Dead Rising 2

Posted June 9, 2012 by Speed - 0 comments

Dead Rising 2 builds further on the foundations of the quite enjoyable first game. This means amongst other things that the story doesn’t matter much. Zombies are standard stuff and for Chuck Greene this means regularly giving his daughter a shot of Zombrex, a medicine that keeps his beloved one from going completely braindead. However, he quickly ends up in a bad situation where he not only has to score some Zombrex but also needs to survive in a Las Vegas look-a-like city swamped by zombies.

The makers luckily don’t take themselves too seriously. Characters are typical clichés but they do work in this game that for the largest part runs on humour. This isn’t only present in the cut-scenes, but also in the gameplay. You can dress Chuck up how you like and then keep yourself busy with combining all kinds of weapons with everyday objects to make original gear to slash zombies with. Fun is also that you constantly will be looking for combo carsd that show you the best combinations and how to use them.

To discover these combos you’ll need to finish missions and look around carefully. That way the game gets a nice balance between zombie slaying for fun and completing objectives and following the storylines. In other words: you can’t just bash heads for hours and hours. Each mission, including the main storyline about your daughter, has a beginning and an end time you’ll need to take into account.

If you don’t succeed before running out of time, your daughter dies or the side mission disappears to never return. The world does remain completely open but you do miss a large part of the game that way. Side missions are also fun to play, but in the end they end up all looking quite similar. Luckily the AI of the people you need to rescue has improved a lot so they won’t result in you prematurely losing your hair, and the beautifully worked out “boss fights” bring the necessary variation and surprises.

Just as in the first Dead Rising not everyone will love the save system. If your daughter dies and you don’t want to have that happen, you’ll have to start over completely. But don’t despair, you keep your level (and accompanying moves) so that replaying is actually quite fun as you can play the hooligan with a lot less stress. On top of that there’s so much to discover and explore that you almost have to play again a few times before you’ve tasted and enjoyed it all. And you can also do that in co-op.

Dead Rising 2 is worth checking out; there’s the humour that you can find back in the characters, the storyline, the bosses and most of all the combinable weapons, the original way of playing where getting killed sucks but also fun as you return more powerful, and of course the fact that you get to kill hundreds of zombies in very creative ways. Those looking for a fun game that you won’t grow tired of quickly will certainly find their thing with this sequel.

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