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Dead Space 2 is set three years after the original game. You still play Isaac Clarke, only in this game you start off on a space station known as the Sprawl, and awaken to the entire population of the station being zombified into creatures called Necromorphs. These creatures or on you from the moment you pick your control up, so you’d better be ready. It doesn’t take long, though, for you to find a plasma cutter and an engineering suit. That’s all Isaac needs to take the fight to the enemy.

One enthralling aspect of this game is the inner turmoil that the main character faces, and that we get to watch him face. In the previous game, he lost his girlfriend on the spaceship that he asked her to work on. Despite fighting off waves and waves of evil baddies, he wasn’t able to save her. Now, those feelings crash down on him, hardening his spirit as he blasts through the enemy. Watching the internal struggle inside of your main character allows for a sense of immersion that is tough for a videogame to reach.

It’s not just the interesting main character that makes this such a great game, though. One thing that makes it so incredible is the fantastic way that you can utilize your equipment, skills, and the environment to slaughter enemies. Try slowing an enemy down, shooting off a limb, and then impaling them on their own limb against a wall. Now, try to do that on another game. Exactly.

There are other aspects that contribute to the awesomeness of this game. One is the fear factor. A number of levels have you moving from point A to point B, slaughtering alien zombies along the way. These sequences are scripted, and linear so that you pretty much have to do all this stuff, in this fashion, to get through the level. Well, where that might be a problem in most videogames, with the horror aspect of this one, it works just fine. The scares are obviously scripted to scare you, but here’s the surprise; they still do. Now, when I know a game’s just trying to scare me, and that I’m safe in my own house, and I’m on edge anyway, well, that game is doing something very, very right.

And that’s the case with this game. Dead Space 2 does things very, very right, again and again. From allowing you to beat the game and continue to have the equipment you unlocked, to implementation of telekinetic effects that doesn’t make you wish your head would just explode already, this game does gamers right from start to finish.