It’s probably not wise for a games journalist to admit, but I remember dying in that opening sequence, and I honestly can’t remember when I last died in the opening 30 seconds of a game – at least, not an adventure game. What happened to tutorials and hand-holding? Dead Space 2 tried to bite the hand off instead, and it was incredible. You’re desperately searching for the next escape, as necromorphs slice through patients and dump alien babies into noggins. You shove him out of the way, and then you’re off. Of course, that’s exactly what they do: Franco is punctured through the skull and then blossoms out like a fleshy lotus flower. There’s screams and scuttling sounds from behind him and he’s clearly panicked, but – surely not – Visceral Games wouldn’t throw you straight into a massacre. He’s been looking for you, and you’re groggy for unknown reasons. Before you’ve even realised where you are, you’re shaken awake by a character named Franco. But then I panicked and wondered: how many of these memories were from the original Dead Space or the maligned sequel, Dead Space 3? Had I blurred them all together like dead bodies around a Marker? Sitting down to write this article, I thought I’d write down all the moments that I remembered, and the list was pretty long. Regardless, it’s a hell of a gaming memory, in more ways than one. It’s testament to the quality of Dead Space 2 that I thought it was worth it. Eventually, I had to truck back an hour to an older save, so that I didn’t make the mistake again. I replayed it, and those four lines at the top of the article, more times than you can know. Over and over, like the worst Groundhog Day you would ever encounter, occasionally getting impatient and failing on the drilling sequence, occasionally falling to a necromorph. So, I returned to the eye-drilling, and died again.
So, having overcome the most horrific QTE I’ve ever played in my life, I died at the hands(?) of a necromorph. I’d managed to save just before the eye-drilling sequence, but – stupidly – had done so with virtually no health.