Dead Space 2

[Chewcky]

Hey guys

I picked up Dead Space 2 yesterday for the PC and I am extremely impressed with it so far.  I am probably about 5 hours of play time into it...however I am playing it on the hardest difficulty so its most likely 2-3 hours when compared to lower difficulties.  Runs like a dream on my laptop at high settings (I have one of the new Dell XPS laptops with 6gb ram and a 1gb nvidia 435GT).  If you like survival horror games then I would definitely recommend picking it up.  The atmosphere is very impressive and ive jumped a few times already.  The game moves a bit faster than the first game, but i think thats a good thing.  Still very challenging because if you play on the higher difficulties you will find that ammo and health packs are extremely scares which makes you focus really hard on aiming for the creatures limbs instead of firing off random shots.  Anyways, such a good game though and a must buy if you like the genre even a little bit.

[OU8]

The only thing I ever played that sounds remotely similar was Half-Life:2.  How does it compare to that?

[Chewcky]

Id say it more resembles Resident Evil 4 than anything, but even thats not a good comparison because this game blows the resident evil games out of the water.  Its very atmospheric like HL2, though in this game it keeps you on your feet constantly because you have to worry about which enemies are going to be around the next corner, and if you even have ammo enough to kill them ha.  I was playing late last night with the headphones on and the volume turned up and ill admit....i jumped a couple times again haha.  The game is really unique because you have these monsters rushing you, and you have to kill them with the few bullets you have, but if you just shoot them in the chest or the head, thats not enough and they wont die.  You have to shoot their limbs off to do the most damage you can to them.  So if you have a guy rushing you, you can blast off his legs and he will still crawl (very fast) after you so you need to keep blasting different limbs to kill him.

The game also has some minor RPG elements added in to increase replay value.  For example there is a complete upgrade system for your weapons that resembles the final fantasy 12 upgrade system.  You place 'nodes' that you collect in game on the work bench and can upgrade a variety of aspects of your weapons like damage, capacity, speed, reloading, width of the laser beams, etc.  You can also get upgraded suits and upgrade the armor and air supply tank of your suits.  I think there are 7 or so suits, and the only way you can get all of them is through multiple play throughs.  But once you beat the game a mode called 'new game plus' opens and you can keep all your gear and money and start a new game.  Its definitely worth checking out, still couldn't recommend it enough.

[Thunder]

The game sounds interesting, thanks for the review - not sure I follow the logic of shooting off limbs instead of, well, the thing's heart though.

[OPIE]

Just got this today noticing it's price had dropped already to $39.99

I can tell you already I've leapt out of my chair said FUCK THIS and had to swallow my heart again. God damn scary as hell!

Chewcky whats your EA ID? We'll have to do some multiplayer.

And it also runs at max settings on my PC. Pretty sure the 8800GTS would even be able to handle it on max settings too. Game is just awesome!

[OPIE]

I got some footage I recorded of some really reallllly creepy parts of the game I will post in the next few days when I get time to edit the videos and compress them

Beat the game on normal and let me tell you....HOLY SHIT! This is most certainly a must buy and the multiplayer is pretty fun. It'll let you burn an hour or two when you need to.