Review: Dead Rising 2

Dead Rising 2 is a sandbox game for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. It was developed by Capcom and Blue Castle Games.

Chuck Greene fighting through a crowd of zombies. The right side shows what mission the arrow at the top is pointing Chuck towards, and the bar under it shows how much time Chuck has to complete it.

In a world where zombies exist, Chuck Greene is a participant in a zombie killing game show “Terror is Reality”, broadcast from Fortune City, so he can afford medicine for his daughter Katey. After Chuck’s latest appearance on the show, the “Terror is Reality’s” cache of zombies is released and overruns the Fortune City, trapping Chuck, Katey, and several other survivors within the city. Chuck, who has been framed for the zombie outbreak, has to find evidence to prove his innocent, rescue as many survivors as possible, and find medicine for Katey so she does not turn into a zombie before the military arrives in three days.

Fortune City is a combination of a large shopping mall mixed with Las Vegas style casinos. From his safe house in the northwest corner of Fortune City, Chuck has to venture out and rescue people spotted by Stacey, who is manning the security cameras, or investigate places that have evidence to clear his name. But Fortune City is packed with zombies, so Chuck has to fight through them using any objects he can get his hands on.

A big draw of the game is that Chuck can use anything that is not nailed down to kill zombies. Food trays from the cafeteria, golf clubs from the sports store, computer monitors, giant teddy bears, lead pipes, park benches, CDs, the game has a ton of ranged and melee weapons Chuck can weaponize. Chuck can initially hold up to four items in his inventory, but his inventory space increases as the game progresses.

For the zombies, their strength lies in numbers. There are usually hundreds on screen, but only the ones near Chuck will attack him. Individual zombies are easy to kill; even groups are not that difficult to deal with. The only real danger is getting impatient with picking the zombies off safely and trying to wade through the crowds. At that point a zombie will probably grab Chuck, but whether or not a zombie actually does is a matter of chance. Sometimes Chuck can run through without a problem, sometimes he will be attacked repeatedly, but the chances of him getting attack go up the longer he is in a crowd.

Another big selling point is that Chuck can combine certain items together to create stronger weapons. Chuck gets combo cards that tell the player which items Chuck needs to collect. Then Chuck can bring those two items to a workbench and combine them to create a combo weapon. Combo weapons are stronger, or just kill zombies in ludicrously violent ways. Two combo weapons that are available early on are a bat with a bunch of nails in it, and a bucket with a bunch of drills in it. The bat is useful for taking out a bunch of enemies at once; the bucket only takes out one, but is entertaining to watch Chuck put one on a zombie’s head.

The bulk of the game is spent going after the people Stacey spots on her cameras. There are two kinds of people for Chuck to find: survivors who need to be brought back to the safe house, and psychopaths who need to be killed. The player normally does not know which one it is going to be until Chuck gets there.

For the survivors Chuck needs to rescue, normally Chuck just has to talk to them to get them to follow Chuck back to the safe house. Most of the survivors are unarmed, but Chuck can give them a weapon to defend themselves. The artificial intelligence for the survivors is decent; they can fend off most zombies with little problems and can follow Chuck closely. Survivors can get annoying though when they want something from Chuck before they will move, like money, or an item.

While the player can technically avoid saving people and focus only on the main missions, it is not advisable to do since, because rescuing people nets Prestige Points. When Chuck gets enough Prestige Points he will level up. Leveling up benefits Chuck in a number of ways, it increases his life, makes him faster, stronger, and lets him carry more items.

For the psychopaths, they have tons of health and powerful attacks that can quickly destroy Chuck. Killing psychopaths also earn the player Prestige Points.

Fighting psychopaths is a pain. Most of them have way too much health, move too fast, and do not react to Chuck attacking them. So while the player is trying to whittle down the psychopath’s health, the psychopaths are tossing Chuck around and being generally unstoppable. A few of the can be stunned by certain weapons, but there’s no indication as to what works on them.

Main missions tend to involve Chuck going to someplace and then fighting stronger enemies and maybe a psychopath. They are not much different from regular missions, except that they happen at specific times.

A special type of main mission is finding medicine for Katey and delivering it to her every morning. The medicine, Zombrex, is hard to find, but not too hard. Some of the survivors carry it, and it can be bought at a couple of stores.

The military will arrive in three days, so the player is on a strict time limit. While three days is plenty of time to get the name-clearing missions done, it is not enough time to do that and rescue or kill all the people Stacey finds. All the missions have a strict time limit to complete, and if the player does not complete a main mission they have to reload or restart the game.

If Dead Rising 2 has one problem, it is that the developers tried really hard to make the game inconvenient and not allow the players to enjoy the setting. The time limit is strict, and does not allow the player to explore and mess around in Fortune City. And with the only entrance to the safehouse being in the northwest corner, by the end of the game the player will have only seen at most half of the city. The survivors and psychopaths are found all over Fortune City, but thanks to the time limit the player will want to get in and out quickly without seeing anything.

The combo weapon system has problems too. A lot of the weapons really are impractical, no matter how cool they are. And a lot of the parts needed for items are in out of the way places, as are the workbenches. That, plus the limited space and Chuck’s inventory makes it really not worth the time to find items needed for combo weapons.

The player saves by going to the bathrooms around the city. There are not enough bathrooms to be convenient, leading to more precious being wasted.

The storyline and characters are not bad, but they are not great. Chuck cool if a bit two dimensional. The rest of the cast are not outstanding except for a couple of the psychopaths Chuck meets who are cartoonish, and the main villains, whose dickishness and extreme dislike of Chuck are almost laughable. The story has shades of anti-Americanism in it, but not the point of getting annoying.

Dead Rising 2 also comes with a series of mini-games that player can play online with three other people. The player competes in four mini-games that award points for how well the player does. There are games like running over zombies with a Zamboni and shooting their blood into a giant zombie mask, or running down zombies with a motorcycle. The player gets money based on how well they do, which can then be spent on weapons in game. The mini-games are fun, and anyone can pick them up and master them, so the playing field cannot be dominated by someone who has been playing them too much.

Dead Rising 2 is a solid premise, but has several faults that keep it from full taking advantage of its own potential. People playing it will have fun, but will be disappointed that they cannot do more.