PROS
- Combo weapons are cool
- Vast improvements made over the first game
- Plowing through hoards of zombies in creative ways is still incredibly fun
CONS
- Survivor AI (while greatly improved) is still pretty stupid
- Most boss battles feel incredibly cheap
- Save system (again while improved) still sucks
- Time limit will cramp fun exponentially
Four years ago the original Dead Rising shuffled onto the Xbox 360 introducing gamers to one of Capcom’s new poster boys, Frank West (as well as one of the greatest lines ever delivered in video game history (you know the one)). Frank had to survive in the “Willamette Mall” for 72 hours with a bunch of human survivors, a handful of crazy people, and of course thousands upon thousands of undead.
I don’t think there is one person, gamer or critic, who didn’t love the premise of Dead Rising. Take the classic zombie flick “Dawn of the Dead” and make a game version of it, be stuck in a shopping mall and use anything as a weapon to slaughter the zombie hoards; however, even though the game received high scores from nearly every gaming outlet and high praise from those who played it, there were still quite a few problems with it. The save system was brutally frustrating at times, allowing only one file to be used at a time, no checkpoint system, and placing save points so far apart resulted in sometimes hours of gameplay being lost. The survivors you were trying to help sucked at surviving making the escort missions frustrating as can be. The boss fights with survivors gone mad (aka psychopaths) were also incredibly difficult due to the flawed control system. Yet people played it and loved it, I myself remember spending an entire summer trying to get the achievement for killing 53,594 zombies. Still these problems did make the overall experience better than the actual game.
Thankfully Capcom, and development partner Blue Castle Games listened and fixed almost every complaint there was to be had with the first Dead Rising to make a powerful sequel.
How Did I Get Here?
The story of Dead Rising 2 is a touching one, the series new protagonist Chuck Greene a former Motocross star, is on a mission to save his daughter Katey from turning into a flesh-eating monster. He does this by giving her a daily dose of Zombrex a new drug that holds off infection for 24 hours. Zombrex isn’t cheap though which is why Chuck and Katey have ended up in Fortune City, the new Las Vegas, and why Chuck is slaughtering zombies on a reality game show “Terror is Reality” which is under protest from zombie rights activists CURE, but generally accepted by the populace.
Well it all starts off well enough but then wouldn’t you know it, an explosion in the zombie holding pen frees all of the undead and they start wreaking havoc. Chuck grabs his daughter and runs to their new safe house barely making it past the swarms of undead. As if things weren’t bad enough for ol’ Chuck shortly after arriving at the safe house a news report shows him planting a bomb causing the explosion which let the zombies out. Now we all know Chuck wouldn’t do that, the military doesn’t though and you now have 72 hours to prove Chuck’s innocence before the military arrives and executes you and your daughter.
While the last game had you in control of photojournalist Frank West who’s weapon of choice was a nice picture of a zombie with a servebot mask on it’s head, Chuck prefers to get down and dirty and create some new zombie killing weapons. The original Dead Rising had around 250 weapons to kill zombies with, a drop in the bucket (which by the way can be combined with an electric drill and placed on a zombies head for a one hit kill) compared to all the zombie killing utensils in the second. The combination aspect is the biggest addition to Dead Rising, box of nails + baseball bat = nail bat, car battery + wheelchair = portable electric chair, bowie knifes + boxing gloves = Wolverine claws. It is incredibly fun to find a bunch of combineable items (marked by a wrench icon) and seeing what you make.
With all these tools at your disposal you need something to use them on, and that isn’t a problem as Dead Rising 2 has lots of zombies. While the original game was able to show a few hundred zombies onscreen at a time Dead Rising 2 can show thousands at a time making them easier to spot. They’re also a bit dumber meaning you will and survivors (who are smarter and less prone to run into the middle of a zombie circle and get munched) can run past them with relative ease.
Time, Time? We Don’t Have Time!!!
For the most part though the way Dead Rising 2 plays out is similar to Dead Rising with some small changes, and unfortunately this is a big problem. As I mentioned you have 72 hours (sped up 12X) to do a bunch of case files that will help clear your name, find and administer Zombrex to your daughter, and find survivors and help lead them to safety. Now I’ve talked to others who enjoy the time limit, they say it helps deliver the tension of a zombie apocalypse, and I get that but for me the time limit is a real deathblow to this game. In the first game if you wanted to ignore the case files, ignore the story and just kill zombies then it was a free for all in DR2 however, fail to complete a case file and you have to start from your last save or restart the save with all your stats carrying over.
Because of the strict time limit I felt all my time was spent running past zombies rather then killing them which is what I want to do. It’s really unfortunate that forcing the case files was an aspect because I ended up frustrated easily. Having to constantly drop what I was doing and rush back to the safe house to receive a mission, going through a load screen each time I enter a new area or cutscene made this game feel “last gen” at times.
Another aspect worth mentioning is the psychopath battles, you will find most of these while on survivor search and rescue missions. Now the battles are a mixed bag, the enemies you face are mentally broken and in some cases downright terrifying, one actually had me scream out loud at 1:00 am in terror, which was awesome. However, some of them are insanely difficult and are easily the hardest part of the game. Since they’re (mostly) optional this means only the hardcorest of hardcore will be able to beat them, but simply experiencing them is worth trying.
Bring a Friend
Everything is better in pair’s right? Well zombie killing is no different, DR2 really shines when you bring a buddy in to help slow the hoard. The game handles this a bit differently, story wise nothing changes your friend will also play Chuck Green and the story will just pretend he’s not there. So you can bring a buddy in to help you level up and finish the story. When you bring someone into your game they don’t progress in the story they will retain all the experience and weapons they got while helping you when they jump back to their profile though. The co-op definitely adds a much needed breath of fresh air into the gameplay.
But let’s say you don’t want to be friendly, let’s say you want to play against others for cash prizes. Well then Terror is Reality is right up your alley and arguably the best part of the game. In the terror is reality mode you compete in a bunch of competitive and incredibly addictive games against other players. There are a bunch of games to play my favorite being the “Pounds of Flesh” game where you wear a moose head and knock as many zombies as you can onto a scale, whoever has the heaviest scale at the end wins. The games are fun as can be and when you win the money you earn carries over into the main game.
Have I Done This Yet
Between the unforgiving time limit and no autosave/checkpoint system you will be replaying portions of this game. Depending on how diligent you are with your saving this may range from having to replay 5 minutes of game or if you’re like me and forget all the time you’ll have to replay sometimes up to 4 hours of game (insert my non sensical hate filled rant here). This can lead to a “I don’t want to do this again” and shutting off the game which is never good.
There are also a lot of recycled story elements from the first Dead Rising. Fortune City is honestly just a larger version of Willamette Mall, there is a cutscene showing how zombies become more aggressive at night, and the cutscene where we find out the zombie killing power of the queen wasp feels like it was copy and pasted from the first game and just replaced Frank with Chuck.
Overall though DR2 is an improvement over the first game, with many if not all of the issues of the first being addressed. If you loved the first Dead Rising you’ll probably love this one, and there is definitely stuff to love, but there are still to many issues holding it back from being the ultimate zombie game it strives to be.
