11 Tips For Dead Space 2

In my Dead Space 2 review I described the game as a “brilliant horror shooter that will scare the pants off you.” So if you’re having a bit of trouble getting past all those scary Necromorphs with your pants intact or you don’t know what the best gun is to use in Dead Space 2 then I’ve got some tips to help you:

1. Legs, legs, legs – Always shoot the legs off Necromorphs first. This gives you a lot more time to kill them as they are slow to recover from initially falling on the floor to crawling towards you. Use this time to reload, blow their arms off, stomp on their head or freeze them with a stasis shot.
2. Always have 1 power node handy – Most levels have 1 door which you will need a power node to unlock. Although the contents of these rooms can vary in value, they are almost always worth investigating. At worst you will find circuit boards to sell and lots of ammo, at best you get blueprints for new weapons and better survival suits.



3. Explore. Go the other way! – Many hidden items can be found by simply going in the opposite direction to the one shown by your locator. You will find quite a few power nodes hidden on the wall right at the end of dead-end corridors. Search the areas you can’t reach as well, as you will be able to use your kinesis ability to retrieve hidden items. Like from the ground floor of the shopping mall for instance.
4. Blow up Stalker (Raptor) Necromorphs – These particular Necromorphs are usually a real pain in the butt to kill as they are so quick. However, they do like to run blindly into mines which is a rather big weakness. When you hear their characteristic Raptor-like noises in a room, fire off some detonator mines and back off. Once they’ve seen you they will eventually come out of hiding and run straight at you so make sure there is a mine in the way. Also you don’t even have to bother upgrading the detonator gun either as it’s very powerful even on its lowest settings.
5. Stop. Look. Listen – As soon as you walk into a new room, especially if it is quite big, STOP. There are certain points in rooms that trigger the arrival of Necromorphs, or at least attract their attention. Have a look around for any wall vents as Necromorphs do like to pop out from them. Grab any containers you can see with your kinesis ability and reload all your weapons and stasis. It is also a good idea to plant detonator mines behind you to catch any Necromorphs that decide to spawn behind your back.
6. Upgrade the Plasma cutter first – A fully upgraded plasma cutter (18 power nodes required) is a wonderfully destructive weapon. If you focus on upgrading it early on, rather than spreading your power nodes across several weapons, you can make the majority of the levels in the game a lot easier. This weapon makes it a breeze to blow off Necromorph limbs, especially if you set it in alt fire mode (press RB) as then the shots come out horizontally.
7. The Ripper is a good fall back weapon – If you’re not too hot at aiming then the ripper weapon is perfect for you. Its big, spinning blade means horrible, dismembered death to any Necromorph that gets too close. Simply deploy and wander around slicing everything to death. However, it does make the game a little bit too easy. Fun to use, though.
8. You have enough air already – Don’t worry about upgrading the air capacity of your protective suits, the basic level is more than enough for the whole game. Use power nodes on upgrading your hits points and stasis ability instead.
9. Pick-up everything – I mean everything. If you can’t carry it all, go off to the nearest store, dump your inventory and go back to pick up the remaining items. You can sell off the unwanted ammo (i.e. for the weapons you don’t use much) for quite a bit of cash to buy more power nodes and ammo for your favourite weapons. As the Necromorphs don’t re-spawn after you’ve cleared an area you can safely retrace your steps and scour for hidden items too.
10. He’s behind you – Although Necromorphs don’t re-spawn when you revisit a previously cleared area, they do like to appear behind you as often as possible whilst you’re exploring a new area. They especially like surprising you in long corridors. You can help yourself not get ambushed by planting some detonator mines behind you. Not only will this probably kill off any sneaky Necromorphs, but the explosion should at least alert you to their presence.
11. Hide behind doors – If everything is going a bit Pete Tong (i.e. wrong) , retreating into a room and closing the door behind you will (almost every time) protect you from the Necromorphs. It seems that most of them haven’t worked out how to open doors yet. There are a couple of Necromorphs on the later levels that can open them however, so don’t get cocky. I first used this hiding behind doors tactic many years ago whilst playing Dungeon Master on the Amiga A500. Some things never change :-)

There is also a glitch in the game which allows you repeatedly pick up 2 power nodes and a semi-conductor from a room in the 14th level (almost at the end of the game). There is video showing how to take advantage of this power nodes and semi-conductor glitch.

Dead Space 2 is out now for Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3.