Before you complain about the various aspects of this guide, keep note that it will contain a lot of personal opinions formed from experience in addition to the premise of the weapons themselves. Most of the "weapons" in Dead Space are actually mining or engineering tools which are clearly not OSHA compliant. The reasoning behind this is that weapons are traditionally designed to kill by blood loss or destruction of internal organs, which Necromorphs are not susceptible to. Some tools are just better at severing limbs than others, so naturally they would make better weapons against Necromorphs.

In this guide, I'm not going to show upgrade trees, tell you where you can find each weapon (if you have the free DLCs, you start with free versions of every weapon available in the bank anyway), suggest certain upgrades (damage/duration is pretty much the most important one for every case, as it conserves ammo), or tell you how to play the game. The wiki can do that for you. I will share my personal experiences about the aspects of each weapon in the game and how each can come in handy.

Credit to the Dead Space Wiki for the pictures.

Oh, yes, it's back. This handheld little death device returns from Dead Space 1 with a vengeance and an all new appearance, ready to shred through the hordes. The change in apperance is owed to the original Plasma Cutter being a tool used to excavate rock, while this one is meant to be used for surgery, repurposed for surgical limb removal by Isaac. However, the weapon's function hasn't changed much since its debut.

Despite being similar to a pistol in layout, the Plasma Cutter has perfect accuracy. Many weapons in Dead Space 2 fire exactly where you aim them without any spread, but they can miss due to small hit areas or projectile speed. The Plasma Cutter is a hitscan weapon with perfect accuracy, but unlike the Seeker Rifle, it hits a line rather than just a tiny spot the size of a bullet. Because you can rotate the direction of the line with the secondary fire, this makes the Plasma Cutter highly useful in severing limbs of fast moving enemies where pinpoint accuracy is difficult.

Although its damage per shot is not particularly impressive, it fires quickly, can get a rather large magazine capacity, and its accuracy all make it a very versatile, if boring weapon. Ammo is fairly plentiful and cheap, its range is basically unlimited, and it can be a great tool in almost any situation.

The only complaint I have about the plasma cutter is the special upgrade which sets enemies on fire is fairly useless, since you tend to fire quickly with this tool, as most enemies require several shots to put down. The Plasma Cutter has no real flaws overall, though.

The Pulse Rifle is pretty polarizing in how people respond to it. People either love it to death or they find it useless. It is a military grade weapon carried by EarthGov troops, designed for fighting humans, not Necromorphs. Thus, it can be tricky to sever limbs with it.

It is a fully automatic weapon that eats ammo like Homer Simpson eats doughnuts. In Dead Space 1, the Pulse Rifle was pretty much the king of DPS, able to deal far more damage in a given time than any other weapon. However, in Dead Space 2, it eats ammo like it did in the first game, but reduced ammo drops (12-13 per unit on Zealot) tends to result in it losing a lot of traction, at least for me.

The Pulse Rifle is not very precise in mechanics compared to most (ie. single shot) weapons. Its bullets seem to hit anything in the cone of fire, which is wider than the limbs of most Necromorphs, but since it fires tiny projectiles being able to hit within the cone seems counterintuitive. The fast fire rate makes trigger discipline important with this weapon.

The Pulse Rifle's secondary fire in this game is far cooler than the first. In the first game, it would shoot bullets in all directions at once, but now it has an integrated grenade launcher! Although rifles that shoot grenades are certainly badass, the rate of ammo consumption and many shots required to kill anything kept this weapon out of my inventory permanently. I don't like automatic weapons in a game where ammo is scarce, as strict trigger discipline seems to end up with very low DPS with this weapon. I prefer weapons that can get a guaranteed kill in a precise number of ammo units, which the Pulse Rifle just can't do in my experience.

*edit* I've been doing a Zealot playthrough from scratch focusing large on the Pulse Rifle, and found I've judged it too harshly. Though I stand by what I said about the secondary fire (and indeed the primary) using too much ammo, it really is useful for its ability to knock back/stagger enemies while shooting them without stasis, and its absurd clip size means you can get a lot of kills with it before you need to reload, so it's a great weapon for when you have something closing in on you. You do need to time your bursts carefully because it only takes a few shots to sever a limb, so it can be slower at killing than other weapons as you take time to set up your next burst, but that is due to human reaction time and not a fault of the weapon itself. Just make sure you carry something else, because this thing eats ammo like crazy. It's much like the flamethrower, except it can hit at a distance.

