“Dead Rising 2” by Mr Riddler
Riddle Me This Who did the Zombie invite to his party?
Anyone he could “dig up.”
What I Expected
Sticking with the trend that I seem to have set for myself, I have not played Dead Rising 1 so, naturally, I’m just going to jump into Dead Rising 2. However, I’ve heard good things about the first game. Either way I’ve seen the trailers for Dead Rising 2 and I have to say that they’ve got me pretty pumped about playing it. Aside from the fact that they’re using that age old strategy of throwing in children to build tension, the weapons of choice look amazing and insane. Also there’s chainsaw galore and who can argue with that? On the other hand since I’ve started writing these reviews, it’/s made me somewhat of a cynic. I can’t really trust the advertisement of the games to get me excited then I’ll end up in the same boat I was in after I played Singularity. Feeling cheated.
But dammit I want to ride one of those chainsaw bikes….
What We Got
Thankfully the game knows what we want because they throw you into a chainsaw bike minigame in the very beginning. Holy Hell that was pretty cool and you can play it again and again online versus other people. More on that later.
You play as the lead character, Chuck Greene, whom I swear is based off of Thomas Jane. As mentioned in the commercial, if you’ve seen it. Chuck is a loving father that’s lost his wife to the zombie invasion, was a previous motocross champion and lives in Fortune City, Nevada which has a game call Terror is Reality that involves riding motorcycles with chainsaw attached and killing zombies for live TV. He also has a daughter named Katy that’s been bitten by a zombie and needs Zombrex medicine to keep her from turning, every 24 hours. (yes this becomes a type of game mechanic to keep you moving) As you would expect, the zombies break from their cages, big shock, and take over the entire city bitting and killing people and it’s your job to save people 1 at a time, bring them back to your safe house, deal with the thieves and the crazies in town AND bring your daughter Zombrex every 24 hours until the military arrives to save you all. Also you need to uncover a plot from the TV show you work for to frame you and a Zombie activist group for the Zonbie Outbreak. It’s not a bad set up for a zombie game, I’ll give it that. It’s typical. Really what else can you do in an established universe that’s dealing with a Zombie apocalypse aside form become Resident Evil Apocalypse…. then noone would like it.
The game really reminds me of playing through Dawn of the Dead. Mostly because it takes place in malls, but also because it’s played through by gaining semi-intelligent Ai controlled people into a party and killing the shit out of some zombies. As I said earlier, you rescue people 1 at a time and bring them back to the safe house. However, you don’t have to bring them back to the safe house 1 at a time and majority of them are intelligent enough to follow you, carry guns and never run out of ammo for said guns. So really these escort missions turn into more of a co-op mission. When playing through the story mission I’ll usually pick up an Ai partner of 2 and give them a shot gun just so I have some back up with me in case I have to fight a boss. Which is really just a big crazy person anyway. I was really impressed how they gave the new twist to the escort style mission though. It makes the game a lot less annoying to play through. Each person you save will also give you PP. (haha) Gain enough PP and you level up which gives you better stats and skills etc etc. Which really makes this more of a satirical, survival horror RPG. In addition to the new stats and skills you also get these neat little things called combo cards. which are basically instructions on what you can duct tape together to make a new weapons and said weapons will, in turn, give you higher PP per zombie kill. Not to mention they’re just awesome. The first one you get is a nail bad and they grow in awesomeness from there to sledgehammer Axes and the boat paddle double-sided chainsaw. This really adds to the experience especially since some combos aren’t unlocked through leveling up you just have to experiment with sticking things together to see what you get and then see what you can kill with it. Combos were something this game was made for and it highly encourages you to experiment mixing weapons, mixing drinks when you get into bars to give you special combo boosts and mixing food when you’re trying to make healing items in a kitchen.
I tried out a new style with this review, can you tell? Now, I’m going to get into the stuff that annoyed the hell out of me. Dead Rising 2 is a fun game and it has all the mechanics set up to be fun. You can customize what you wear and it keeps it the same way from cutscene to cut scene. the Story isn’t going to win a prize, but it’s alright and killing zombies, if it hasn’t been proven before is fun as ever, BUT The lay out of the game is set up to be almost open world sandboxy. You have this huge casino city to explore and play in and the story pulls on your leash every 20 minute to tell you, “Stop having fun. It’s time to do some work.” What the hell is that?! I was having fun running my lawn mower over zombies but I can’t anymore or else I’ll get a game over!? There’s a time limit on each missions or rescue that’s all running at the same time so you need to manage your time wisely to save everyone or get story missions done before the game leaves you behind. Not that it really matters if you get a game over that way. It will ask you, would you like to load your last save, restart the entire game with what you have now, or just keep playing without a goal. Anything aside from loading my previous save seems kind of like a waste of my time so I have no choice, but really Capcom. Learn to make a sandbox. It may not make sense sometimes but when I’m done with a story mission I want to just kill some zombies before I move on. I want to enjoy the game aspect of the game sometimes without being pushed to watch more cutscenes. I’ll still get my daughter Zombrex before the day is over. I promise!
Also a note:
Every chance this game gets to throw a girl with nice boobs or ass at you and flaunt it, it does. To no end. There’s playboy advertisements everywhere, and for having a dead wife that Chuck mourns, he stares at a lot of women. Seems like he has the Kratos anxiety of, “no matter how many women I sleep with, I’ll never be able to fill the emptiness in my heart, but dammit if that’s going to stop me form trying.”
Multiplayer
Multiplayer for Dead Rising 2 is broken up into 2 different groups. Co-op Game which allows you to join another friend in a story mode fashion to play through murdering zombies and rescuing people. Snrozeville. Well not really boring but you get the idea. I’ve done this before and none of my friends have this game so I’m not just going to join up with some jackass online. The other version is TIR or Terror Is Reality where you compete on game show that you’ve seen in the story mode of the game (ie. The Chainsaw Bikes.) Interestingly enough, I find these to be awesome. It’s like playing Mario Party except with a lot more blood. Each game is made to be “Zombieland” like fun by grind up zombies, shooting zombies with canon balls or setting up spears to catch zombies on. Of course you also have the chainsaw bikes. Best part of multiplayer, however, is that the money you get from playing the game show can be transferred to your single player game to help you grow in level and buy more zombrex for your daughter.
Conclusion
The game is classified as a survival Horror and I’m sure it came out before October when it did to market itself as such but don’t expect it to be. You’ll get more laughs out of playing this game than scares, but those laughs will be a sign of having fun. The game is a load of fun and the experimentation system with weapons will be able to kill multiple hours. Unfortunately the story is super short. Because of the time limit it’ll limit your game play to a max of 6 hour play throughs. None the less you still keep your level and items when you move on so.. is it really over? no… no it’s not…
Overall Rating
Buy it. The game is worth the play through and like any other sandbox game it’s a great way to blow off steam.
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Feel Free to leave me a comment down below and let me know what you think, if you enjoyed the review or what you want me to review next. I’ll pay attention. After all, you are my only reader.
Riddler Reviews 
As long as I get to kill everything, I'm happy
When Eddie made me play the game I went about smacking every single Zombie. He said you know, you don't have to kill every single zombie. You can, but you don't have to. The point being, yes, you can kill everything it seems. :>Also you can change the guy's clothes and walk into serious scenes with the same clothes. It can go very wrong, very fast.
this really seems like a nice game to blow my rage on
totally buying that