Good games are often tough to review because it’s hard to tell when they go right. Or rather, you never notice it. You have to go back and try to think about why something was so fun or immersive. This is usually why the number of games I gush over are so few. I’ve played them multiple times over and have had plenty of time to think about them. Bad games, or at the very least flawed games, are much easier due to how their problems will break up the flow of gameplay.

I wasn’t planning on doing any sort of post on Dead Space 2 yet, but as I was in my car for the awfully slow snow-covered commute to my job this morning I started thinking about the first chapter in the game. I suddenly started to realize the number of good design choices they made, including one major risk, all in the first thirty-to-sixty minutes of the game.

The game’s first good idea is to simply start the player with nothing. Even if a rational mind keeps on saying “don’t worry, they won’t throw anything to severe at you until you’ve got a weapon”, the fear of something popping out at any time will keep you on edge. I will go over this more later, but suffice to say being at an extreme disadvantage is a good way to drive fear through the player’s heart.

What truly didn’t strike me until the morning, however, was the new presentation of weapons. Isaac gets his kinesis ability by breaking open a machine and pulling the module that creates the kinesis field out, attaching it onto his arm. I was more concerned with the sudden Necromorph appearing at the time, but looking back it was a pretty good way to introduce an ability in the game. It felt less video-gamey and more realistic, a way to try and piece some equipment together when you have nothing better than a flashlight and straight jacket on. The plasma cutter is also introduced a bit later as a surgery tool, pulled off of the machine to be used as Isaac sees fit.

In many ways this gives the player a concept of who the character is, someone that is good with machinery (as an engineer should be) and someone that is resourceful. But it also continues to set the game apart from any other. Whereas most games will just have the player walk on top of a gun to pick it up, or hand them a gun, Dead Space 2 reminds the player that these aren’t actual guns being used. They are tools in the same vein as our power drills, and Isaac is using them because they are the most effective weapon he can find.

It would be nice to see this sort of creativity more often in games. It allows the weapons, tools and abilities to feel like a real and legitimate part of the world rather than just a spare power-up lying around. It keeps the universe consistent and believable.

Yet I think I was most impressed with a little wordless tutorial presented between chapters one and two. Shortly after discovering the first work bench where a player will likely spend all of their power nodes there is a locked door. This locked door can only be open by a power node, the same that a player likely just spent all of upgrading their equipment. Through the next door is a stray power node on the ground that can be used to open the locked room. Inside is a schematic for power nodes as well as a ruby semiconductor. Tracking back to the store a player will discover that power nodes cost 10,000 credits to purchase, which happens to be the same amount that ruby semiconductors sell for.

This process teaches the player multiple lessons and systems without actually telling them anything directly. The locked door teaches them that it may not be wise to spend all their power nodes in one place. Obtaining the ruby semiconductor and schematics let the player know what to expect in these locked rooms. The next trip to the store reveals that schematics are used to purchase new items from the store while the semiconductor allows the player the money to purchase this new item.

It is not a foolproof design. It could be easy for a player to miss the power node on the ground, or they could decide it is more worth their time to use the power node on upgrading an item instead of unlocking the room. However, on the whole it allows the player to make a discovery on their own. They are never aware that the designer intended for them to learn this lesson on how the game works, but the goal is accomplished just the same.

This is an extremely tough sort of design to pull off, but Visceral managed to make it work. So far, at least. This was just the first chapter.

I am reminded of why the first Dead Space was my game of 2008, however. Its predecessor has already blown many of its competitors out of the water that I’ve lately been playing, and I haven’t even passed the first hour mark. I look forward to spending more time with it.

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