Actually, I think the opposite
Dead Space was all about the jump scares and body horror, with a few more interesting moments (Headbang guy). Dead Space 2, scares the player from the beginning quite well. The Asylum Escape, for example, is terrifying because it's surprising. You're in a straightjacket, unarmed, and barely able to even stand up, and yet you're still supposed to walk out.
Another creepier part is the Marker. In the first game, the Marker never really did become a frightening force; Nicole was odd at most, and the interactions with her were obvious. In this game, there's a variety of jump scares in the dementia moments that actually work because they're so strange; for example, the moment in the first chapter when you come across the tubes containing people and you suddenly see them filled with screaming and flailing corpses, and then they're back to glass tubes. It's scary because after the body horror of the Necromorphs, we're treated to some genuine moments of mind screw.
Also, I found the boss battles in the previous game horrible (Except for the brutes, those were pretty fun). They weren't horrifying because they were just red goopy masses of flesh, and they also weren't particularly fun. Plus, boss fights feel artificial; putting them in makes the game feel more like routine and less like an experience. That's not to say I'm against boss fights (I'm a Metroid fan, after all), but Dead Space's felt very artificial and forced in; the slug in particular was way too impersonal and random. I still didn't like the bosses in Dead Space 2, but at least there was less of a focus.
I'd say this game is an improvement both in scares and in gameplay. The first Dead Space felt a bit too much like Resident Evil 4 in space, but the second one starts to assume its own identity in both tone and mechanics.
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It is Its Own Beast
When going into Dead Space 2 (Electric Boogaloo) you need to realize is that it isn't at all like the original. This is the Resident Evil 5 to Dead Space's RE 4; more action, more story, less scares, Mac Gyver weapons. Issac being voiced makes him more likeable, and gives him more humanity, but at the cost of his Gordon Freeman-esque immersion factor. By that I meant it's harder to project onto him, but fortunately they handled it better than I expected. The new weapons are range from very useful to profound wastes of time. For example, the pre-order rivet gun is only really useful against the exploding babies and demon children, while the Seeker Rifle can knock baddies out in two shots and and has abundant ammo. The Pulse Rifle is more like an assault rifle now, complete with grenade launcher, and the Ripper is more like a chainsaw than the uber powerful gamebreaker it was last game (they also fixed that problem where the game spawns shitloads of ripper blades at the exclusion of the other ammo types.) The scares aren't as... impactful as they were in the last game, and the boss fights are almost non existant, thankfully made up for by the new and improved Zero-g sections, but on the other hand, there aren't any battles with tumble dryer shoggoths, or outer space slugs which was disappointing.
All in all, if you liked the first game, you'll probably like this. If you're a hardcore survival horror player who measures his fun by the browness of his pants, then you'll likely find it underwhelming