Although this is often referred to as being the equivalent of a shotgun in Dead Space, I prefer to think of it as its namesake, a "force gun," since that is exactly what it does. The Force Gun is a mining tool designed to blow away chunks of ore with a blast of kinetic force. It can cut through limbs like rice paper and send enemies bowling over backward, though it is best used at close range.

Instead of blowing multiple holes in an enemy at point blank range, the Force Gun's primary fire sends them flying back like a shotgun in an Old West movie. Think of it like being hit by a truck. The primary fire doesn't deal enough damage to kill most things you point it at (since blunt force doesn't sever limbs), but it will knock them down and save you a Stasis charge for the followup shot. It is immensely useful against exploding enemies, particularly groups of Crawlers. The primary fire will not cause them to explode, and they will die after only a few shots because of their low health. It also can take out groups of the Pack, since they die after one hit from anything.

The secondary fire of the Force Gun is the real killer for larger enemies. It takes all the force it delivers from the primary fire and delivers it to a much smaller area. This is usually enough to tear off whichever limb it hits in one shot.

The secondary fire requires more precision than the primary fire, but a knockdown from the primary followed by a secondary to the arm or leg can take out most normal enemies. The Force Gun is priceless in tight quarters where you are likely to run out of stasis shots. This is one of my favorite weapons for both its blasting power and its ammo efficiency. You usually get 2 or 3 ammo units per drop on Zealot, which is all it takes to kill most enemies with it after upgrading.

The game's description of the Line Gun as "a wide-beamed slicer with timed mines" is a perfect way to describe this tool. It uses line racks full of ionized gas to cut through wide pieces of ore, and for some reason it also has the ability to fire a timed mine by using the secondary fire. It is a mining tool in both senses of the word. (You see what I did there?)

The line gun's primary fire shoots a powerful, horizontal beam which is incredibly wide. You can upgrade the width of this beam through the upgrade tree to make it even wider, increasing its area of effect and reducing the need to carefully aim. The primary fire is capable of hitting both arms or legs on a Necromorph at once, or cutting all the tentacles off a Lurker in once shot. It also penetrates foes, allowing you to hit an entire line of Necromorphs with one shot. However, the shot is not hitscan, but instead fires a projectile with some travel time, reducing its usefulness at long range. Also, you cannot rotate the beam like you can on the Plasma Cutter, meaning that it is generally better to aim at the legs of standing enemies.

The secondary fire on the Line Gun is quite powerful, provided you can hit an enemy with it. The mines shot by the gun explode on a timer, not proximity or contact, so be sure to learn the proper timing. It has to be shot onto a surface, so it is most useful against Necromorphs which don't jump around or swarms of enemies like Crawlers or the Pack.

The Line Gun really packs a punch, but its biggest drawback is its ammo. Line racks stack in very small quantities, only 6 per stack, and enemies drop only single units of it. It is also the second most expensive ammo in the game, meaning that this is impractical as a primary weapon. This is not to say it isn't useful, but it is best saved for large groups in tight spaces.

The Contact Beam is a tough one to figure out. Expensive, slow, but packs the biggest punch available in the early game (or the game overall?). The Contact Beam is yet another repurposed mining tool, designed to soften up hard materials before breaking them up to get at the ore inside.

The Contact Beam's primary fire shoots an incredibly powerful beam with a small amount of height to it, making precision aiming vital. The beam must be charged before it can fire, making it a weapon most suited to long range. You can hold the charged beam before releasing the trigger, but you cannot leave aim mode, meaning you can only move at a slow pace while holding the beam charged. Upgrades can reduce the charge time, but not eliminate it. It is an incredibly powerful attack even before upgrades, able to kill many enemies in one shot, which makes it a hard hitter right off the bat. It somewhat loses its punch once you start upgrading, though, compared to other long range weapons. It's great against bosses like Brutes or Tripods, since you typically engage them in large spaces and they take a lot of damage to bring down. The damage of the primary fire cannot be upgraded in DS2, but in DS1 it started at 100 and maxed out at 175, which would seem to indicate that it should be somewhere in that range in DS2.

The secondary fire mode of the Contact Beam causes Isaac to point the beam into the ground and fire, sending out a shockwave. The shockwave pushes enemies away from Isaac, knocking them down and giving you some breathing room. It uses one unit of ammo, the same as the primary fire. This is most useful against fast enemies that attack in swarms, like the Pack or Crawlers. Apparently, according to the wiki, the secondary fire deals damage based on how close the enemy is, enough to kill as much as an Enhanced Slasher at point blank range. It can be upgraded to apply Stasis to enemies it pushes, which can be very useful for when you are out of Stasis.

