In your bedroom at night with the lights off and your headphones on... everyone can hear you scream...

Like I said last week, I've grown tired of Fantasy RPGs of late, and felt that the well-above-average Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga deserved my attention at a time when I can bestow it fully upon the game. I even tried the simple, accessible Fable II (not a typo, I've just played Fable: The Lost Chapters and intended to play the three of them in sequence), but just couldn't muster the enthusiasm. The heroic adventures of Nobhead (descendant of Arseface) will have to wait.

All the while, the soundtrack to my RPG lethargy came in the form of The Smashing Pumpkins' whingey teen anthem 'Bullet with Butterfly Wings', a song (and band) I absolutely abhor, yet one that worms it's way into your subconscious like the T-Virus. The vessel for this song? The TV advert for Dead Space 2, a game that was so far off my radar it might as well have been Women's Murder Club or something. I've had the original Dead Space for so long, and it must be said I have never liked it, I just haven't ever gotten rid of it because of it's poor monetary value (I bought it for a tenner a couple of years ago, I'd be lucky to get £3 back on a trade-in). The reason for my disdain was the lack of positive reinforcement for your actions as a player, every little thing you did had a negative impact on the story, and every cutscene was just one of your companions telling you to go somewhere and do something, and the other, a bratty annoying bint of a woman, telling you it won't work. Then you do it, and it doesn't work.

But the TV spot for DS2 made me want the game so badly, for no reason other than that I couldn't get Billy Corgan and his group of misfitted pricks out of my head. And I felt like, as it is such a major player in the still fairly niche Survival Horror genre, I should really like it. So Divinity II took a temporary bow and my trusty 360 Elite became the subject of nightmares for a few days. And I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Bulbasaur used Vine-Whip! It's not very effective...

Actually, that's a lie. There's this bit where you have to shoot asteroids out of the sky before they hit you, and that had me on the verge of snapping my controller in two through sheer rage. But apart from that, it was excellent. None too original (Think Half-Life's Gordon Freeman complete with Gravity Gun, fused with Silent Hill 2's James Sunderland, on board Red Dwarf, fighting Zombies, directed by Ridley Scott and you're pretty much there), but that hardly matters when you are so preoccupied with being terrified that you daren't take your finger off the aim button to press a switch. Later in the game, the developers seemed to have forgotten that the game was supposed to be scary, with the whole endgame taking place in broad daylight, but that's just cleverly there to lure you into a false sense of security before chucking the ending at you, which had everyone I've spoken to who's finished the game collectively shit their pants.

So I'm on board for DS2 now. I'll no doubt pick it up in a month or so, I was planning on getting the 360 version to continue my night terrors, but the prospect of a single disk, a free copy of Dead Space Extraction and some armour for Dragon Age II (which my wife is to purchase on the PS3), I'm being swayed to the PS3 version, but I'll see. Speaking of Dragon Age, the Archdemon finally fell last night. I've got Awakening, Witch Hunt and The Golems of Amgarrak to do before DAII, but for the minute I'm enjoying the light-hearted and simple Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Here at 24HG, if you ask us what the manliest game in the world is, chances are you'd be told Ghost Squad. Sega's Wii Shooter does have you high-five the President after rescuing him from the clutches of an evil homosexual terrorist after all. but this week it's been surpassed by... EA's girl-friendly casual gaming champion The Sims 2?

Now, Ghost Squad may be manly. But it will never be Pyramid Head, Kratos, Barry Burton and The Punisher in a Hot Tub talking about Baseball manly.

Finally, I was asked over Formspring what I have against Bayonetta. Good question. One that I will answer the next time I don't have anything better to do, like oh, go and buy Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which is what I'm going to do right now. Bye for now.