doors and windows. Not this time round. In some ways this game is much more merciless.
Ok - downside.
I love this game. Except for a couple of things.
Firstly some of the more 'challenging' areas of the game are just frustrating. It's a fine line. But a challenge makes me want to come back and try again. If it didn't work a couple of times, then I go away, think up a new tactic and try it again. And I'll feel great when I crack it and move on. So a challenge is when the game makes me want to come back to it no matter how difficult an area or a boss is. Frustration is when I tried all that and now I just want to get past it, or throw the disc at the wall or hit something.
Secondly the hacking mini-game is a thing of evil. Especially when you've just killed a slurping, roaring beast the size of a house and your rig is glowing redder than a pus-filled boil on your spinal column. One hit is all it takes to knock you into a mass of steaming beef-fat on the floor, and it's incredibly frustrating when that final blow comes from nothing more than your inability to focus on the final blue wedge in the time limit and hit the x-button right. Or maybe I was just a bit rubbish at that bit?
The run-up to the final boss battle also saw more than one dualshock controller being launched aggressively at the screen of my tv. And as for the final boss battle itself? Trust me it's way tougher than the boss from the first game. That's all I'll say.
But I beat it, I finished it, and now I'm playing it again. So it can't be all bad right?