Well, horrors beyond horror have appeared again. What's an unlikely hero to do?

Visceral Games has thus far given us two games worth noting, the first Dead Space, a completely unexpected hit, and Dante’s Inferno, a game best not talked about any more now that I just remembered it. Taking everything from the first game and fine-tuning it for the sequel, Visceral Games has managed to craft a second game in a series worth existing and certainly worth the typical asking price for a Triple A title.

Back is Isaac Clarke, the unlikely hero from the first game, except now he’s a little off his gourd with some mild insanity and hallucinations and whatnot that you’d expect from someone whom saw all manner of unspeakable horrors previously. He’s on a space station called the Sprawl, and as you’d expect, Bad Things Happen. Specifically, Necromorphs return in spades and seek to throw him into a tailspin of nightmares.

So does Visceral Games succeed in nightmare-worthy throwing? Yes. Dead Space 2 is packed to the rafters with Monster Closets (events you trigger purposefully for a monster to jump out and go “BOO!”), but it doesn’t feel like the usual schlock here, mostly because encounters with enemies aren’t just simple, “Oh, I shot you and now you’re dead” battles. The controls are tight, which you’ll need since each extended encounter with enemies can leave you physically winded in the real world after you realize you’ve been panicking as a result of tough fights in-game. Basically, the Monster Closets only add to the stress and “horror” of being ill prepared for a fight against the looming threat of more and more Necromorphs.

Really though, if these things began jumping out at me in real life, I'd be pretty terrified.

Much like the early Resident Evil titles, ammo drops are a bit less frequent than you’d probably feel safe having, meaning you’ll have to be more careful with your shots and with what weapons you use. If you use just the first weapon, the Plasma Cutter (making its glorious return from the first Dead Space), for the extent of the game, you’ll pretty much only get ammo drops for that weapon, but if you decide to mix things up and try all the weapons out, ammo drops will start coming in a wider variety, meaning you’ll have ammo for everything but only a little bit for each. Take your pick which is better between sticking to one gun or having a chronic lack of ammo.

The presentation is what sells Dead Space 2 more than anything. Graphically (I don’t care about these whatsoever on average but people want to know), the game looks excellent. No one should be throwing any sort of hissy fits about textures or shadows or other random unimportant features as everything here is flawless. The sound, too, is in a league of its own, though at times it can be difficult to hear characters talking over the loudness of the rest of the sound mix, so be aware that you may need to adjust some settings to get things just right.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, but Dead Space 2 is surprisingly not for children. Blood flies everywhere, body parts litter the screen like clouds in the sky, and incredibly graphic fatalities occur to both the warped enemies and Isaac himself. No kids allowed on Sprawl! Go home and keep playing Call of Duty or whatever it is you kids play these days.

Little kids, you wouldn't get the level of character development that's going on here anyway.

To cap things off, there is a multiplayer mode to the game that just sort of exists for no other reason than to be the standard multiplayer experience now required in games. The single-player campaign will last you between eight to 12 hours, but the multiplayer modes will probably wear thin after one or two. They just aren’t very good, pitting human characters against other players controlling Necromorphs. Both sides can level up with a progression system, but it’s really not worth the effort to continue playing this portion of the game. Stick to the single-player and you’ll be fine, though if you enjoy the multiplayer, more power to you.

And that’s it. Dead Space 2 is worth a rent, a buy, or a- well I guess those are the only two options, aren’t there? You can pick this up for the PS3, Xbox 360, or PC, and each version works perfectly fine, so get out there and start fighting Necromorphs. Your sanity depends on it.

Want more game reviews? Check these articles out:

-Little Changes, Big Smiles: A Review of Little Big Planet 2

-Not Quite An Epic Win: An Epic Mickey Review

-The Missing Link: A Review of Donkey Kong Country Returns

They are shooting pure joy from my heart.

Halloween is pretty much here, but for some of us that doesn’t mean much. Why is that? Well we’re too busy playing video games to care what’s happening around us. As a result, we may accidentally pass up the day in lieu of just playing something bright and cheery, but there are other options for us shut-ins that still want to celebrate Halloween with some good atmospheric games. So here are 10 Games You Should Play On Halloween.

