Dead Effect 2 – Review

Dead Effect 2 is a Survival Horror first person shooter, so it was right up my street. Having never played the first Dead Effect I thought I might be at a disadvantage but I quickly got to grips with the story. Set on the ESS Meridian a colonisation ship taking its occupants to a new world. While most of the crew are in cryogenic status, a skeleton crew of scientists is running the ship and experiments, without the normal restraints, the experiments have gotten out of hand.

Chose to play as Gunnar Davis, Jane Frey or Kay Rayner, each having their own skills and loadout so right from the off you have the choice of how you play the game, machine gun, shotgun or melee it’s all up to you,

Explore the vast ship while upgrading weapons, equipment, and skills, while all the time fending off the undead. Play the story mode in solo or coop, and there is also a Player V Player multiplayer, so this game should keep you occupied for hours.

With 100+ upgradable weapons, 300+ gear items, 30+ special ability’s, dozens of gear sets with complete gear sets granting special abilities, and high-tech body implants there is a multitude of individual customisation.

You will explore the entire ship in the story mode and encounter a wide and varied of environments and layouts, from maintenance rooms to oxygen gardens and more dark corners than you can shake a stick at, getting bored is not really an option. There are also special missions or challenges to sink your teeth into from, Biohazard, Survival, Lone Wolf, and Infestation mode there is plenty to get your adrenaline pumping. Pit your skills against a variety of different enemies from  Zombies, Soldiers, Cyborgs, Mutants, Cannibals, Mechanical Dogs, and Drones. You will be outnumbered, outgunned but never outwitted, depending on the difficulty that you set the game at, these enemy range from ‘that was simple’ to ‘Jesus get me out of here’ Zombies are straightforward as we all know the effect of a bullet to the head, but the Dogs and Drones are hard hitting and take a lot more than a single well placed shot to end your encounter.

The imagery in Dead Effect is perhaps not as state of the art as some of the AAA games currently around, and the sound is nothing special, however, none of this takes anything away from the game. Imagery is atmospheric and engaging, while the sound is perfectly adequate. The controls of the game are standard FPS so everyone can pick up the game and run with it.