I liked Dead Space (quite a lot actually), but it never struck me as "survival horror". There was no gradual building of suspense (relying solely on simple jumping out of the expeccted shadows yelling Boo! at you gimmicks) nor any real shortage of ammo (played it on easy). The visual style and the "soundscape" were stunning however, as was the feeling of moving around in a supersized derelict space ship. Isaac was hard to like though as he never said anything. By that I do not just mean no voice overs. I can't remember him actually ever saying anything, just listening passively to instructions all the time, like some bot with built in voice recognition module. Oh, and the weapons were quite fun too, giving new meaning to 'cut and paste' (I'll cut you into a gooey paste)
If it wasn't for EA's silly insisting that their customers needs online accounts to play single player games, Dead Space 2 would have been a must buy for me. I just can't be bothered to keep track of more logins.