Stalked by Survivor's Guilt in Dead Space 2

Every moment of Dead Space 2 feels like you’re fighting to cheat death. From the game’s opening moments, protagonist Isaac Clarke narrowly skirts the edge between life and death as he’s thrust into a heart of a necromorph infestation aboard “The Sprawl,” a civilian colony chiseled out of Saturn’s former moon Titan. As if those horrors weren’t enough, Isaac is plagued by nightmarish visions of his late wife Nicole, forcing him to question his own sanity while grappling with the burden of trauma left over from having narrowly escaped the USG Ishimura with his life three years prior.

There are innumerable encounters in Dead Space 2 that, however violent and brief, would qualify as chase sequences. The aforementioned opening, for example, where a delirious and straitjacket-bound Isaac must escape from an asylum whose patients are being devoured and transformed into a new brood of necromorphic predators. When I think of a truly exemplary chase sequence, however, that honor is reserved for Dead Space 2’s finale - and a creature whose nature and lethality more than warrants the distinction of its name.  

In the fourteenth and penultimate chapter of the game, Isaac comes face to face with the Marker: an extraterrestrial object whose psychic energy triggers a cataclysmic chain reaction across the Sprawl, twisting any form of sentient life into shambling husks of living death. At the behest of a vision of Nicole, Isaac must battle his way through waves of necromorphs to reach the base of the Marker and destroy it. There’s just one problem: the Ubermorph, a necromorph with the ability to regenerate itself after being otherwise destroyed, stalks him every step of the way. No weapon at your disposal — however powerful or surgical — can hope to stand a chance against this adversary. In order to survive, you have to put as much distance between yourself and it while dispatching an onslaught of necromorphs as you make your way to the Marker.