Resident Evil 4:

Sure, the first game is great and the most recent installment is pretty good, but Resident Evil 4 knocked my socks off when I first played it on the GameCube all those years ago. It was the perfect mix of fluid gameplay with situations that terrified me to no end due to stuff like, oh, I don’t know, chainsaw wielding zombies or Wolverine-style monsters with their eyes sown shut. I freaked, but I never stopped playing.

The thing about RE4 is that it pushed games to be at least as good as it was by deciding what 3rd-person gameplay should be for shooters and what to expect with quick-time events (one of two games I was actually okay with the silly feature). You can pick up a copy for the GameCube, PS2, or PC, and the Wii has a version with motion controls that work extremely well (Amazon’s got it for under $15). Just do yourself a favor and play through if you haven’t already. Just tell me when you get to Del Lago.

Silent Hill 2:

This is Pyramid Head. This thing should not be.

I was forced to play both Silent Hill 1 and 2 by my friends and I made fun of them the whole way through, especially number 2. And why? Because I didn’t want to let on that I’d probably be crying unless I found a means of coping with fear since Silent Hill 2 throws you into a bad situation and just makes it worse. If you haven’t heard of a Silent Hill game, you probably live a happier life than I, otherwise Amazon has the PS2 version for around $10.

See, Silent Hill is a town that’s cursed since a little girl was pushed to become pure evil and fill the town with demons (yes, I hate it when this happens, too). The combat is awful on purpose as the main character isn’t a great fighter or solider. He just wants to find his dead wife because she told him to meet him in Silent Hill (if your dead anything ever says this, don’t go). You will see horrible things and you will hear horrible things and by the end of the game you will have had to do horrible things and you won’t sleep with the lights off for a while. Seriously, if you ever want to terrify someone who’s played a Silent Hill game, flick off the lights and blare a disaster siren. They will go hide in a corner; I guarantee it.

Super Ghouls & Ghosts:

And that's about as far as I get.

No, not every game has to be extremely terrifying to make for good Halloween playing. Super Ghouls & Ghosts (and really any entry in the Ghosts & Goblins series), will give you nightmares just realizing you can’t make it past the first level. I’ve put the game on easy, cranked up my lives, and still I couldn’t make it anywhere near the end of the first level. The first level! And I’m not a bad game player. I’ve even beat I Wanna Be The Guy (go search this on Google to see what it is), so you know I’m hardcore.

Super Ghouls & Ghosts has you jump in the shoes of Arthur on a quest to save a princess from a demon. Along the way, Arthur will die and die and die because he will be attacked by every manner of zombie and skeleton and unholy death with only two hits before he dies. If that sounds merciful, it isn’t. Ten hits before death is even being stingy. But the game is still worth playing even if you can’t make it past the first few zombies, so go find this on the SNES or the Virtual Console. In fact, this is so dificult that it looks like people are practically giving away used copies on Amazon for under $4.

Super Castlevania IV:

The box art sort of says it all.

Yes yes and more yes. I’m not going for scary here, I’m just telling you to go play games that put you in a Halloween mood and Super Castlevania IV (so super it needed it in the title), is such a good game that you’d be a fool to just let it pass you buy. It’s on the SNES but also on the Virtual Console, making it an extremely easy and affordable purchase.

Simon Belmont goes toe-to-toe with Dracula yet again, but at this point the structure of the Castlevania games is nearly perfected. The game is tough but fair and beating it yields a sweet sense of accomplishment that games don’t typically give anymore. Just whipping zombies and horrors and Death itself makes this one a game you should be playing anyway.

Luigi’s Mansion:

Don't care; Great game.

There I said it. Go play Luigi’s Mansion, one of the first titles released on the GameCube. It gets a bad rap but the game was great, albeit extremely short. So what better game to play through in a single day? This was Luigi’s big chance to shine (the only other game he’s starred in since Mario Is Missing and that doesn’t count), and while he doesn’t get a chance to stomp Goombas, he does get a chance to rid a haunted mansion of ghosts and spirits and such.

Surprisingly, this was one of the best looking games on the system, and it was a launch title. I always found that strange. You’re going around a mansion filled with ghosts and everything makes spooky noises. It’s cartoony but it works. It’s a small diversion but it pays off, especially since you can probably find this title for $5 at a video game store, Amazon inclued. Just think of it like Ghostbusters but with Luigi instead of Bill Murray.

