My guest columnist Shane Underwood returns this week, with his take on seminal zombie slash-em-up Dead Rising 2. I thought it would make a nice counterpoint to my review, so grab your baseball bat and get swinging!
Greetings folks! I’m back with another review – this time the full game of Dead Rising 2.
Before I begin, I hope you all purchased a copy of Dead Rising: Case Zero. If not then you’ve missed out on a quick start to the game, because you can transfer all of your XP and stats from that game to this one.
Now let’s begin with the story.
If you’ve played Case Zero then you’ll have a brief understanding of what Dead Rising 2 is about, and if not then I suggest you get a copy (see my last review for details).
This game starts you off in Fortune City – the kind of place where if you’ve got the cash you can indulge yourself in just about every sort of pleasure.
Sadly this isn’t the case for our hero, Chuck Greene – he’s in the city to make some money for his daughter’s medication (see Case Zero again) and the only way he can do that is by taking part in a Fortune Citys reality game show – Terror Is Reality (TIR), and in this game to win big the contestants have to get messy killing (you guessed it) zombies. Lots of zombies.
Welcome to fabulous Fortune City
After a little excitement, Chuck finds himself in the middle of a zombie outbreak and has to find a safe place to take his daughter and hide.
Luckily theres a Goverment-funded fallout shelter built for such emergencies (did they see this coming or what?)
As for the outbreak, apparantly Chuck started it – so now your mission is to clear your name and find out who set you up.
Now, let’s jump into the gameplay.
I personaly find the game easy to pick up and play, because the controls are simple – there’s no need to press three buttons to do one move, it’s all single-button combat, so it’s easy for all you gamers out there who dont like complicated control movments.
You are given tutorials in the game, but they only appear when you find new things.
The loading screens are still a pain – like the first game and Case Zero, they take for ever to finish.
And, just like the original, there’s a ton of blood and gore and a neverending supply of zombies.
A typical day in Fortune City - forget to get dressed, then punch a zombie to death...
But it’s not all good news, because the game’s controls can sometimes be oversensitive – if you’re shaking a zombie off and start button-bashing you might accidentaly throw a weapon away or use a health item when it’s not needed.
Now let’s move on to the fun stuff – yes you can make new weapons in the game, and yes there’s alot of them.
Ever wonder what happens if you combine a hand grenade with an American football, or an electric wheelchair and a machine gun?
Let’s just say this: football + grenade = FUN.
Dead Rising 2 does have boss battles, but they’re not against super tough zombies, they’re against survivors who have gone crazy because they’ve lost the plot, but don’t worry, some of these battles are optinal – you dont have to fight them, but you might accidentaly stumble into one.
I hear you asking if this game has an online feature?
Yes it does – in fact you have two options: you can either join a co-op story and help someone complete their game, or you can play TIR.
TIR lets you play in 4 of the 9 games the show has to offer, like killing zombies by shooting bowling balls at them, or riding a motorbike with chainsaws on the handlebars into them.
Now for my final score.
Based on everything I’ve said and everything I’ve played, I give the game 8/10 – only because the game offers an online mode and the ability to play with freinds.
Now, if you’ll excuse me I must be off – there are a long queue of zombies waiting to see Dr baseball bat.
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