Severed Treads Familiar Ground For Dead Space 2 Fans

If you read our review of Dead Space 2, you know we're big fans of the series here at Game Informer. Anxious to try out anything with the Dead Space name on it, we burned through the newly-released Severed DLC tonight. Featuring Gabe Weller and Lexine Murdoch from Dead Space: Extraction, this $5.99 (560 Microsoft points) add-on extends the Sprawl experience by two chapters. When most of your team is killed by necromorphs, it's your duty as Gabe to make sure your girlfriend Lexine safely escapes the treacherous city.

While you won't be seeing Isaac outside of some "Wanted" messages, Gabe's arsenal and abilities are nearly identical. His security officer rig is visually separated from Isaac's engineer getup, but you'll still be dismembering necromorphs with the plasma cutter, line gun, javelin launcher, and the rest of the weapons you came across in Dead Space 2. Outside of the returning twitcher enemies from the first Dead Space, you'll be met with the same resistance Isaac plowed through. Gabe is decidedly more British and decidedly less insane than Isaac, but they're otherwise interchangeable.

Dead Space 2 was known for its sometimes punishing difficulty, but Severed is significantly easier. Since there are far fewer power nodes in this short experience, you'll want to pick one weapon to upgrade and focus squarely on it. I put every single one of my nodes into the always-trusty plasma cutter, and it dispatched enemies with no trouble at all by the DLC's end.

These two chapters should take gamers more than one hour but less than two to complete, and Visceral tries to cram in miniature versions of Dead Space 2's staples throughout. You'll have a moment where you're shooting while upside down, an attack by the raptor-like enemies, a couple brief miniboss fights, and the option to buy almost every weapon from the full game. All of these gameplay moments will seem familiar, and so will the environments. The large majority of Severed's areas are recycled from the main game, and the new rooms are largely uneventful.

In my two playthroughs of Dead Space 2, I don't remember encountering a single glitch. However, I ran into two significant bugs in my 90 minutes with Severed. One caused items that I held with kinesis to disappear randomly, and another caused a necromorph to run in place as if on an invisible treadmill. I was able to casually walk up and punch it to death without any danger. It's hard to say if bugs will be a common complaint with the DLC, but I definitely noticed them here more than in the extremely polished main game.

Despite the familiar nature of Severed, the brief story of Gabe and Lexine should keep your interest. Gabe has to struggle against necromorphs and EarthGov in his effort to get Lexine to safety, and the DLC ends with a memorable scene in terms of both a gameplay and story perspective. Severed may tread familiar ground for most of the experience, but the low price of entry should be enough to entice hardcore fans of Dead Space 2.