The Necromorphs have in their decade-plus in the video game canon claimed a corner of their own, not just in the realm of video game horror, but all horror. It's exhilarating, and refreshes not just players of the first game about what they're up against, but introduces the monsters to new players as well.

The transformed humans drop from the ceiling and pop out from unexpected spaces. The monsters are a dash of Alien's Facehuggers, sprinkled in with what you might expect from a gruesome zombie movie. Necromorphs are revolting, as we see in the opening's frantic escape. Poor Clarke has been asleep for so long, and this is what he wakes up to. His eyes turn white, giant insect-like legs sprout out of his back, his neck shoots up like a giraffe, and finally, his face morphs into a ghastly beast.

Then in a flash, the man is stabbed in the skull by a Necromorph. In just its first minute, hero Isaac Clarke awakens in a straitjacket in an insane asylum, where he learns from the star of the spin-off Dead Space Ignition that the monsters of the series-Necromorphs-are at it again. There are few game openings that are as simultaneously terrifying and thrilling as the start of Dead Space 2. Stay tuned for more in the weeks to come! Monster of the Week is a three-part series where we dive into the creation of iconic monsters from video games with the game developers who helped bring them to life. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.

Dead space the pack concept art