The main drawback of the Contact Beam is the same as the Line Gun: the price and quantity of ammo. Contact energy is the most expensive ammunition in the game, stacks in units of 6, and is dropped in units of 1 on Zealot difficulty. Personally, I've never found this weapon worth carrying because of the rarity of ammo, but it has its moments. Don't expect to make extensive use of it.

A handheld hydrazine torch originally used to melt ice to get at valuable ores beneath, this tool has been repurposed as a flamethrower. Because no zombie game would be complete without the ability to weaponize fire!

For some reason, the developers did absolutely no research on the properties of hydrazine when they designed this weapon for Dead Space 1. Hydrazine should be able to ignite in a vacuum because it is commonly employed alongside an oxidizer, but it couldn't be used in a vacuum in the first game. Luckily, someone sent enough whiny letters so that they fixed this in DS2.

The primary fire of the Flamethrower, as expected, projects a stream of flames. Unlike the flamethrowers used in WWII, which were designed as weapons, this is a handheld torch which uses compressed liquid canisters instead of a pressurization system, which limits its range greatly. The primary fire mode of the Flamethrower has the second shortest range in the game. It is best used in very short bursts, because the flames deal damage over time. Even though it can't dismember like it did in DS1, you should still aim at the limbs of enemies, since it still deals more damage to limbs like any other weapon. Damage upgrades really help this weapon, and it is a nice touch, if you pay attention. The flames change color as you upgrade damage. They start out red, then turn orange, then blue, presumably because the fire is getting hotter. The damage dealt by this weapon tends to stagger enemies, making its short range less of a liability, since enemies will stop charging you during the stagger. You probably will still need to backpedal a bit to let them burn, as the Flamethrower doesn't deal high damage instantly like most weapons.

The secondary fire on this weapon launches the entire fuel tank, functioning like an incendiary grenade that explodes on impact, spreading fire everywhere. It can be used to create firewalls to ignite groups of Necromorphs and create chokepoints. Although it visually consumes the entire tank, arbitrary magazine FPS rules apply, just like most shooters. It only consumes 25 units of ammo, though you do have to go through a reloading animation after.

Most players hated this weapon in Dead Space 1, but in this game, it can be extremely useful. Although ammo comes in fairly small amounts, it is cheap, carried in stacks of 150, and doesn't require a lot of ammo to kill enemies. This is the weapon to use against the Pack. Not only does it kill them instantly because of their status as One Hitpoint Wonders and have a massive clip size, but the burning damage inflicted by the flames will cause their corpses to immediately drop loot, handy since enemy corpses despawn rapidly when created quickly in large numbers, notably when the Pack is around. This works on other enemies as well, and allows you to focus on defense instead of worrying about lost loot.

This weapon is probably the most fun I've ever had with a weapon in any game I've ever played. It's unique, creative, interesting, and incredibly gory!

Apparently, the Ripper is some kind of industrial saw which utilizes disposable blades held by a gravity tether, instead of a single blade attached to a motor. I'm betting it was created because every dystopian, steampunk, ultra-capitalistic future needs unnecessarily complex and expensive tools which are designed as disposable by greedy corporations for the sole purpose of getting more money. The Maintenance and Repair Tools from System Shock 2 come to mind. A diamond-coated tungsten sawblade shouldn't just break after spinning in the air for several seconds. Apparently, they spin at up to 17,000 RPM, so maybe they tear apart from centrifugal force. Somehow this doesn't send deadly shrapnel flying all over.

Ripper-off or not (I did it again!), the Ripper is a powered saw, the exact tool which comes to mind for severing limbs, accidentally or not. It's very much used like a chainsaw in other zombie games, though in real life a chainsaw would make an awful weapon because the chain can easily break, snap back, and cut through your femoral artery. The primary fire shoots out a spinning disc of death in front of where you aim. The blade will continue spinning until you stop aiming or until the duration runs out. The duration can be upgraded, as well as the damage. The Ripper is the closest thing Dead Space 2 has to a melee weapon, as it has the shortest range in the game. Its range was longer in Dead Space 1, though this actually made it somewhat harder to use. The primary fire is best used in combination with Stasis, allowing you to hack all the limbs off an enemy with a single blade. A single blade can be used to kill multiple enemies, provided they are close enough together.

