That bit where... Dead Space 2

Haven't blogged in a while, partly because it's still January and as such there are no new games to talk about, but mostly because I haven't had time. I've still been writing though, and if you haven't seen them already you should go and check out my articles on Hooked Gamers, who I now work as a volunteer writer for!

Borderlands 2 Preview: http://www.hookedgamers.com/pc/borderlands_2/preview/article-988.html

How biased are gamers? (Feature): http://www.hookedgamers.com/features/2012/01/24/how_biased_are_gamers.html

Back to blogging business then, with the latest part in my 'That bit where' series.

I'm not usually much of a horror game player, but Dead Space 2 tickled my fancy last year so I decided to give it a try. After a play through with many spills and multiple thrills, it became one of my favourite games of last year. There are several stand out moments (most of them horrifically gory), but the one I'm going to write about here is one of the most exhilarating sequences in the game.

Dead Space 2 - The Train


For the most part, Dead Space 2 is a game which gleefully allows nothing to happen for five minutes while you wander around checking every corner, and then when you least expect it: BAM, a monster jumps out of a wall and impales you on razor sharp spikes. You do well to hold onto your controller when this happens, and if you do you are hammering on the fire button until whatever the thing is falls over, and sometimes even then it isn't dead. The game is very good at this, and so does it at nearly every opportunity, and it never gets any less terrifying. In a game where ammo can sometimes be fairly hard to come by, wasting multiple bullets in these situations isn't advisable.

I'm emphasising the amount of times you're slowly tip-toeing around, waiting for the next monster to appear, because the train sequence in Dead Space 2 is pretty much the exact opposite. It breaks any of the tension that has been created up to that point in the game in about a three minute long action packed roller-coaster(train) ride.

So you start up the train, which clearly the undead inhabitants of Dead Space 2 don't like, as they start swarming to your location. Even as the train hurtles along, they're jumping onto it and breaking through the windows left and right. After defending yourself for a bit, suddenly the carriage you are in breaks off from the rest of the train, so you have to make a death defying leap towards the next carriage, using your handy foot-mounted rocket boosters. After dodging the doors which are wrenched off and sent flying towards you, you roll into the next carriage, with yet more monsters waiting for you.

But it's not over there. Not long after this, the train starts to go into a nose-dive (by the way it's like a floating space train, should've mentioned that earlier). Unable to stand up properly, you slide on your back through the rest of the carriages, shooting and dodging flailing zombies as you go. The train crashes into what seems to be a large storage hangar, and you are caught in a wire, hanging upside down from the wrecked train just above the ground. And there are more monsters coming.

This moment probably stayed with me as it was so different from most of the rest of the game. The game is filled with edge-of-your-seat moments, and this one is exciting in a completely different way from the traditional horror moments of other levels. I would definitely recommend playing this game, you can probably pick it up fairly cheap these days too.

Thanks for reading.