Xbox 360 review: Dead Rising 2

Set five years after the original game, Dead Rising 2 takes place in Fortune City, an American west casino town that effectively behaves as a baby brother to Las Vegas. Chuck Greene, former motocross champ, has found himself participating in Terror is Reality, a stadium game show based around the premise of having four competitors slaughter hordes of zombies for cash prizes. Not long after Chuck’s run, the otherwise safely-contained zombies break loose and quickly spread out from the arena into the rest of Fortune City. Fearing for the safety of his daughter Katey, Chuck heads off to find her and, once reunited with her, makes his way to a safehouse with a handful of other survivors. While the group should be able to rest easy knowing that rescue will arrive in three days and that the shelter is secure, Chuck has to provide Katey with a constant supply of Zombrex, as she was bitten once before but never turned into one of the undead. To compound the situation, Chuck learns that someone has framed him for setting the zombies loose, and so in order to earn the trust of the other safehouse survivors and clear his name, he must venture out into Fortune City to figure out just who is trying to blame him for the outbreak and why.

Dead Rising 2 utilizes the same basic engine as the first game, offering up a third-person perspective for the bulk of Chuck’s running, fighting, crafting weapons, and changing outfits. With firearms, flamethrowers and the like, the camera can zoom in temporarily to allow Chuck more precise aim, which comes in most handy when engaging survivors who have mentally gone off the deep end in some of the game’s boss fights. These ‘boss’ characters are little more than a typical survivor model with a potentially larger health bar and, occasionally, some special tactic or another. In the case of a schedule-obsessed postman, his attack patterns involve both a shotgun and some time bombs that he hurls at Chuck. With a guy dressed as children’s store mascot Slappy, it’s a combination of speedy roller skates and flamethrowers, making an up-close-and-personal approach less than ideal. While these psychopaths are all aesthetically unique, their personalities are effectively the same – the zombies hit, they were shell-shocked, and thus took their roles way too seriously; so seriously that they would rather kill Chuck than give up their routine, no matter how trivial or misguided it might be post-outbreak.

It is immediately apparent how much better Dead Rising 2 plays than its predecessor. Zombies are not as prone to grabbing onto Chuck or his allies and devouring their health, while practical weapons like a spiked baseball bat or sledgehammer will keep the infected at bay long enough for Chuck to complete his first few introductory tasks. The save system sees the biggest improvement by far, allowing players to save their game at any bathroom stall at any point, regardless of what weapons they have on hand, how many survivors are travelling with them, etc. Collecting Zombrex for Katey can be handled through a few different means – Chuck can save up money to buy it from pawn shops located around Fortune City, or he can take on certain missions that will detail Zombrex as a reward before he commits himself to aiding a survivor who is willing to help Chuck out in turn. Making sure Chuck has Zombrex on hand once per day is not so much a challenge due to any explicit difficulty factor, but instead requires planning and strategy on part of the player, as they must find time to divert their attention to finding the Zombrex as well as administering it to Katey at a specific time each day.

As far as the weapons at Chuck’s disposal are concerned, there are typical blunt objects like the aforementioned bat and hammer, elusive firearms including pistols and shotguns, and well as heavy hitters with a more limited range of use like flowerpots, signs, and giant teddy bears. Mowing down crowds of infected with putt-putt speed golf carts or more literally with a lawnmower provides a good chuckle from time to time, but the real winners are also the most rewarding with regards to boosting Chuck’s experience points – those weapons being all the special combo ones. The most fun and admittedly funny moments come from Chuck’s use of the Paddlesaw (two chainsaws attached to opposite ends of a kayak paddle), Electric Rake (a leaf rake with a car battery strapped to it, emitting a jolt from the metal teeth), Rocket Launcher (a series of metal pipes that fire bottle rockets out in gatling gun fashion), and the Knife Gloves (boxing gloves with knives protruding from the knuckles). A few other combo weapons are one-time uses and are intended to quickly clear a large area, and can thus prove useful when escorting large groups. Meanwhile, the construction helmet with beer bottles strapped to either side – aptly title the ‘Beer Hat’ – allows Chuck to refill his health bar on the go, and can be extremely helpful during the game’s handful of boss fights, some of which are sprung on players without much warning. However, it’s best not to rely too heavily on alcohol in order to refill Chuck’s health bar, as too much booze and no food will make him throw up.

Gaining experience points will merit Chuck new levels, which in turn grant him bonuses like more slots in his inventory and a larger health bar. Experience points are earned at a very gradual pace when killing zombies, while escorting survivors will net Chuck large bonuses. While the main story is consistent regardless of how many times you replay Dead Rising 2, you are granted complete freedom with regards to which psychopaths you decide to fight and which survivors you opt to bring back to the safehouse. Saving certain characters will open the door to further missions, as well as trivial distractions like a game of poker.

