Dead Rising 2 Review

Dead Rising back in 2006 blew everyone's minds. So many people had wanted a game like this where they could just sit back and slay zombies with anything they could get there hands on. Dead Rising 2 is the newest installment in the franchise which allows fans to splatter some blood everywhere for another 72 hrs of fun.



Pros:
- Zombie hacking, slashing fun!
- Improves over the first one
- Psychopaths battles are great, though difficult

Cons:
- Core gameplay hasn't changed much
- Not as Memorable as the first story wise and wow factor wise
- Weapons usually only have one attack type and many feel the same or are useless
- graphics and animation are not great



Story

The story in dead rising 2 follows chuck green a retired stuntman and his young daughter who has been bitten by those nasty zombies. The game shows how chuck battles through the hordes of undead and psychopathic humans to get Zombrex, an anti-virus to delay people turning into zombies, but not stop it all together. It's up to chuck as a father to get zombrex for his daughter and prevent her from turning into one of the living dead herself. Chuck will have to play in a twisted reality game show where contestants have to kill zombies for cash, until the zombies break free and its up to chuck to not only fend for his daughter and other survivors, but also survive himself until help arrives. The storyline is cheesy and perfectly B-movie when the psychos start appearing, but this adds to the charm and does well enough to have to not just mutilating zombies for the hell of it. Sometimes moments get overly melodramatic but the characters and trying to find out what happens next will keep you playing. It isn't as memorable as the first dead risings great psychopaths and story that kept you guessing, but it does its job.

Gameplay

Dead Rising 2 is nearly identical to Dead Rising 1 in every way. The controls are the same and even the PP system is back. However there are some key differences. For one the photo taking is gone, instead are weapon combination's. At worktables in the virtual city of Las Vega- i mean fortune city, you can combine two items with duck tape to create an entirely new weapon. a motorcycle with chainsaws on the handlebars or a wheelchair with mini-guns attached are just a couple of the hundreds of variations. This also gives you combo cards and PP and really makes you want to explore to find all the combination's. Another change is that there is 3 save slots instead of the one from dead rising. This allows more flexible use of playing and staying away from the dreading menu screen which plagued dead rising 1, but it still is a problem as it works the same way as dead risings. A few more of just an outright save whenever option would have been better. The main hack and slash gameplay remains fun and can allow you hours of killing spree fun. The game is bigger and contains more than its predecessor, more weapons doesn't necessarily mean more variety. Like the first, most weapons aren't fun except for the obvious and a lot of them feel the same and usually have only one attack type (along with being able to throw it) which is disappointing but the combo weapons are good enough to resolve this. boss battles with psychopaths are as good as ever but the psychopaths are not as memorable as last years. They are a hell of a lot harder though. Each psychopath has unique fights where it can cause you to stare at the game over screen quite a few times before you get a strategy in place. There's also some vehicle sections but the driving controls aren't the best, its hard to control and jerky, also it's all to hard to crash and then take ages to get back into the game. The game also offers a rather nice multiplayer where players can take part in a variety of minigame style modes. This was a nice addition but it just doesn't feel right, it's good to slice up foes with a friend but dead rising just feels like a single player game and not a competitive multiplayer game. Overall, the game is very similar to dead rising but it's additions are enough to make it a true sequel.

Graphics

This is the weakest part of dead rising 2, From afar the game looks quite nice but up close it is pretty average. Character models of zombies are nicely detailed but survivors and environments aren't as pretty. Blocky textures and some bad animations hamper the looks. At a stretch I would even say dead rising one looks better. Still the blood and gore looks good and the game isn't horrid, just flawed, and the game is very big so its understandable that it wouldn't be the best around, but a bit more effort wouldn't have hurt. The games best point is how many zombies the game can put onscreen and still retain a decent frame rate. Overall, the game may not look great but is passable and damn can it put a lot of zombies onscreen.

In conclusion, Dead rising 2 is a nice sequel and has enough improvements that it surpasses its predecessor, but the games let down by little flaws such as a save system which still isn't as good as it should be and graphics which aren't up to today's standards. If your looking for some fresh new ways to kill the living impaired then pick up this sequel, if you weren't a fan of the first, I'd give it a miss as there's nothing changed to bring newcomer as most improvements are merely cosmetic.