Dead Rising 2 Review
Come down to the mall this Saturday, fresh zombies are in stock
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SpectralShock
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Following the somewhat unexpected success of the Xbox 360 exclusive Dead Rising, Capcom has decided to bring the sequel of the slow zombie action title to all platforms. With Dead Rising 2, players can expect to see some familiar gameplay that made the original game a hit, while some tweaks have been made to the formula to extend the experience in some ways. With a new protagonist and storyline, and a huge location filled with zombies, the developers managed to achieve the whacky action title they were hoping for. The gameplay is generally fun in free roam, but when you factor in the time limit and the boss fights, things can become fairly frustrating quickly. Dead Rising 2 brings back the classic slow zombie-killing formula with relative success, and there is fun to be had in both single player and coop.
The plot of the game kicks off five years after the event of the original game. The zombie outbreak has been apparently contained, but instead of completely eliminating the monsters, people have decided to turn them into a form of entertainment. Former motocross champ, Chuck Greene is a part of such an entertainment event. In a free-for-all to kill as many zombies as possible inside an arena, Chuck competes with others in order to earn cash. He uses the money to buy Zombrex – an antibiotic of sorts that slows down the process of turning into a zombie – for his daughter, Katey. She needs the pills because she was narrowly bitten by her mother when the first outbreak occurred, and thus must continually take the pills in order to stay human. Chuck’s relationship and interactions with his daughter are probably one of the best portrayals of such a relationship in recent times.
After the show, a bomb goes off and all the zombies are released free from their cages, quickly overwhelming the show’s attendees and thus another outbreak begins. Chuck quickly finds his daughter and takes her to a secure location, which serves as the home base for the majority of the game. Once there, Chuck realizes that he has been framed with setting the zombies free, and must prove his innocence if he is to escape jail. The rest of the story plays out with some nice twists as Chuck comes across other survivors and eventually unravels the conspiracy against him. Dead Rising 2’s story is more focused on the actual people and their actions rather than the zombie outbreak itself, which gives the plot more strength to carry a solid narrative.
Dead Rising 2 takes place entirely in a mall and surrounding area amneties, but that doesn’t mean there’s little to see or do. All buildings and shops can be entered and often interacted with as in a real mall. Of course, everything is also free so there are limitless possibilities for Chuck’s outfits. All locations are realistically designed, with shops ranging from clothing apparel to toy outlets and many more. Once you’ve found yourself a decent set of shoes and a fancy hat (which get covered in blood rather quickly), it’s time to step outside.
The developers did not hold back in filling the game world with zombies. Imagine if everyone in a packed mall turned into a slowly shuffling zombie, and you get a good idea of what to expect here. The locales are literally filled to the brink with zombies, making it often impossible to simply walk or run by the crowd. These slow zombies will attempt to grab Chuck at any opportunity, and breaking free requires you to mash the zombie away in a sort of quick time event. Since fighting with fists wouldn’t get you very far, the game excels at making almost every object in the game a weapon of some kind. Huge part of the gameplay appeal comes from using the most random items – statues, park benches, drills, buckets, cash registers – to take out the zombies surrounding you.
While that’s fun in itself, there is also a robust combination system that lets Chuck put certain items together to create handy-man style weapons. Chuck can either find or invent the weapon combinations, and they can be created on lab benches found throughout the game world. Take a baseball bat and a box of nails, and you get a spiked bat. A boxing glove and knives produce a very sharp punch, and a bucket with a drill makes for a fancy death hat for the zombies. All of the items you find and create have a limited amount of use, so its often a good idea to carry around a few weapon sets, though the inventory is limited.
