Isaac Clarke’s adventure is no longer a tense psychological horror, but it’s still a gory action romp that will occasionally make you jump. The versatility of Dead Space 2’s structure is what saves it, however. For example, you end up automatically following the orders of characters who are obviously not what they seem, and who provide far too little information to justify your faith in them. The scare-factor is then further reduced by a story which, while enjoyable, is often quite predictable in places and regularly relies on you making questionable decisions. This means that players get more answers and less unease than they did the first time around. Isaac is no longer afraid to ask questions of the other characters, nor to dispel tension with a muttered obscenity.

There were times when the silence in the first game felt contrived, but by going the other way the sequel has destroyed much of the horror and intrigue. On the downside, however, Isaac’s propensity to pipe up does mean that a lot of the mystery and dread which defined the original game has been negated in the sequel. Sounding believably frustrated and prone to expel expletives only in the most dramatic situations, Isaac comes across as both suitably downtrodden and sympathetic. Instead, Isaac’s voice, tone and personality fit him so well that you’d be forgiven for thinking that he had them in the first game too. The good news is that EA has managed to resist the urge to turn the beleaguered space engineer into either a gun-toting, gravelly voiced superkiller or a foul-mouthed yob who cusses more than a rapper with a papercut.

The new Necromorphs, the new weapons, the flying sequences? It’s all much of a muchness what really matters is that Isaac speaks. The previously mute Isaac may have woken up in a straitjacket after a three-year cryostasis slumber, but at least he’s no longer gagged.įlying in the face of conventional wisdom, it’s this latter point that’s the most important change Electronic Arts has wrought on the sequel to the favoured 2008 scare-em-up Dead Space. On the plus side, however, he’s got his voice back. It’s no surprise that his mind is tearing itself apart at the seams, though, given that he’s being manipulated and hunted by a government agency and a cult of zombie-worshippers who certainly bear no resemblance to Scientologists whatsoever. Haunted by an apparition of his dead girlfriend, driven into a deep, deadly dementia and trapped once more on a space station filled with alien mutants, Isaac is a man under the cosh.

Dead space 3 xbox one review