Woove staff writer Caroline Moseley reviews Dead Space 2, a new video game from Visceral Games, released January 25.

I never buy video games on their release date. I am a frugal skeptic when it comes to new releases, especially with the recent failure of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2, a game I had anticipated for well over a year. However, after crawling through the original Dead Space, frantically searching for ammo and creeping around corners waiting for the next Necromorph to disembowel me, I decided it was time to break my own rule.

For those of you new to the series, Dead Space is an action horror set in outer space. You play Isaac Clark, an engineer who possesses a horrific secret against the wishes of his government: intricate knowledge of the mysterious Marker.

The sequel picks up where the original left off, with a sprawling, futuristic metropolis under quarantine due to a rampant infection that turns men, women, toddlers, and even newborns into horrific monsters with an arsenal of ways to claw, bite, poison, and slash you to death. You must plow your way through them using a wide variety of both dismemberment-themed and brutalizing weapons.

While I easily fell back into the rhythmic, fast-paced gameplay that mirrored the original Dead Space, a few major improvements immediately caught my attention. Both the graphics and sound quality have been ramped up; the Xbox 360 version requires two discs to run because of the game’s remarkable attention to detail. The kinesis system, which allows Isaac to move heavy objects and, more importantly, impale monsters with their own severed limbs, has been honed for both precision and power, useful throughout the entire game. Additionally, both the old and new weapons have been tweaked and given more options for useful customization. Who doesn’t want to be able to clear through waves of undead in a single burst from the Line Gun?

However, the most pivotal aspect of Dead Space 2, as well as its largest selling point, is the expertly crafted artificial intelligence of its monsters. Necromorphs drop through air vents, crawl under barricades, smash through windows, sneak up behind you and latch themselves to your unsuspecting head, and occasionally flood at you from every possible exit. They scuttle nosily through the dark, never giving away their position until it’s too late and you’re frantically tapping a button trying to shake them off. Visceral Games outdid themselves in both their enemy and level design, producing a quality immersive experience that far outstrips the original in both depth and sheer terror in waves so frequent, you might wish you had bought a box of Depends.