More Space Zombies - The Game's I've Played

I talked about Dead Space already, and if you remember right, I thought they got everything right with starting a new survival horror game. They had a compelling character that made sense, the story line was creepy and great, and then there were the monsters.

With #2 coming out, I got excited. The first was scary, and I thought with a bigger budget, and more of a backing that they might just be able to go somewhere with the second one. 

I was wrong. 

Part of the allure of the first Dead Space was that poor ol' Issac was thrown into the situation with no experience or training. He was just an engineer who got stuck in a space mutant zombie infestation. It was creepy, and new, and things were survival horror in the best sense possible. Meanwhile in Deadspace 2 we've turned it more into a Tomb Raider, Uncharted, adventure game than trying to stay alive. Instead of it being an accident that Issac stumbled into he gets woken up out of a coma in an insane asylum because of what happened in the first. 

Where #1 made you jump at the slightest rustle and would crawl into your mind even when you weren't playing the game #2 is heavy and straight forward. The monsters announce from a mile away that they're coming, the surprise and shock of something happening is all but removed, and the only real moment that my stomach tightened up giving me some gamer abs, was near the very end with a very particular action sequence done right where screwing up is less shocking and disturbing than trying to do it right. 

The problems only start to compound from there. The only really horrifying part, that made it feel like a survival horror game instead of just a shoot 'em up action game was when Issac (spoiler) finds his way back onto the ship from the first game, but it wasn't so much as actually scary, it was just remembering the first game.

The good news is that while screwing up the direction and writing within the game, at the very least EA didn't manage to screw up the interface. One of the best parts of the game was the interface and the entire lack of HUD, and true to the game they kept that part. They kept a lot of the things that made Deadspace good, and even tried to tweak how some things work (like traveling in 0 g space). Most of the changes were worth it, and technically made it a better game, but the story and the pacing of the game ruined anything that technically was better. 

You can make the game engine and mechanics better, and even have better graphics and more diverse monsters, but if you're going to take all of that and not try to make it a survival horror game, then it doesn't quite make it. 

It's an okay game. You can still have fun hacking off limbs and freezing aliens in place as you take a blowtorch to them, but don't expect as much horror or survival, and expect a lot more typical action adventure.