Dead Space 2 had a Hell of a lot to live up to. Despite meagre sales, the original Dead Space was one of the best games of 2008, with its macabre gameplay and ‘no one can hear you scream’ philosophy. Drawing on the sci fi horror greats in all ways imaginable, the first Dead Space game was a landmark in modern horror. Isolated in a chaotic new mythos, the player stepped into the shoes of Isaac Clarke to escape the doomed husk of the USG Ishimura, which had become overrun with a Necromorph blight following the Ishimura’s recovery of the obligatory mysterious artifact, the Marker. And what comfortable, and yet silent, shoes those were.

Dead Space 2 fits to the player like a well loved pair of sneakers. The minute gameplay starts, we are thrown into madness – Isaac wakes up on The Sprawl, strapped up in a straight jacket, his health in the red and fading fast, all he can do is run as fast as he can as the menace he thought he left on the Ishimura rears its ugly, undead head once more. It’s a loud, in your face introduction – a far cry from the original game’s slow, tense build up to the first monster reveal. It’s the first demonstration of how Dead Space 2 has taken the original game’s concept and developed it into something fresh.

The silent protagonist Isaac now has a voice, and a face that we see for more than just rudimentary glimpses – and what a likable, down to earth character he is. None of the testosterone addled macho-man facade – he’s still just an engineer with a very bad run of luck. Acted to perfection by Gunner Wright, he feels much more a part of the adventure now that he’s found his tongue. Joined by a cast who range from the helpful to the purely insane, Dead Space 2 is a character driven piece – but of course, first and foremost comes the dismemberment fixated combat.

The player welcomes back into their hand the ever-reliable plasma cutter, ripped lovingly from an operating table overhead while the helpless patient strapped below begs you to help him before the necromorphs start piling in. But Dead Space 2 takes no prisoners and, as with nearly every other NPC you encounter, he falls to the oncoming horde. But while all your old weapons are (eventually) on hand to save you from the same fate, there is also a great focus on the use of kinesis to attack and dismember enemies. As a result where before you may have found ammo clips you instead find long metal poles, which do rate slightly higher in the believability stakes of “random crap left lying on the floor” and make for a satisfying SHU-DUNK as your enemies are impaled – although of course you should still aim for the limbs.

New weapons and new necromorph enemies are thrown in to spice things up some more. The Stalker, a velociraptor-esque group hunter which hides until ready to charge you down, makes for some brilliant set battle pieces in cargo holding areas where they have plenty of places to hide. To offset their natural speed and stealth abilities, the game gifts you a Seeker Rifle with a zoom capability that lets you spot and pop their heads off as they take a peek to see which bit of you looks tastiest. Once you survive your first encounter with these strategic dinomorphs,you receive an achievement aptly named “Clever Girls”.

Also joining the show are the Crawlers, which have the added emotional kick of looking just like backwards babies with bulbous boils sitting on their stomachs (which are liable to explode when shot at). The older kids didn’t fair much better either, and are now transformed into the Pack, which essentially looks like a bunch of naked children running around. If these two breeds of necromorph were meant to inspire some sort of “nothing is sacred, no one is safe!” sense of horror, they didn’t do a bad job, but there’s little moral quandary about shooting them presented within the game itself, which strikes me as something of a missed opportunity. That said, this is a horror shooter, not an exercise of internal reflection.

Actually, that’s not strictly true. A lot of internal reflection goes on on Isaac’s part, mostly in the form of violent hallucinations of his (now known to be dead) wife, Nicole. Her image stalks him throughout the game, catching the player off guard even when they are safe from the onslaught. It’s very much a case of the enemy within, which makes your experience of the Sprawl one you cannot trust with your eyes and ears alone. Suffering dementia following his exposure to the Marker in the first game, Isaac finds himself struggling to differentiate between ally and foe, and every human presence is just as much a threat as a necromorph.

For its first three quarters the game is a well paced ramble through the various sections of The Sprawl, which is a colony located on Titan. Close up encounters with the Church of Unitology and a shopping mall makes for a scenic change from the gunmetal grey of the Ishimura, although you do retread old paths toward’s the game’s conclusion, which leaves things feeling a little stale before the finale. The last level is deeply reminiscent of that experienced in Dead Space, and there is the sense that perhaps the team used up all their good ideas too soon. A couple of squeamish moments do occur to break up the monotony, but the game’s collapse into roads already travelled and a bit of psychological nonsense made for a disappointing conclusion.

Before the last quarter, though, Dead Space 2 offers several hours of fun and isn’t afraid to get inventive or put the player on their toes in a panic. It’s a short, sharp experience which clocks in at about ten hours if you play the story straight. After that you can go back and try things out in Hardcore mode, which only allows you three saves and amps the difficulty up something chronic. Online play is on offer as well.

There is little doubt that EA will keep this franchise running until it’s bled every drop of blood it can from the horror loving public, so keep your eyes peeled for other Dead Space titles. Given 2’s final cutscene, Dead Space 3 is an inevitability that I eagerly anticipate.