Video Game Review: Dead Rising 2
by Dan DeVriend
Dead Rising 2 is a sandbox of zombie killing fun. Unlike the survival aspects of Resident Evil or Left 4 Dead, where big guns rule the day, in Dead Rising, the name of the game is hand-to-hand combat, with guns being far less effective against the shuffling horde. In Dead Rising 2, the ability to combine items and create weapons, such as spiked bats, Super Soaker flamethrowers, electric wheelchairs, and the Machetecopter really amps up the fun and creative ways of slaughtering the undead.
Dead Rising 2 is, not too shockingly, very similar to Dead Rising. Like the first game, it takes place in shopping malls (called plazas in this game) most of the time, although there are now casinos and a larger outdoor environment to explore. It’s a bit easier and far more polished, with a straight out of Hollywood storyline that manages to be a little more serious than the first game, while still being not serious at all. Chuck Greene is a motocross champion who has fallen from grace, reduced to game show appearances (where you slaughter zombies, of course) to afford Zombrex, a drug that keeps his infected daughter, Katey, from becoming a zombie. Framed for a crime he didn’t commit, he has 3 days to survive zombie hell, clear his name, save people and find a dose of Zombrex for Katey each day.
"Braaaaaaains."
The game is really a series of timed events. Besides the overarching 72 hours you need to survive, every 24 hours you need to give Katie her medicine. You need to be in certain places at certain times to advance the plot, and events and survivors have a time limit as well. Playing the game is really managing the timers while you slay thousands of zombies. If you fail to help a survivor, they die. If you fail to help Katey, it’s game over. If you miss an important plot event, you can keep playing for a bad ending, or restart the game with your experience and unlocks intact, able to rip through the zombies faster and hopefully not mess it up this time. There are also bosses in the game in the form of crazy people who use the chaos to indulge in their insanity, and they are some of the games most twisted highlights in terms of character design and voice acting. It gives the game a feeling of stress different than the other zombie games out there, and ends up being fun and frustrating at the same time.
The graphics are fantastic, as are the sounds. They really give Fortune City, the in-game Vegas knock off, a real sense of life… err… afterlife… and are very detailed. There must be hundreds, if not thousands of different zombie models, but that won’t stop you from seeing the same ones over and over, sometimes right next to each other, kinda hurting the illusion. You can dress Chuck in whatever clothes and gear you find laying around, giving him a customized kind of feeling, but he’s not truly a player avatar, as he has a very rigid set of objectives in the game that define him as a character.
Dead Rising 2 also features online co-op, and an online arena combat game called Terror is Reality, based on the in-game game show you participate in. Together with the standard story mode, it’s varied enough to keep you playing for a while, but it doesn’t have the endless replayability of the co-op in Left 4 Dead, as slashing around the casinos can get tiresome, especially as you’ll have probably played through the early part of the game a few times if you miss some deadlines. Once you’ve gotten a couple endings under your belt, you’ll probably be ready to move on, unless you have a serious passion for killing zombies!
To sum up… of course if you liked Dead Rising, this game is for you. If you like zombie games in general, you’ll probably dig Dead Rising 2. Resident Evil fans, especially of the earlier games in the series, will probably enjoy it as well. People who need their games to be deadly serious? Stay away, as this one can get a bit silly. But I recommend it, as there is a lot here to like, and a clear improvement over the original.
Dead Rising 2 by Capcom 2010 for XBOX360 and PS3 is obviously rated M for MATURE as it’s got gore a plenty, violence all over the place, and some surprisingly crude sexual situations. Contact the ESRB for more information if you really care. Dead Rising 2 is now available for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.
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