Game: Dead Rising 2 (2010)
Genre: Action/Adventure
Developer(s): Capcom, Blue Castle
Publisher(s): Capcom
Platform(s): PS3, Xbox 360, PC
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Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Grounded premise (realistic), HUGE variety of combo-weapons, plethora of in-game activities, good mix of multiplayer functionality, stats carry over from previous play-throughs.
Cons: Very linear/restrictive gameplay, no auto-save feature.
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Dead Rising 2 takes place in Fortune City, Nevada, five years after the events of the first Dead Rising game. The players take the role of former motocross star Chuck Green as he struggles to provide his infected daughter, Katey, with a zombie-suppressing drug called Zombrex. The game starts off with Chuck competing in the controversial zombie-slaying game show "Terror is Reality," attempting to win prize money. After the show, there is a zombie outbreak in the city, which Chuck is framed for. Chuck is then forced to fight through hordes of zombies as he completes a series of missions to save survivors, acquire Zombrex, and ultimately clear his name.
I played through this game extensively (about 3 times through), and each session was equally as entertaining. However, playing the game several times was almost required due to the game's restrictive gameplay design. Each mission had a timed duration (both plot and side missions), so if the mission expired, it and any corresponding missions related to it were forever lost for that play-through. You could willingly fail the plot missions (aka let them expire) and continue playing the game, but you would then be restricted from the areas/features that the mission would have unlocked. You were constantly juggling Katey's Zombrex dosage, saving survivors, and completing plot missions in a timely manner, which left very little time for you to explore the game's setting or to just goof around as you grind down or smash in the faces of limitless zombie hordes.
Luckily, if you were to restart your game, your current level, stats, and achievements would carry over into the next game. This means that you started each play-through stronger and richer than the previous, making the game progressively easier. I felt, however, that this system almost encouraged you to start the game over several times until the game was easy enough for you to play through it completely.
The boss battles were challenging without the proper stats, skills, and weapons, which was both refreshing and frustrating. It was refreshing to have to think about how best to overcome the boss (study their moves, utilize the surrounding terrain, and use your current resources intelligently). If you weren't properly prepared (you didn't have the dodge skill, enough healing items, or enough weapons), though, the battles were significantly more difficult, making you reload to a previous save several times, which sometimes could have been hours ago if you forgot to frequently save.
The combo-weapon system was another interesting mechanic of the game. It certainly fit with the game's flavor, to say the least. However, I felt the vast variety of weapons was a tad overkill. There were almost too many weapon combinations and not enough ways to obtain the "ingredients" needed to make them. You would enter the casino/mall from the same location every time you would leave the safehouse, making the combo weapons nearest to this area the easiest to restock on.
It was helpful that each workshop housed materials for specific combo weapons, but again, you had to wade through the zombie hordes just for that desired combo weapon. It would have been much better if they had different exits from the safehouse, allowing you to better plan your workshop route and combo weapons for that run. Many combo weapons were just for shits-'n-giggles; however, the game's time restrictions usually made playing with those combo weapons fruitless.
Multiplayer was interesting in that there were two different ways to get players playing together. There was co-op mode, where players could jump right into another player's game, chainsaw-paddle swinging (depicted above), or players could actually participate in a "Terror is Reality" game show. The American Gladiator-esque games awarded prize money that could carry over into single-player mode.
Aside from the missions and zombie killing, players could also gamble at the various casinos, design their wardrobe at select clothing stores, mix their own drinks behind the bar, catch a movie at the cinema, or just destroy everything in sight with wanton disregard for the consequences. One of my favorite past times was to mow down the clustered swarms of zombies on my chainsaw-motorbike. Imagine this: The warm Nevada air rushes past your face, tousling your hair. The motors of your duct-taped chainsaws and your motorbike blissfully hums in unison. As you ride through a group of zombies, their hungry limbs are strewn about the air like blown dandelion seeds. All the while, your zombie-kill counter happily ticks away.
From a design standpoint, the game was solid. The zombie-survival experience was evident, the setting and mechanics fit, and the game had a grounded, semi-realistic feel to it. There were a few bugs, but they were almost exclusively regarding AI. I would have either removed the timers on the survivor missions or made in-game time pass more slowly, thus giving the player a little more "goofing around" time (which was honestly my only gripe with the game, but that cost it major points).
Whether you want to rent the game or buy it, I suggest giving it a shot, especially if you are a zombie-apocalypse nut like me. It took me about 1-2 weeks to play the game completely three times through, so it would be possible to beat it over a renting period if you wanted to.
