Call me a sucker for the frightening, the macabre, the disturbing. Just don't say I have bad taste in gaming, because the original Dead Space was one of the freshest and most terrifying games I've ever had the privilege of playing. Now, two years later, the sequel is finally here. Is it the bloody shot in the arm the first one was, or have the vicious necromorphs run their course?

Pity poor Isaac Clarke. Everyone's favourite interstellar engineer has been through hell and back during the events on the Ishimura during the original Dead Space. For those who haven't played the original, I'll try and catch you up without too many spoilers. Isaac and his crew were on their way to fix a broken comm link on an interstellar mining ship known as the Ishimura. Of course, things fell apart very quickly when the crew was transformed into blood thirsty mutants known as necromorphs. The necromorphs are essentially space zombies that have razor sharp blades where their appendages used to be, and come after our hero with reckless aplomb.

Throughout the events of the first game (and the Wii side story Dead Space Extraction), it is revealed that the necromorphs are the result of a relic known as the Marker which was found on the surface of Aegis VII, the planet that the Ishimura was mining. Where did the Marker come from? Who is responsible? Dead Space 2 deals with these questions that were answered in the first game, and explored further in this instalment. Dead Space 2 takes place two years after the original game in a city known as the Sprawl, a massive city on one of the moons of Saturn. The necromorphs have overtaken the station, and only Clarke and a few select survivors are fighting for their survival. Without giving away too much, Dead Space deals with some heady themes that are rare to see in the survival horror genre like the folly of blind faith, love, and what sanity truly means. Okay, the last one has been played out a bit at this point, but Dead Space 2 treats the player's intellect with respect, and tells a strong and unsettling story over its ten or so hour campaign.

But, let's be real here. You play Dead Space to be scared stiff and to see some entrails. Dead Space 2 is not for the faint of heart. This game is absolutely gruesome, and the necromorphs are a terrifying and disturbing enemy. Dead Space's unique hook is that enemies must be dismembered. Shooting them in the head or the body will only waste ammo and make the enemies faster and more dangerous. Blowing their limbs off is the only effective way to keep them down for good. And boy does it show. Limbs, heads, it all gets blown apart in disturbing detail, especially when you die yourself. It's clear that Visceral Games put a lot of work into the hundreds of different gruesome ways to die in this game. From getting sliced in half slowly by an airlock door to getting graphically disembowelled, you will get nearly as well acquainted with Clarke's insides as his outsides. I played this game with my significant other and she felt sick to her stomach after only a half hour of play. Even with my desensitization from years of gaming, I found myself feeling a little sick and uncomfortable at what I was doing and playing too, but definitely not enough to stop.

The gameplay will be instantly familiar to anyone who survived the harrowing corridors of the Ishimura. The game is played mainly from a tight third person perspective, like you're closely following Clarke. At its heart, Dead Space is a linear shooter, but with a plethora of unique weapons at your disposal that will already be familiar to fans of the first. Since Clarke is an engineer, most of the weapons you'll wield are actually improvised mining weapons like plasma cutters, line guns, flame welders, and my personal favourite, the ripper (which launches saw blades in front of you for easy dismemberment.) I'm still waiting for one of the games to have those chainsaw lightsabers from that awful Dead Space movie. Actually... maybe not.

Since the necromorphs come from every angle in the darkness, it's fortunate that Clarke can slow his enemies down with his stasis module and use a telekinesis-like kinetic module. Since ammo is scarce as well, you'll find yourself using your kinesis quite often to hurl objects at great speeds. A quick dismemberment of a razor sharp necromorph's arm makes for a pointed way to do some real damage to your enemies.

The enemies are more varied than the last title, and more unsettling than ever. You'll find necromorphs that run right at you, launch projectiles from a distance, explode when they get too close, release small parasites when they die, while others (who are represented by mutated children and babies no less) will overwhelm you with sheer numbers. Using the right weapon and strategy against the right adversary is the key to victory.