sea said:
The first Dead Space isn't much better than Dead Space 2 as far as its linearity goes
True, but at least DS1 tried to give the illusion it wasn't completely railroaded. You can walk into the "hub" of a chapter and have 3 or 4 unlocked doors. Naturally you have to go through each section in order most of the time, but if you don't use the magic quest compass you at least have to
look to figure out where you're supposed to go next, and in a handful of locations you get no visual cues, so you can "explore" to see where you need to go next. Now, notice I said "most of the time"? that's because a couple of segments
do give you multiple objectives that you can complete in any order. It's nothing earth-shattering, but it's a hell of a lot better than any other modern shooter; they're not just railroaded, they're exactly like playing one of the old arcade rail shooters, except with a "stop" function. Unfortunately, so's DS2.
and it has the problem of reusing lots of its environments with only minor differences as well.
Never bothered me. The graphics do get reused, but then again I grew up on 80's graphics. As for copy-pasta of the environments themselves, didn't notice it. If it's there, it's not as onerous as Quake 4.
From what I understand Dead Space 2 is even more of a straightforward shooter and doesn't have as much of the puzzle-solving of the first either
Pretty much. Instead of only a couple of instances of multi-objectives you get absolutely none, instead of hub with many doors that have to be done in order you get no branching at all, this one does reuse some environments (sometimes makes sense gameworld-wise, but still feels cheap). And puzzle-solving is replaced with minigames.
Speaking of, how are the controls in Dead Space 2 on PC? Is there still mouse lag and acceleration present? Is the field of view still sickeningly low?
Terrible, yes, and yes, in that order. And if you thought DS1 was bland, stay the fuck away from the sequel. I
liked DS1 yet thought DS2 was terribly bland.