Working Day: Dead Space 2

It's past your bedtime, sonny! No more Dead Space 2!

I’ve been playing Dead Space 2 over this weekend and, as I expected, it’s filled with all manner of horrible events. The monsters are absolutely disgusting – more so, in some instances, than in the last game. The soundtrack is awash with wet, splashy sounds punctuated by satisfying weapony-blast sounds and screams from the pits of hell. The environments are alternately wide and impressive and narrow and claustrophobic. And apparently in the future, no one pays the electric bill, because even in the rooms which haven’t been splattered with gore, I find myself suppressing the urge to scream: “would someone please turn the bloody lights on in here!”

Best of all, Isaac (Asimov Arthur C.) Clarke can talk now. He actual says stuff, like; “Hang on! I’ll be right there!” when his mates call for help and “Aaaargh!” when he gets hit with something spiky and “OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod!” when something horrendous leaps onto the screen.

Actually he doesn’t do that.

I do that.

And then I pause the game and take a break.

A long break involving a hot bath, a cup of tea and a book about flowers and bunnies. Then it’s back to the coal-face – or in this case, The Sprawl.

I find Dead Space 2 easier to digest in chunks. It’s a lot like playing Vanquish except instead it feeling like everything in the world is shooting at you, it feels like everything in the world is screaming at you and trying to eat you. This sense of being overwhelmed is compounded by the game’s score, which sounds for all the world like an orchestra eating itself alive – although I gather,  that’s the point.

More on this when I emerge from under my duvet…