Ghostbusters The Video Game:

Or heck, why not just play Ghostbusters The Video Game? It’s new this year on the PS3 and Xbox 360 (there is also a pretty good Wii version, too), and if you are wondering, yes, it is just what you’d expect from a Ghostbusters game. And by that I mean it’s awesome.

Those games on the NES from back in the day? Yeah, those sucked. This game is like seeing the 3rd movie that never was (but will be due to the high sales of the game). Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis all reprise their roles for the game, and for a video game that’s simply amazing. You play as the rookie, a nameless new guy that the other Ghostbusters don’t want to get attached to since they think you’ll probably get killed testing out the new equipment. The best part of the game is the humor, but they still don’t skimp on the actual gameplay, which is also great. It’s just the perfect lighthearted Halloween game to play, plus it’s under $20. Good deal.

Eternal Darkness:

No don't try to figure out what they're talking about. You'll just go insane.

But maybe you don’t want lighthearted. Maybe you want to go over the edge with insanity. So go ahead and pop in Eternal Darkness for the GameCube and watch your mind slowly retreat into itself to hide from whatever you’re about to see on the screen. This game was the answer to anyone that ever called the GameCube a kiddie system. You dare challenge me? Snag it on Amazon for $15 and prove me incorrect.

What sets Eternal Darkness above other horror games is the way you play through multiple characters’ doomed stories. You know that each of these characters will die by the end of their chapter, but you want to see where their section of the plot takes them. Naturally, it takes them to the brink of madness as you have both a health meter and a sanity meter to deal with. If your sanity gets too low then weird things start to happen like the TV volume fluctuating, the screen turning on and off, and even a message telling you that your memory card is being erased. I freaked out around the point that my character thought her head fell off and she had to go pick it up. Read that sentence one more time if you didn’t catch that. Oh yeah is this game messed up.

Dead Space:

That hand there isn't going back on any time soon.

Yup, another game for the 360, PS3, and PC with play control similar to Resident Evil 4. You are one of very few survivors left alive on a space mining facility where a plague of alien something or other…yeah, it doesn’t matter. All that’s important is the fact that crazy stuff happens all around you and you have to fight off hellish monsters with futuristic mining equipment. Also, that the game is a Bestseller, meaning it’s only $20 these days.

The main draw here is the ability to sever various limbs from the enemies in order to rendering them unable to walk or attack. Instead of headshots being the best way to go, some enemies had more of a weakness in their legs or midsection or something similar to that, making you have to rethink the genre slightly. Not by much, but just enough to be extremely creepy and keep you playing past every insane challenge that comes up.

Left 4 Dead:

At least the Dead Space guy's hand still had a thumb.

Okay, so you could play this on your 360, or you could play it right on the PC. I suggest the PC version. Left 4 Dead is a Valve title and currently it is one of their best (which says a lot). You are one of four characters alive after a zombie apocalypse and you must work with the others to stay alive through swarms of the typical zombie fare. You can play this as a single player, but the best reason to play Left 4 Dead is to blow zombies away with three friends in cooperative play.

This is simply one of the best multiplayer games on the market right now, and Valve has been hard at work delivering patches and new content and a sequel hitting not too long from now (which promises to be just as great, if not better). If you saw Zombie Land this past month, this is pretty much the game that the movie is based off of, even if it wasn’t aware of it.

Bioshock:

Why won't you love me?!

I will never stop telling everyone to go play Bioshock. Maybe it’s my own guilt for not playing it until just recently, but Bioshock stands out as a game that understands what it means to create atmosphere in order for things to be scary. Out on the 360, PS3, and now on Steam for the PC, everyone can play Bioshock and figure out what I’m going on about.

You play as a character that survives a plane crash and swims to a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean, only to find the entrance to the city of Rapture, a dystopian society that’s been utterly destroyed after people spliced their genes way too much for God to allow. You’ll get to encounter Big Daddies, Little Sisters, Splicers, and Andrew Ryan, my new favorite villain. I can’t wait until Bioshock is made into a movie since the plot alone has me sold.

And that’s my list off the top of my head. I promise that there is something here for everyone, from the hardcore gamers out there to the casual players. But I know this isn’t a complete list, so tell me what I left out. Are there some games I should be ashamed to omit? Let me know with a comment or two in the comments section and let your voice be heard.