Horror Games Special Feature – Dead Space 2

Posted on 21st October 201527th October 2015 by

With Halloween just around the corner, we felt it was time to delve into some of the horror classics of gaming!
In the nights leading up to All Hallows Eve, we’re going to do a short feature of some of the more notable horror games that have been released. This isn’t a list of the best or even our favourites.
Just some Horror games which have stood out to us, for one reason or another.

The horror genre has been home to some turbulent waters over the past few years.
It’s pretty common knowledge that AAA studios have a lot of trouble developing genuinely scary titles. They opt for guns and action with some decent gore effects, as opposed to deep psychological horror.
In few places is this more evident than in the Dead Space franchise.

The original Dead Space was a wonderful surprise for me one Christmas morning in 2008. Nothing says season’s greetings like dismembering alien zombie limbs, after all.
Dark, tense and powerfully atmospheric, it gave some hope that, hey, maybe big studios can frighten us after all. For a long time, it was my number one choice for scariest game I’d ever played.

More recently I played Dead Space 2, a game many critics had assured me was even scarier than the first. Unfortunately, somewhere between 2008 and this year, the term ‘scarier’ appropriated its meaning to simply mean ‘louder’.
A lot of people point towards the third game in the franchise, saying this is where it sold out and became a Call of Duty clone. I’d argue that the clues are just more obvious there, that’s all (co-op, extra guns, bright, snow covered planet, etc).

Dead Space 2 didn’t scare me. Not once. At no point did I feel I simply couldn’t go on, that I needed a minute to steel myself before going through that flesh covered air-lock. It’s a decent action game and shooting Necromorphs is tons of fun, maybe even more so than in the first.
But it just wasn’t scary!

The game is notable because it represents that subtle shift in emphasis that so many horror franchises went through. For most games, there is a very clean break between two games and you can easily pinpoint where the studios said “More action here!”
Dead Space 2 is a funny one in that it sells itself on horror, not action. Action enthusiasts who delve in would undoubtedly be impressed. Horror aficionados would more likely be disappointed. It is, basically, a soft-core horror game that appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Dead Space is a great horror game and deserves any praise it gets. Dead Space 3 is an action game on almost every level. Going into it with a Call of Duty state of mind is probably a barrel of laughs. It might not be true to its horror roots, but at least it wears its identity on its sleeve.

Dead Space 2 is the betrayer. Dead Space 2 is the game that promised bigger and better scares than ever before. This is a noteworthy game that made its way onto this list because, enjoyable as it is, this is the game that tricked horror fans into saying “We like action, not scares”.

Best Moment
As easy as it is to give out about this game, there are some brilliant set-pieces for players. And while the anti-gravity segments are a lot of fun, the bit with the DIY laser eye surgery is the stand out moment for us.

Where is the franchise now?
After luke-warm sales of Dead Space 3, development on further sequels was more-or-less halted. Visceral games have stated that they would like to return to the franchise again, but EA are focusing on their bigger brands, first and foremost. It may be some time before we see Dead Space 4.