Dead Rising 2 may look like more of the same, but there's enough great content to keep you playing for hours on end
Dead Rising 2 follows motocross champion Chuck Green. The game opens up with Chuck in the newly renovated Fortune City, participating in a TV reality show called "Terror is Reality". Terror is Reality is a reality TV show that started up a few years after the first zombie outbreak, and has people competing by killing zombies. The main reason Chuck is doing this is so he can get some money to buy Zombrex to keep his daughter Katey, whose been infected by the zombie disease, from turning into one herself.
It isn't long until someone decides to let the zombies loose, and Fortune City is overrun. Chuck barley escapes to safety along with his daughter. Chuck soon discovers that not only is rescue not coming for three days, but he's been framed as the person behind the zombie outbreak. Chuck now has to survive for three days while finding Zombrex for Katey every twenty four hours, and prove he's innocent by finding out who's really behind it all.
Chuck is a really likable character, and the story actually does get pretty interesting. But the story isn't what makes this game so great. Dead Rising 2 features the same kill zombies with anything you can find gameplay, and it hasn't lost its charm. You can use everything from a chainsaw to a tricycle to kill your way through the zombies, and it's a blast!
One of the most notable changes to Dead Rising 2 is that you can now combine two weapons together, to make it more powerful. These are all preset combinations, but that doesn't take away from the fun. For example you can combine a pitchfork with a shotgun, so you stab the zombie with the pitchfork, and finish it off with the shotgun. There are many different combinations, and all of them are so much fun to use.
There are a lot of side missions in Dead Rising 2, and a lot of them have you rescuing survivors. The survivors are stranded all over the mall, and if you want to save them, you'll have to escort them back to the safe house. But unlike the first Dead Rising, survivors are much more capable of actually surviving without you constantly saving them, which makes escorting survivors much more rewarding, and less frustrating.
It isn't easy to get to all these survivors. Dead Rising 2 has many boss battles, which are called psychopaths. Psychopaths are human survivors that have lost their mind, and reinforce one of the main themes of the Dead Rising games, humans are worse than zombies. The psychopath boss fights are really challenging, and makes the game's clunky controls more noticeable. Everything surrounding the boss fights is excellent. Each psychopath has a creepy back-story, which makes the fights feel more intense. The boss fights are vary hard, but this just makes it more satisfying when you finally take them down. And to top it all off, each boss has a gruesome and hilarious death sequence.
One of the other things that make both Dead Rising games unique is its real time structure. With everything you do in Dead Rising 2, actual game time is passing. You have a set amount of time to do everything. Each mission has a time limit, and if you don't get to it in time the mission just passes, and it's gone. You can technically play the whole game without doing any missions. There are multiple endings that can only be seen by skipping certain missions. An improvement to this system is there are now multiple save slots, so if you mess up one save, you can just load back to another. You can also still start the game over at any time while keeping your current level, move set, and prestige points. This structure keeps things feeling intense and keeps the game moving.
Another improvement to Dead Rising 2 is the introduction of cooperative play. You can now have someone join your game. There's not a whole lot to cooperative play, but it's a whole lot of fun to fight zombies and psychopaths along with a friend. This can also make some of the more frustrating boss fights much easier. The player who joins the game doesn't get story progress, but they do get to keep the prestige points and money they earn while playing.
Along with the cooperative multiplayer, there is also competitive multiplayer for up to four players. The competitive multiplayer takes the form of the zombie killing game show from the story Terror is Reality. You compete by killing zombies in different way, and whoever kills the most each round wins. The competitive multiplayer just feels like a small mini game collection, and doesn't have a lot of depth to it. It ends up becoming boring really fast. But you do earn money that you can carry into back into single player.
Dead Rising 2 captures everything that was great about the original, and more. This is a great game, with lots of re-play value. Those who were turned off by the time structure and the clunky controls probably won't enjoy this game. But if you did, you are in for a hell of a time. Dead Rising 2 is a blast, and a great sequel to one of the most original games of this generation.