Capcom has finally made their sequel to Dead Rising, a game where you screw around killing zombies in a mall, with the game Dead Rising 2, a game where you screw around killing zombies in a casino.
Dead Rising was a great game. Being able to run around and create mass genocide with things you found laying around a mall is amazing. Me and my friend played it for so many hours (until one of us decided to kick the console while I was playing it so it scratched the fucking shit out of the game and caused it to be unplayable back in 2007 and since then the only fucking part I can play is the beginning, taking pictures of zombies, and it pisses me off to no fucking extent.) just killing zombies and ignoring the case timer running out. There were a few things that made me mad about it, and it is by no means a perfect game. The aiming was shit, case timers would go way too fast, and some of the bosses were just plain hacking. I was hoping that they would fix those problems. Well, suffice to say, they didn’t, but I’m not disappointed.
Dead Rising 2 picks up five years after the zombie outbreak in Willamette from the first game in the series. Since then, people decided to get rid of their new zombie friends by making ‘Terror Is Reality’, a game show that has people killing zombies in various ways for cash. Unless you want to trudge through the derelict ‘Terror is Reality’ multiplayer mode to see them all, you’re only going to see the main event, Slicecycles. This is where we meet our protagonists, Chuck Greene, and his daughter, Katey Greene, who has to take the zombie-ism suppressant Zombrex, lest she wants to reenact a scene from Quarantine. Our hero is trying to win the cash prize from the show to keep Katey from biting his face off, when in a surprising twist, another outbreak occurs! Our protagonist heroically hauls his ass to the nearest panic room with Katey, who still needs her Zombrex, so it’s up to Chucke Greene to go get her some.
Capcom has made a great sequel with this. Out the window is picture taking for upgrade points, and now, you just kill zombies with weapons you glued together. The weapons you combine together a lot of the time don’t make any sense, and are made solely for the spectacle of seeing it, and with that comes very very strange combinations you won’t think of. As an example, would you think to combine a tennis racket and a tiki torch? I didn’t until I got the combo card. I barely ever got combo cards anyway. The only ones I would get were from leveling up or the occasional one from an escort mission. I only got two from posters, and even those I could barely make half the time. All the combos I made I found online, or within the combination room itself. All the combo rooms have a few things kind of hinting what you should make. Like, a bow and some dynamite right outside its door. Well, we all know what that is from. Rambo! Of course, with a bow, you have to shoot it, so we come back to our old friend aiming.
Although the aiming does feel a little bit better, as I can tell from my memories of the first game (Which I would play, but oh no, it had to go and get fucking destroyed), the problem with the bosses is still present. The game is a bit more merciful with its sharp stick and doesn’t shove it up your ass as fast this time because the main cases are generally easy if you have any idea of what to do. The side mission bosses are where the game just likes to twist and push that stick until it’s coming out of your ears. I understand why they’re hard, don’t get me wrong, but I felt there should’ve been more boss battles I’ve could’ve done on my first play through. I tried a lot of them, the Chef, the Pink Chainsaw guy, and I couldn’t beat any of them on my first time around. The only ones I could beat were the ones to get Zombrex or the actual main case bosses. I like a good challenge, but you just have no inventory space to cope with the low health you’ll have fighting the side bosses.
Although it may seem I’m complaining a lot, I really like this game. They pulled a Terminator 2 on us. It may not be that much more creative than the first, as most of the game takes place in a mall (Oh, I’m sorry, a ‘plaza’), but it still feels new and different, especially with the introduction of vehicles. Just don’t expect to be driving them because you’ll never get the money to buy them without playing online, which nobody does.
