Written by: Ian

 

 

 

With a move to a Western developer, does "Dead Rising 2" pay off for Capcom, or does it fail like Dark Void or Bionic Commando? With a developer that you probably won’t have heard of before, have Capcom taken a massive risk, or made a shred decision?

 

 

Playing as Chuck Greene, a TiR (gruesome reality TV show, just like Running Man) contestant who gets framed for starting a zombie outbreak in Fortune City, you have to survive for 72 hours before the military liberate the place.

 

To make matters worse, your daughter, Katey, has been bitten by a zombie, and requires a dose of Zombrex every 24 hours in order to survive. This makes Dead Rising 2 a frantic rush to solve the cases and to collect Zombrex before time runs out.

 

It’s a game designed for multiple playthroughs, but even a single run will take 4-6 hours, so whilst you can’t do everything in a single go, I can see why once through would be enough for some.

 

 

Dead Rising is a game with a lot of zombies in it. It easily challenges Left 4 Dead as the most number of the undead you can kill in a single game. There is a ridiculous achievement which you get for killing over 70,000 of the things, which is an insane amount and will take many playthoughs to complete. But it’s a more methodical, slower paced game.

 

 

You generally fight in melee, and whilst the survivors can help you out, the vast majority of the killing will be done using your own hands. I’m a bit disappointed with the game world presented. Yes, it is bigger than the mall in the first game, but the main hub is still a shopping centre. The outside areas are relatively small and don’t really change up the gameplay; it certainly doesn’t feel like you can explore an entire city like some of the early previews were promising.

 

However, there are some awesome features, like the ability to customise weapons. Not only do these crazy combinations look cool, but they generally do way more damage and get you way more experience points too, so there is really no excuse not to be using these toys, and there are thankfully loads of rooms scattered about to make these creations, and they will normally contain at least one combos worth of items within. And boy, it would be a real grind to level up without the combo items.

 

Even with 2 or 3 playthroughs, I would expect that most people wouldn’t even be close to hitting level 50. And it’s a shame to expect people will spend 50+ hours replaying the game over and over, because you do become an awesome, pumped up superhuman by the time you hit the upper levels, with loads of health and insanely powerful melee strikes that really help the kill count go up and up. It’s also a shame (or a blessing) that the gamepkay remains fundamentally the same as the first game.

 

You solve time-pressured cases, kill some dead dudes along the way, dress up like a douche, and rescue any local idiots that you happen to find on your travels. If this appeals to you, you’ll love Dead Rising 2. If it doesn’t, then even killing thousands of zombies won’t retain your interest for more than a single run through, and that would make the game pretty poor value.

 

 

Some things return from the first game that you may find pretty annoying. You can only save in bathrooms, although there are now three save slots. If you die, you also get the option to just restart; which makes the game easier, but obviously resets your progress (you can also import a Dead Rising: Case Zero save file). You can also import the money you win from multiplayer as well to help out further.

 

Pretty much every task you get is also time-limited, and the timers just get tougher and tougher as you progress through the game, which some people also won’t enjoy. It’s a critical part to the game, and I can’t see how it could have been done any different though. I also found the long loads and huge save times to be pretty frustrating, and the lack of an autosave is a definite annoyance.