When facing the new dangers of Dead Space 2, Isaac can rely upon an old friend: his trusty plasma cutter. Gamers who played the original DS will be able to get the cutter in the sequel as well.

Visceral Games programmer Louis Gascoigne told Joystiq that the weapon can be unlocked in DS2 simply by having a save file for the first game on your hard drive. It doesn't even need to be a save file from a completed game. However, none of the upgrades you purchased for the gun in DS1 will carry over. That would've made things a bit too easy.

DS2 will be released on January 25th. A demo is available through Xbox Live and PSN.