This week’s game – Dead Space 2 (PC)

I’ve got to the bit after the narrow, dark corridor where a necromorph suddenly appears out of the darkness and attacks, you know the bit, it’s just after the bit where you go round a tight corner and a necromorph lumbers out of the darkness and attacks you.

Ok, easy jokes aside, I’m loving Dead Space 2 so far. As many proper reviewers have noted, it has retained all the good things from the first game and improved the parts that needed to be improved.

It's going to move, you know it is...

Things happen faster this time, from your much more natural speedy foot-stomp to the brutally quick way the first level goes from, “Oh dear, something is wrong…” to “Ruuuuuuunnn!!!”

In amongst the extreme gore and the rapid succession of rather blatant survival horror moments in the opening area, there’s a subtle elegance to the way your character acquires the first few weapons and abilities. Rather than relying on old standards such as smashing open a bunch of handy crates, or emerging from a cutscene with magical new powers, you see Isaac mometarily not quite under your control ripping the innards out of some medical machinery and strapping a device to his arm to acquire the Force Push, sorry, the Kinesis Module.

Setting stuff on fire is always fun

I’m currently playing this quite a lot and will post further details of my experiences lopping the limbs off gangly semi-dead alien monsters in the very near future.