Dead Rising 2 Review

Hey Everyone,

So This week im going to have a look at Capcoms latest Zombie Creation Dead Rising 2. Capcom famous for the Resident Evil franchise and its inherint zombie mayhem, and while many belive that the Resident Evil franchise has lost its way Dead rising 2 gets back to the core of what the zombie mania was about in the old days. killing innocent infected people so as not to become food.

 

Dead Rising 2 is set in a fictional Las Vegas style casino grown ups playground type city. you play as Chuck Greene former Motocross Star, Father of One and zombie apocalypse survivor. The Game begins with your character being involved in a Pay per View event which involves mowing down countless zombies in an attempt to score points in a game called Terror is Reality. After the show there is an out break of infection when zombies are let into the stadium. you rescue your daughter and escape to a shelter. Chuck is blamed for  the outbreak and you have 72 hours to wait for rescue and prove your innocence.

 

Game summary aside the storyline is of course a little cliched but arent all games these days.

 

Game play is very smooth in my opinion, the ammount of weaponry available is staggering, anything and everything can be used from Fire Axes to Garden chairs, Leaf blowers to Assault Rifles. the best part of the game in my opinion, is the combo weapons, mixing things together to create weapons that are halarious to use, but genius to construct. There are two Combos that i think are just unbeatable, the Laser sword (lightsabre) using Gems and a flashlight, and the trusty Bat n' Nail. the weapons themselves do varying degrees of damage naturally, swords and guns doing more damage then a baseball bat etc. but some weapons can take out multiple zombies at once. honestly in this game, guns are a hinderence rather then useful. but the controls are easy to pick up and its all very fluid i think. others of course may disagree but after the awkward controls of the Resident Evil zombie game i welcome these changes.

 

the levels look brilliant, all the casinos the zombies and everything else. the colors the neon lights and the surrondings. it feels like Las Vegas to me anyway.

 

The survivors have been upgraded, in the 1st game the survivors were useless in this game they are far from it. its worth your while giving them good weapons aswell makes things easier. and creating a posse. (having a few survivors with you at once) can be fun and can get jobs done quicker.

there are some setbacks too. Chucks daughter Katey needing medicne every 24 hours is a pain, (yes i know, My name is Micheal J Caboose and I hate Babies) but thats not my actual problem its one take once every 24 hours, but to by zombrex from the shops is like 25 000 dollars, there are 5 secret Zombrex's hidden, and you get one or two from game play but its just so annoying, having to break from saving survivors and Killing psychos to give her her drugs. anyway anti baby rant over (IRL i love kids, please dont think otherwise)

 

The theme of this game is Time, you have three days to prove your innocence (Chuck apparently not needing sleep ever) time frames to save people and finish side quests and Time frames to kill psychos, at one point the time frame ran out for me to kill a psycho when i was actually fighing him. screen said psycho has escaped and the character just vanished in mid stab. but that is one of the few mistakes this game has really. the time frames give a sense of urgency and discourage just going into the mall and bashing as many zombies as you can. You could of course still do this but that would only lessen the experience of this game.

 

the other aspect of this game is the ability to restart the story line with all your levels and equipment kept with you. you can play through for til almost the end, and then start the game again at like level 20. making the missions rediculously easy and almost defeating the chalange of the game. well I think so anyway. people again may disagree. however after the 1st play through if you go from start to finish, it makes restarting fun as you can just go nuts and kill everything.

 

out of 5 i would give this a 4. it looses a point for its inconsistancy with the time frame and how it uses this to advance the plot. other then that its well worth playing and owning.

 

also the Special editon game comes in a case that looks like the foil packs that you get pills in and you get a pen what looks like syringe of Zombrex its really cool!

Next week i will give a preliminary view of Fallout New Vegas. as im getting it tomorrow!

 

until then friends and readers
Caboose