The secondary fire of the Ripper shoots out an untethered blade, with obviously much more range than the primary fire. It is less useful than the primary fire, and you have better weapons at your disposal for ranged attacks. It is possible to grab the fired blades with Kinesis and throw them again, but it takes precision timing.

Overall, the Ripper is a high risk, high reward weapon. It is tricky to learn to use, and dangerous to let enemies get close enough to hit with it, but it is devastatingly effective and extremely efficient with ammuniton. Ripper blades are cheap and can be stacked in quantities of 15. Because of its short range, it should NOT be used against Exploders, Crawlers, and Pukers because of their tendency to explode or spew acid blood. A face blown to chunky salsa or melted into paste is not desirable. However, it works wonders against the Pack (it will cause their corpse to drop loot because it will damage them after death) or the Ubermorph.

Unlike the other military rifle in the game, the Seeker Rifle is not an automatic assault weapon. The Seeker Rifle is a semi-automatic sniper rifle, pure and simple. It packs a massive punch, fires slowly, and can zoom with the scope.

The Seeker Rifle's primary fire shoots an incredibly powerful round with pinpoint accuracy. It matches the Plasma Cutter in precision and has a hitscan shot, but the shot only hits a single point instead of a line, demanding accuracy from the user. Stasis is mandatory for severing limbs with the Seeker Rifle. It fires slowly, so aim carefully.

The secondary fire of the Seeker Rifle toggles the zoom function, allowing you to zoom your field of view in. Although it doesn't actually use the scope overlay or increase the accuracy, you should always fire the Seeker Rifle zoomed, as zooming increasing its damage dramatically, especially with upgrades. Also, the toggle persists between swapping weapons and aiming, meaning you can turn on the zoom, switch weapons, and come back to the Seeker Rifle and you will be zoomed without having to press alt-fire.

The Seeker Rifle is my favorite weapon in the game because of its sheer damage output. Ammo is surprisingly cheap, hits very hard, stacks in quantities of 15, obliterates Necromorphs in one shot, drops in amounts of 2-3, same as the Plasma Cutter's ammo, and it deals a buttload of damage. Did I mention how much damage the Seeker Rifle can deal? If the upgrade tree is to be believed, it deals 70 damage with maxed out upgrades, and 100 on a scoped shot. This is on a weapon which drops ammo in the same quantities as the Plasma Cutter and is nearly as cheap. Two scoped shots to the legs with a fully upgraded Seeker rifle can take out a Tripod, and a single shot to the torso can take out most smaller enemies. The wiki article denying this is wrong and was evidently written by someone who hasn't actually tried it. *edit* (Somebody has corrected this on the wiki in the combat tips section. Now it correctly states that it is usually a one-shot-kill even against torsos.) It's the most powerful weapon in the game with a fully upgraded, scoped shot, unless the Contact Beam deals the full 175 it did when upgraded in the first game. The only real downside to the Seeker Rifle is the difficulty in aiming shots with it. If you suck at aiming, go play a different game. Or just choose another weapon and play on Casual, you wimp. It also does not handle crowds well, as expected from a sniper rifle. Use a close range weapon for that.

The Javelin Gun is a device used to fire "survey tool" titanium spikes into hard surfaces, allowing them to be driven in without the use of something more practical, cheap, and safe, like, say, a sledgehammer. Another example of a stupidly overengineered device created because of corporate greed. However, it it quite useful for causing horrific impaling injuries with its spears.

The primary fire of the Javelin Gun shoots out a spear at high speed. The spear is a projectile and takes time to travel to the target, though it moves pretty quickly. The spear is able to pin live enemies to walls or floors, provided the enemies are the size of a Slasher or smaller and it does not dismember a part on hit. It can thus be used most effectively to immobilize enemies with a shot to the torso. Like the Seeker Rifle, it fires slowly and only hits a single point, so aim carefully. It has the capacity to do the same damage as a fully-upgraded Seeker Rifle does on scoped shots.

The secondary fire of the Javelin Gun electrifies the last spear which was fired, arcing lightning between nearby enemies, and the special upgrade causes it to explode as well. Apparently, survey tools need to be able to shoot lightning bolts and explode to better perform their job, or maybe they are supposed to be able to excavate rock. The devs were pretty stingy on the details of this weapon. Regardless, the secondary fire is great for crowd control and for hitting limbs after a torso shot with the primary fire. Just don't be close by when you set it off, or it will electrify Isaac as well.

