After four long years of waiting, there is finally some new Dead Rising fun to be had!
First of all, this game could easily be called a demo you have to pay for if you are the cynical type. But for those willing to dig in to this one, it's a full arcade title with an original storyline, achievements, and multiple endings to encourage the kind of replayability the first game excelled at.
It has to be said that the first DR was not without it's faults. Some people loathed the save system, people with Standard Def televisions couldn't read the text based messages that often had useful info, and the survivors you had to rescue were as thick as cement slabs with no survival instincts. With a list of complaints like that, Capcom could have approached the sequel with an agenda to "fix" everything and ended up making a game that didn't even resemble its predecessor. Thankfully they didn't do this. There are minor improvements to the save system (now allowing you 3 slots to save your game), the text is larger and easier to read so those who are still using older televisions hopefully won't have any issues, and survivor A.I. is better but not perfect, just the way they should be. People, afterall, are panicky nutjobs when threatened with life or death situations and if you make survivors too good at surviving it makes them not really seem like they need your help to begin with. Beyond that there are only minor tweaks to the controls. This game still feels like Dead Rising. Whether or not that is a good thing depends on the player. (for me personally, it's exactly what I was wanting)
DR:CZ is a nice chunk of game for a very reasonable price. If you liked the first game, you will like Case Zero and probably the upcoming DR2. And for only $5 it is definitely worth taking the time to try out if you are a newcomer to this franchise.