Dead Space 2 Demo

So I finally got a chance to play the Dead Space 2 Demo.

First, let me gripe.

I didn't finally get a chance to play the demo because I was busy and couldn't find the time to play the thing. I couldn't play the demo because I wasn't a Gold Member on Xbox Live. That annoyed me. That annoyed me a lot. I was really looking forward to the demo, and on release day I ran to my XBox like a small child runs to the tree on Christmas (Merry Christmas, BTW) to play the game as soon as I possibly could. Then I had to read all the Facebook posts asking me how much I enjoyed the game. I was truly a tortured soul.

That last part was embellishment. I was a smidgen annoyed in truth.

The demo itself is very fun. It exists to give you a very small taste of what the game is going to be. A very small taste. You can probably run through the level in 15 minutes or so.

You get to check out a new weapon, the harpoon gun, and figure out how to use the thing. It's pretty nifty. When it would normally kill an enemy, it sends them flying back into the nearest wall (or floor, depending on the angle of the shot) and pins them to it. Then, you can press the alt fire button and enemies near the harpoon will get zapped with a fairly powerful electric burst. This comes in handy, especially against the new enemy type.

The new enemy type is called, I believe, The Pack. Basically a bunch of zombie children who run at you screaming and hungry. They're terrifying. Not hard to kill, but they just keep coming, and coming, and they're children, and the animation for their kill on Isaac is straight out of the most terrible imagining of Lord of the Flies. It's awesome.

Theirs also the new suit that Isaac wears. I'm not in love with it. The old suit was perfect for the game. Kind of rugged looking. Mid-evil in a futuristic kind of way. The new suit is very streamlined, like a modern Gundam. It's not bad, but it doesn't say horror to me, it says action. I liked the Engineering suit because, even without the other bits of atmosphere in Dead Space, I really felt like I was in trouble in the game.

The story bits are nice as well. Isaac is still insane, probably moreso than he was last game, and you get one awesome hallucination scene that really drives that home. Apparently the government is after Isaac as well, which makes perfect sense if you've read the Dead Space book, and Isaac is working with someone new, whose motive I was left unaware of. Good stuff.

While it was a rather short experience, I was extremely happy with it. It felt very true to the first game, and that's really all I want out the new experience. There's no need to reinvent this wheel.