Ammo for the Javelin Gun is not particularly expensive, but not too cheap, either. It is stacked in quantities of 10 and found in units of 1 on Zealot, meaning this shouldn't be your primary weapon. I never got much use out of this weapon. It's not a bad weapon, and it is certainly useful, but I find that it fulfills a similar role to the Seeker Rifle, which never leaves my inventory. This doesn't mean it's not worth using, since the Javelin's secondary fire is better than the Seeker's, but it's just a personal preference for me.

Remember when I mentioned a better grenade launcher in the Pulse Rifle section? This is it. You know those laser-guided tripmines that are strategically placed in the environment in the worst places possible to get in your way? The ones that blow you to bits if you step into the lasers? This little gun shoots those mines.

Primary fire for the Detonator fires a mine that will attach to the first surface it hits, extending lasers out as the triggering mechanism. Although the lasers look like they are capable of slicing enemies apart or shooting some kind of projectile, they are only a triggering mechanism for the explosive mine. This means that you should place mines in narrow corridors. If the laser beam is interrupted at a distance, it will set off the mine without hitting the creature that triggered it, wasting the mine. Mines exploding can set off other mines in the blast radius, allowing you to create massive explosive traps, though one is usually all that is needed. Launched mines fire in an arc and are affected by gravity, so you should practice aiming with the Detonator, though this isn't a problem in zero-g areas. In addition to laying down mine traps, the Detonator can also be fired directly at enemies, causing the mines to explode like grenades. Even without upgrades, the Detonator's mines are extremely powerful, killing most creatures in one shot, without the need to aim for limbs. Also, there can only be 5 mines placed at any given time. Placing a sixth will deactivate the first mine placed. Beware of setting off your own mines, as Isaac and physics props can set off mines the same as any Necromorph, and you can be hit by the splash damage if firing at close range.

The secondary fire of the Detonator is what makes it such an efficient weapon. It deactivates the most recently-placed mine, allowing you to pick it back up and shoot it again, as the launching mechanism is in the Detonator and not the ammunition. This is the only weapon in the game which allows you to retrieve your missed shots, meaning that ammo will only be wasted if shot into an irretrievable location. This ability also lets you practice shooting this weapon for free and getting to know the arc of the mines.

Although ammo for the Detonator is pricey and found in single units, the ability to retrieve undetonated mines and to kill enemies in a single shot makes it very efficient. It is best used at long range, for obvious reasons.

Every game has that one weapon. Halo 1 has the Needler, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has the Makarov PM, GoldenEye has the KLOBB, and Dead Space 2 has the Rivet Gun. Designed to shoot rivets into surfaces, this has both the appearance and the power of a real-life nailgun, ie. none.

The primary fire of the peashooter Rivet Gun shoots peas rivets at enemies to lightly tap them in the vague area you aimed at. The terrible damage of the rivets, equal to Ping Pong balls thrown by a premature infant, makes the primary fire about as useful as yelling at the Necromorphs to stop attacking you.

The secondary fire of the Rivet Gun uses 5 ammo to cause up to 5 embedded rivets to explode, making them shoot out additional rivets. This has about the same accuracy as Mr. Magoo would get at the archery range. Supposedly it works fine if the rivets are currently embedded in an enemy, but the rivets always hit me when I try it. You're better off attacking the Necromorphs with toenail clippers.

If you use the Rivet Gun, you must like pain or are doing a challenge run that will rapidly be abandoned once you realize how terrible this weapon really is. The Plasma Cutter outclasses it in every possible way, but every other weapon does as well, since they can actually kill things. The wiki claims for some reason that the Rivet Gun gets better with upgrades, but it really doesn't in my experience. This weapon is not included in the base game and was bundled as a GameStop preorder bonus and the Agility variant was included in a DLC which is free on PC.

Also known as the Handgun (by me, at least), this is a special joke weapon which can only be earned by beating the game in Hardcore mode, by which point its extreme power is meaningless. It is a giant, red, foam finger which instantly kills whatever you shoot it at. Isaac provides all of the sound effects for this weapon, and it does not require any ammo.

The primary fire of the Hand Cannon goes "bang, bang, bang!" The secondary fire goes "pew, pew, pew!" There is no functional difference between the two.

A single "shot" from the Hand Cannon instantly severs every limb on the enemy you hit with it. It doesn't have any upgrades, but you can put a single node into it. This doesn't do anything other than increase its resale value from 0 to 5000. It doesn't have any laser sights like other weapons, but you can spam it because it fires as fast as you can click and doesn't need ammo.