REVIEW: Dead Rising 2

For guys like myself playing a Zombie infested game, is heaps of fun! This Fantasy Creature we call the walking dead has been a favorite to many over the years. Ever since Zombies invaded the gaming world, we’ve been “blessed” with games such as Resident Evil, House of the Dead and the famous Left 4 dead. These games have proved that killing off zombies over and over again and surviving a Zombie outbreak is oh so satisfying. You might ask why is it satisfying to murder these slow, brain eating, rotting corpse over and over again? Heck, who cares, it’s fun!  And Dead Rising 2, gives you just that and a lot of ways to do it too. It sucks to be a zombie, it is even worse if you’re a zombie in Dead Rising 2.

You play as Chuck Greene, an Ex-motocross Champion forced to play this game show called Terror is Reality to support his only daughter Katey. He lost his wife during the last outbreak and has been killing zombies for a living ever since. Which bring him to another zombie break in Fortune City, a city based on the casino strip in Vegas. Chuck gets Katey and heads to the safe house where he meets other survivors. He then finds out that he’s being framed for the outbreak and now has 72 hours to clear his name before the Military arrives to clean up the outbreak. The story was not great and is easily forgettable but the gameplay more than makes up for it.

Dead Rising 2 is time driven. Your given 72 in-game hours to do everything that has to be done, and you must manage your time carefully or you’ll miss important parts of the game. I’ve gotten myself in situations where I did not make it in time for the main story because I had too much fun smashing zombies while saving survivors in Fortune City. Don’t worry, if this happens to you, you’re given the choice to restart the story and carrying over your stats and key items or you can just simply load your last save file. The time given for each mission is not forgiving; you’ll be seeing yourself racing against the clock every time to head to your next objective. Just like the first game, Leveling is still around. You start at level one and as you progress in the game, your Chuck gets faster, stronger, and you get skills that can help you take care of those zombies in your way.

Fortune City is a huge place for Chuck to explore. Everything in Fortune City can be a weapon, from swinging golf balls, to using a lawn mower outside to clear the way for your allies, the game has a huge number of items that can be picked up any time. In fact, running around trying every item to use on zombies can be time consuming but still awesome. Besides weapons in Fortune City, you find a huge number of clothing that you can wear to give your Chuck your own personality which carries over on the cut scenes.  You don’t only encounter zombies, there are still bosses in Dead Rising 2, just like the first, their called Psychopaths and man! fighting them can be annoying. There’s not much strategy in these fights, it’s mostly hack away and use a healing item when you’re low.

Dead Rising 2 lacks several small things that could elevate its game play satisfaction such as options to plot your own waypoints and less loading time. The lengthy loading time destroys the game’s pace of racing against the clock. The game isn’t that difficult although it gets a little harder as you progress having zombies more aggressive but the gameplay will feel just the same when you hit that part of the story.

The Best Feature of Dead Rising 2 is their new Combo Cards system, where you get to combine 2 items and make an awesome weapon, like grab a box of nails and combine it with a baseball bat and you get a deadly bat with nails on the tip of the bat for you to smash on zombie heads! There’s a total of 50 Combo Cards for you to find and using these combined weapons gives you extra PP(Prestige Points) when used. This is a great addition to the game, as you progress, killing zombies may begin to feel repetitive but The Combo system helps create ingenious ways of annihilating them. It’s great to explore all the combinations, some are absurd and weird while some are just awesome to look at when used on a zombie.

Another Great addition is Co-op play. You get the option to bring your version of chuck into someone’s game or make a friend join your game for some zombie killing cooperation. During my first play through, I played on my friend’s story progression and it’s a blast smashing zombie heads with a friend. Aside from co-op play, just like games nowadays, they have multiplayer. The multiplayer is pretty much the game show Terror is Reality, the game show Chuck was in before the outbreak started. You become one of the contestants of the game show, competing against 3 other people in 9 different kinds of zombie mini-games. In my opinion this was the least fun. The Multiplater aspect of Dead Rising 2 Felt like an afterthought and seemed pretty pointless to me.

The Graphics of Dead Rising 2 wasn’t all that impressive, the character models were decent looking but What Impressed me was the sheer number of zombies that were on screen for each area. Don’t try clearing the area because they will just randomly spawn out of nowhere so it’s never ending really. I’ve had usual Frame rate drops but the frame drops weren’t a bother in gameplay. Overall, the game was worth the buy, it has small issues that if resolved, could have made Dead Rising 2 a better game. It has tons of content, lots of replay value and a fun co-op game to enjoy with a friend. If you enjoyed the First Dead Rising, you will love the second one for sure.

Score: 85/100