This game, in my opinion, was a huge step up for Visceral. Honestly I'm not a horror fan, but this game did have my eye for a good long time.
To start off, I do like that they added a bit more of a story element, balancing it out well with the horror, while the first one was basically more horror. We get to see how Isaac Clarke, who started out as a silent protagonist, and we never really got any reaction from him until the end. Now he speaks, and due to that we get to explore how he is having to cope with what happened in the first game. I felt it was a really nice touch to his character.
The Dead Space universe itself is interesting. We get to dive in more into the world and how humanity is flourishing in space. That is...until the Necromorphs show up. They have a cool gritty Warhammer 40K/Halo/Alien kind of feel to me with how the stations, the suits, and the ships are designed.
All in all, I thought this was a really good game, and I thought the DLC story with the characters from the Wii Dead Space game was a nice addition