Review: Dead Rising 2

By Laurence Cutner

Price: £44.99 Xbox 360, PS3, PC

If you have played on the original Dead Rising, or seen any film relating to zombies, or generally blood, guts and worldwide epidemics then you will be immediately familiar with this.

Dead Rising 2 is the latest sequel in the classic series - and one of the most anticipated games of the year.

Within moments of the story beginning in “Fortune City”, zombies break-out in their hordes, hungry for blood.

The story establishes around the main character Chuck Greene, an ex-stunt motorbike star and revengeful father, full of hate and anger at the zombie menace for eating his wife in Las Vegas and infecting his daughter, Katy who now requires regular dosages of zombie-antivirus called “Zombrex”.
Now the former motocross star must become the hero to save his daughter and repel the zombie invasion.

As well as searching for Katie’s fix every 24 hours. Chuck has tasked himself with exploring the entire city and rescuing as many survivors as possible and investigating and uncovering the source of the zombie outbreak.

For a hero on a strict schedule and responsibilities, Chuck sure does take his time around things from getting one place to another.

Playing the game you are constantly distracted by new weapons of using to eliminate your foes. The most enjoyable areas (with all of the zombies and weapons!) of the game are the shopping districts.

Where you will find the various different stores offering useful bits and pieces to shred, drill, stab, smoulder and burn all of your enemies. The map area is all suspiciously similar to the original Dead Rising, there is a central park surrounded by shopping districts, only this time there are some dull casinos added on.

For all intents and purposes, it's the same game from the original in a slightly different setting and without Frank West (main character from the first Dead Rising). It's a larger, but not longer story-line. And there are countless new weapons with which to polish off enemies.

The game still contains the same ancient graphics that you wouldn’t expect in a brand new sequel, and registering the difference between a light and a heavy hit is a cause for concern when wading through mountains of zombies.

Chuck rampages through the streets taking out zombies and rescuing survivors

Dead Rising 2’s claim to fame is the newly-implemented combo-weapons takethe chore of zombie slaying to the next level - the “Chainsaw Bike”, “Pitchfork Shotgun” and “Flaming Gloves” all pretty much speak for themselves.

If the first Dead Rising wasn’t for you, the Dead Rising 2 is unlikely to win you over in any way at all. But there are a little or less significant changes that do improve aspects from its predecessor.

The most notable will be the ability of saving in multiple slots in the new saving system. In the original Dead Rising, you were only given just the one save slot, which led to many gamers being forced to restart the entire game.

You'll possibly be forced to restart the game in Dead Rising 2 as well on the occasion of missing a helpless survivor, not having enough health to carry on through the game or just too beleaguered to put up with a certain level, but never down to erroneous saving. Saving the game on multiple slots will give you the benefit of choosing different save slots to gain the advantage over completing the game with ease.

There is perhaps one vital improvement from the first Dead Rising, and perhaps the most significant one, is the way saviours behave. When rushing through the district; no longer do the survivors stand surrounded by zombies as some kind of free salad bar.

In Dead Rising 2 they do now put up a bit of a fight.

Adding to the fun of the massacre of killing zombies by you there is the new co-op mode. There's no element of actual “co-operative” play, nothing that requires two players to strategically work through, it's just massacring as many zombies side by side. So too is the versus multiplayer feature mode.

The Dead Rising series is an odd one. There's a strange combination between restriction and fun, and I still feel they have a long way to go before they get the game absolutely perfect.

Failing in creating a new and unique storyline is just the start, just killing zombies isn't quite rewarding enough, while playing in the course of the story is a restrictive habit and the player then struggles to get the essence that they are playing a game than the game's structure may suggest it could be.

The balance of the game still hasn't been found yet; a few more tweaks and additions may be needed to make this series of legendary calibre. The Dead Rising series is taking its first steps towards the greatness that it really should have by now.

Dead Rising 2 offers the player very little more than the original, but what it does offer has largely been improved.