It's tough for videogame developers these days. If your game isn’t already a tried and proven franchise then it seems that publishers need a gimmick to pivot their entire marketing strategy around. Be it open world, cooperative play or a game world that’s bigger than Los Angeles. But what if your game is just a plain old videogame? It doesn’t have a gimmick. It’s not innovating and taking the next leap forward in interactive entertainment. Its premise, its game mechanics and its design has all been done before. If you’re Visceral games, you suck it up, stick to your guns and trust that your game is going to be great. And if your game is Dead Space 2, then you’ve got nothing to worry about.

Set a few years following the events of Dead Space, Dead Space 2 begins with Isaac Clarke waking up in a hospital on The Sprawl, a Bladerunner-esque, densely populated city on one of Saturn’s moons, with no memory of the past few years. The introduction cinematic reveals that not even Isaac’s psychotherapist believes his tall tale of Necromorphs on the USS Ishimura and hallucinations of his wife aren’t helping things.

Dead Space 2 wastes no time getting into the action and you’re instantly running for your life in one of the more impressive opening levels in a game this generation. You’re unarmed in a straitjacket and you’re being chased by the very things that tormented you into a psyche ward…except now they’ve infected civilization.

The Sprawl itself is Dead Space 2’s biggest change from the original. You’re no longer confined to a drilling colony which gives Visceral Games the opportunity to vary the level design quite a lot. You’ll trek through office buildings, science labs and cryo-freezers and you’ll even get your ‘cliché’ on by visiting a church and a school. These varying environments are a novel touch, but the level design is probably Dead Space 2’s weakest element. Don’t get me wrong, the level design is great. It’s like saying that it’s unfortunate that one of Katy Perry’s boobs is smaller than the other.

Set pieces and boss battles are a little more ambitious this time around and these lend a more ‘action’ flavour to the usual slow-paced, methodical gameplay. You’ll outrun helicopters, swat teams and ride a mining drill Gears of War 2 style as you’re bombarded by Necromorphs. These sequences are used sparingly, however, and signify key points in the ebb and flow of Dead Space 2’s pacing. You’ll soon find yourself back to edging your way around corners and tactically and cunningly taking on Necromorphs one on one.

Like its predecessor, pacing and tactics is where Dead Space 2 really shines. You’ll encounter new enemies and new weapons to kill them, but you’ll need to choose carefully as weapon and vitals management is still very much a part of the gameplay. You’ll need to decide early on which weapons you’ll want to use and where to assign the Power Nodes you’ll collect along the way, using the power benches that are few and far between.

You’ll learn to use stasis to freeze enemies and buy yourself some breathing space, and you’ll use kinesis to deliver a killer blow by shooting an enemy’s own dismembered limb into them, saving valuable ammunition. I found myself using these two elements a lot more than in the original game, mostly because the new Necromorphs in Dead Space 2 are craftier, faster and more deadly.

Dead Space 2’s pacing and balance isn’t flawless, however, and I found myself being overwhelmed by the Pack, speedy little baby Necromorphs, because I’d chosen not to carry an assault rifle and my single shot plasma cutter wasn’t…erhm…cutting it. These balance issues probably have a lot to do with Dead Space 2’s new replay mode that allows you to play through the game multiple times while keeping your level ups and status, something sorely lacking in Dead Space.

Adding to the replay value of Dead Space 2 is an all new multiplayer mode. Borrowing a lot of ideas from Left 4 Dead’s Versus mode, you’ll choose to either play as humans of Necromorphs in objective based games and apparently it’s a lot of fun. I spent precisely 5 minutes playing this mode before I realized that it wasn’t for me. Dead Space 2 is an amazing single player experience and while Dead Space 2 has one of the better tacked on multiplayer modes, it’s still tacked on and it’s still unnecessary. Publishers had to get some sort of gimmick in, right?

The original Dead Space copped a lot of gentle ribbing over its borrowing of concepts from some of the most popular sci-fi movies and games, and rightly so. But it did so with elegance and a level of polish not normally associated with a game that’s straight plagiarized. Dead Space 2 is no different. It’s single player campaign is superb and if given enough of a chance, I hear that the multiplayer mode is a tactical and fun experience if you’re with the right group of people.

While some people might say that Dead Space 2 is better than the original, I would disagree. It’s the logical next step of a great franchise and as long as they keep doing what they’re doing, Dead Space will be amazing.