Once you’ve had your fun with random zombie abuse, it’s time to take on the main game. Dead Rising 2 takes place in the above-mentioned mall, which is an entirely open sandbox. Missions are given to you via a radio, and they all have a certain time limit before they expire. As such, players will need to make some choices in what missions they undertake, and it’s nearly impossible to get them all in a single playthrough as the game’s timer counts down. The army is set to arrive within 72 game hours to stop the outbreak, putting a limit on the length of the game. Story and side missions vary only slightly in their context, and often require Chuck to find and rescue a survivor and progress the plot via conversation. There’s also a timer that requires Chuck to find or purchase a new pack of Zombrex and bring it to his daughter in order to keep her from turning, so that’s yet another timer to keep track of.
What has been described so far is a very fun experience, but there are also some major annoyances in the game. For one, many fans who are looking for the game to let them spend the time and explore the world will be disappointed by the game’s overall time limits as well as mission-specific timers. Chuck also has a dastardly low amount of health for the first few hours as you level up, so constant near-death escapes are unavoidable. Health is restored by eating food, but while doing so you’re susceptible to another zombie strike. There are also random survivors wandering the world, which are optional to rescue and bring all the way back to the safe house – a trip that’s usually more frustrating than it’s worth.
The game’s bosses are also incredibly frustrating – since Chuck is very slow and cannot run, most of the boss fights are based on quick un-blockable attacks and take a very long time to kill. There are some extremely annoying boss encounters in the game that you’ll be forced to replay over and over until you find a safe spot to do a ranged attack with a rifle, but then it simply feels like you’re cheating the game out of a challenge. Since boss battles are required to progress, be prepared for a lot of trial and error. And since you’ll be dying a lot, it doesn’t help that the game lacks any kind of checkpoint system. To save, you must visit a bathroom location in the mall – if you get carried away with the zombie kills and forget to visit one, dying an hour later will revert all your progress since the last save. This almost breaks the desire to play, especially when faced with a boss battle that’s significantly far from your last-saved location, forcing you to take the same trip over and over.
To help with some frustrating missions and bosses, the game does feature online Coop mode. This lets players invite someone else (who appears as Chuck, thus creating twins) into the single player game and continue from that point on. The two players begin their progress from the point where the host has left off, and makes boss battles and general goofing around fairly enjoyable. If a player goes down, their partner can simply revive them with some food and continue on. Also included is competitive multiplayer, in the form of the zombie killing show that Chuck is part of during the start of the game. Four players can participate, competing against each other for the most kills inside an arena full of undead. Players will be able to use weapons and vehicles, as well as various items to slow down their opponents. Both online modes are fun and work as intended, though there is not much gameplay variety in the competitive mode.
As mentioned before, Dead Rising 2 is a fairly detailed game, and the graphics engine does justice to the environments. Textures are richly detailed and the light and visual effects are more than satisfying. You can watch Chuck’s clothes get covered in blood and it looks good, but some of the zombie kills and blood on the floor can look filtered and unrealistic. Still, the game is a well-done port for the PC with a wide variety of settings and the ability to run great on all range of hardware. Mouse support is implemented well, and with some tweaking there are no problems with controls at all. The voiceover is good for the most part, as the primary characters all have a solid performance, though some of the minor characters have very basic dialogue. The sound design is appropriate to the setting, though there is not much to listen to in a mall full of the undead. Probably the biggest issue on the technical front are the loading screens. There is a loading screen in every single area of the game, and before and after every cutscene. The process isn’t very long, mind you, but it’s long enough to keep constantly noticing that there are simply too many of these screens.
The developers set out to achieve a sequel that capitalized on what the original did well, and they succeeded. Dead Rising 2 plays like an action survival game, with a large environment full of zombies to explore. You can visit any store, dress up silly and kill zombies in the most absurd ways – but once that’s over, the timed nature of the game and its missions can be annoying to some players. Most of the side quests are not diverse and often produce too little of a reward to bother with. The online coop takes some of the frustration from certain single player elements, and the competitive multiplayer can be fun, if not varied. The game is well presented, though not perfectly executed with endless amounts of loading screens and some poor textures. If it’s zombie killing with a twist you’re looking for, Dead Rising 2 will deliver – but with certain gameplay issues that some players may simply not look past.