Nonetheless, he is the perfect survivor and after several playthroughs of this game, the Necromorphs begin to lose a degree of their menace, mainly because of how capable Isaac is. The panic of these close encounters is somewhat mitigated by the powerful arsenal that Isaac has at his disposal that he is capable of jury-rigging due to his skills as an engineer.

In Dead Space 2 we often witness the frailty of humanity in the face of the primal brutality of the Necromorphs, when we see the defenseless citizens of Titan being slaughtered. However, we don’t often feel so helpless ourselves beyond the tailored opening sequence.

This was the experience I wanted to recreate and so I set myself a challenge: I would not have access to Isaac’s full arsenal; no firearms would be allowed. I would have to rely on his Kinetic and Stasis module, in tandem with good old hand-to-hand combat, the idea is that by limiting Isaac’s tools, we can feel closer to experiencing the danger Necromorphs pose to the population at large.

After matching my ambitions to the reality of the difficulty involved, I resolved to reach chapter six of the game on Survivalist difficulty without firing a single shot.

A note on the rules: The use of firearms is permitted where it is necessary to proceed with the game: i.e. certain boss encounters, ‘quick time’ events, etc.