Somewhere along the line Clarke is picked up by EarthGov and transferred to The Sprawl since his mind contains the blueprints for constructing a new Marker. Isaac Clarke, formerly a CEC Engineer assigned to assist the USG Ishimura (the planet-cracker class space craft overrun by Necromorphs in DS1) narrowly escapes the Ishimura and the Marker infected planet of Aegis 7 before they both blow to bits. Poor bastard barely gets a word in edgewise before his guts spill out all over your feet. When DS2 begins, you find yourself awakened out of a coma-induced stasis by an unknown man (I’m betting more than likely he’s involved with the Unitologists) who is quickly killed off by a slasher and then mutates into one himself before your very eyes. Take out the legs, then go for the arms until there’s nothing left but a mutilated torso. Instead, you must cut the limbs off the Necromorphs (the reanimated baddies controlled by the marker signal which grotesquely rearranges it’s host human body into a nightmarish concoction of razor sharp blades, tentacles, exposed spinal columns, multiple jaws and so on) using whatever tool or weapon you have at your disposal. As with the first title, Dead Space does away with the video game cliche of head shots taking down your enemies in a one-hit fashion.

Oh, and you better have damn good aim otherwise you’re fucked. This translates into a genuinely disturbing gaming experience where playing on Survivalist/Zealot difficulty (if you want the true survival-horror experience) means you cherish every line cutter or plasma rounds you can find and health and stasis packs become a rare premium. What more could you ask for? The sequel takes everything great about the first game, twists, grinds and reanimates it into something even more fucked up. Dead Space has reinvigorated the survival-horror genre in a particularly gruesome and disturbing fashion, and it does it all in the dark, cold realm of outer space. The Dead Space series of games has quickly become one of my favorite new IP’s this console generation. The Sprawl is a living, breathing metropolis with some very disturbing secrets tucked away inside. The game is localized mainly on Titan’s Sprawl Station, since it hovers above Saturn’s moon Titan. Unlike it’s predecessor, DS2 is not isolated to a space craft (unless you count the last chapter or two of DS1).

Dead space awakened story hallucination