Online multiplayer sees four players compete to earn the highest score in the Terror is Reality game show that Chuck competes in during the single-player game’s intro sequence. The main event of this multiplayer mode is Slicecycles, wherein players hack up hordes of infected via chainsaws attached to motocross bikes, while the rest of the games include the likes of a target shooting range, strapping dynamite helmets to zombies and hitting a button to make them explode, a tag-like match with players running inside of giant hamster balls, and so on. In essence, these feel like some bloody, M-rated equivalents of Mario Party games, though they certainly lack the spirit and fun-factor of Nintendo’s board game video game. The Terror is Reality minigames are no doubt inspired, and arguably one of the most creative multiplayer modes to grace any zombie game, but the entire mode feels like a brief afterthought tacked onto the end of the main star, the single-player story mode.

Sure, most of the characters Chuck encounters during his days in Fortune City are more caricatures than fully realized characters, but that’s part of Dead Rising’s charm. What Resident Evil is intended to be to serious and dark zombie games, Dead Rising is to a 70s and 80s B-movie presentation. It’s not a game that is meant to be taken too seriously – in fact, Dead Rising and its sequel do more than their fair share of poking fun at tropes within the zombie subgenre of films and video games. While it is unfortunate that Katey and Chuck’s relationship falls to the wayside and isn’t explored in any real meaningful way like it was in Case Zero, Dead Rising 2 is more about gameplay than storytelling. Know that while Chuck will spend most of his time hacking, slashing, blowing up, and setting fire to a sea of undead, you - the player - will have a riot in controlling him to do so.

My rating: 8.25 (out of 10)

XBLA review: Dead Rising 2: Case Zero

Chuck Greene and his daughter Katey are on their way to Fortune City when they make a stop in the small town of Still Creek. Host to a typical set of small storefronts, ma and pa restaurants, and a few means of local entertainment, Still Creek spans just over a block’s distance, with a small quarantine zone blocking off the highway. As Chuck steps inside the gas station store to look for supplies, someone hijacks his pickup, taking his much-needed supply of Zombex for Katey along with them. The fact of the matter is that Katey was bitten and infected, but Chuck has thus far prevented her from turning into a zombie by giving her regimens of Zombex medicine – without it, she runs the risk of turning into one of those bloodthirsty creatures, and Chuck runs the risk of losing the one person he still has to hold onto and care for.

Luckily, tracking down a new box of Zombex is the easy task. Chuck’s initial trek outside of the gas station/scrap yard safehouse has him push through a thick horde of infected into the quarantine zone just outside the other end of town. Once he’s nabbed the Zombex, his focus shifts to restoring a motorbike, the pieces for which are scattered about Still Creek’s handful of businesses. Some are already in the possession of other local survivors and can be acquired for money or taken by force, while others require Chuck to scour the interior of some of the larger buildings and access otherwise locked rooms.

There are a little more than a half-dozen survivors that Chuck can choose to aid at his leisure. Some will give him money for his troubles, while others simply reward him with a boost in experience points. As Case Zero lasts approximately an hour and a half for a single playthrough, this may seem a daunting task, but most of these rescue scenarios allow Chuck to easily string multiple survivors along at once, drastically reducing travel time back and forth.

Much like with the full Dead Rising 2 experience, Chuck can craft new, more powerful weapons out of the various tools and firearms he finds lying around Still Creek. This portion of the experience is nowhere near as in-depth as in the main game, but Chuck can still access some of the more entertaining weapons like the Electric Rake, Paddlesaw, and the tried-but-true Spiked Bat. Still, easier-to-locate weapons like the Broadsword and Moose Head can prove just as much fun to use when slicing and dicing the infected or simply mowing them over with brute force.

The only segment where the gameplay becomes notably weaker is during the final minutes when Chuck and Katey make their escape run on the recently-repaired motorbike. It doesn’t control terribly well, and requires you to slow down significantly if you want to make even wide turns through the streets, effectively killing the high that one would expect of an ‘escape run’ scene. However, the rest of this prologue to Dead Rising 2 operates well enough. The other characters are a mildly interesting bunch, and do not share more dialogue than necessary due to the in-game time limit tied to Chuck’s to-do list. There’s a nice sampling of the larger gameplay offered by Dead Rising 2 throughout, and a lot of what constitutes Chuck and Katey’s dynamic shines through in fairly convincing, if not brief, interactions between the two. As for the replay value, it is centered primarily on unlocking 100% of the achievements tied to Case Zero, and a second or third playthrough won't offer anything beyond stacking Chuck's experience points until they cap out at level five.

My rating: 7 (out of 10)*

*(rating applies solely to downloadable content, not its inclusion with the content on the original game disc or other downloadable content)