I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure.

Game number 14 was Dead Rising 2, a decent follow-up to the first game. The core gameplay in Dead Rising 2 hasn’t really changed here and the goal is once again to kill hordes of zombies in a mall with the random weapons you find lying around. While doing this, you need to discover why there is a zombie outbreak in the mall, save survivors, and kill psychopaths.

Once again, there is a timer and you get 3 days to do everything around the mall. There are events that take place at certain times and you can miss things if you do not get to an event in time. I really like the time management mechanic in the Dead Rising games. It helps create a sense of urgency and makes you feel like you need to make serious decisions when choosing missions to complete. Please do not let the timer prevent you from playing this game (or the first one).

New to Dead Rising 2 is crafting weapons. There are workstations set up around the mall and you can combine different weapons that you found around the place into stronger things. It is fun to try combining everything together and there are some truly awesome things to create… but let me tell you a little secret. There are 2 weapons you should have on your person at all times. The first is the spiked bat (combine nails and a baseball bat). The second are the knife gloves (combine bowie knife and boxing gloves). These two weapons can be made right at the start and are more than enough to get you through the entire game.

The story of this game is good, but not as intriguing as the first game. This time around, you get to play as Chuck Greene, a professional zombie killer from a tv gameshow (idk how to explain that better) who has been framed for starting a zombie outbreak in the mall. Your goal is to clear your name, as well as find zombrex to keep your daughter from turning into a zombie. I like Chuck more than most people seem to, but I'll admit that he’s no Frank West. Overall, the story is pretty good.

One thing I need to discuss about this game is that it seemed much, much easier than Dead Rising 1. This is in every aspect. The psychopath fights didn’t seem as difficult, the zombies didn’t attack my followers as much, and I had more than enough time to complete almost all the quests. I wished that the game was slightly more difficult, but I also appreciated the follower AI being much smarter here than the first game. I think that change may have had the biggest effect on me.

Overall, I think Dead Rising 2 is a great time and I personally like to think of the Dead Rising series as just this game and the first one (3 and 4 suck). Please play these games if you haven’t before. 7/10

I spent 12:06:19 playing Dead Rising 2, for a total of 169 hours and 35 min on the Road to 360 project so far.

Next Game: Mass Effect 2

Dead Rising 2 is a perfect Sequel. Every issue that surrounded Dead Rising 1 was fixed in this game. The main issue in DR1 was a half-baked villain that was shoved at the end of the game, and the ending felt really unsatisfied, that felt rushed. Thankfully the Dev's for DR2 took their time and give the Villians in this game a proper character arc, and a motivation arc that is easy to understand that made sense in the world of Dead Rising. The pacing and structure of the story in DR2 were constructed perfectly. The game had a natural flow and a proper conclusion.

In Dead Rising 2 Case Zero I mentioned that Chuck was a better Main Character than Frank West. After completing the DR2 main game, I still believe that Chuck is the better chacter. The father and Daughter dynamic felt pure and realistic. Chuck's previous life before the zombie Outbreak has a purpose to the main plot of the game. The way he interacts with the cast in DR2 felt more organic and had a proper flow. Everything was done right to make a strong main character.

The new implementation of the combo weapons system was done brilliantly. It helped create many unique and interesting ideas of new weapons to use against the zombies. Plus giving 2X PP for every zombie kill was a nice feature. Plus I loved they implemented a poker system in the game. It helped pass the time when I had to wait for the next case to unlock.

Having the DR2 setting based in Vegas was such a great idea. Vegas felt alive, with all the casinos, flashy neon colors, stadiums, malls, and the dirty adult entertainment business. This is how you build a game world!

The Devs didn't disappoint with the Psycotpaths. They managed to find a way to improve upon the first game. Their motivations felt realistic based on the game setting in Vegas. Their deaths were massively improved and made sense ad realistic. Plus the Soundtrack was also improved also.

As for the downsides for DR2.

There's None!

Go Play Dead Rising 2! It's totally worth it.

Final Verdict

4.6 / 5

Dead Rising 2, for PC

Rating: 6.2/10: Above average

Not recommended unless you either: A) Like/tolerate time limits and time management, or B) Will mod the time limits

Dead Rising 2 is a third person action game with controls similar to the old school Grand Theft Auto games (3 and Vice City), though with minimal driving. Now if you don’t know, GTA is geared more towards driving than being on foot, so Dead Rising 2 is already on a bad foot for having clunky less-than-ideal controls. Melee combat forces you to stand in place while the attack animation plays out and it is difficult to determine when and how you should attack. Should you time your attacks, or mash the button? Move away to get some distance, or keep going with the forward momentum? It is hard to tell because the zombies seem to hit and grab you randomly. Are there invincibility frames where you are immune to zombie damage? I can’t tell. It is an annoying and frustrating combat system with little thought or tactics involved (the shooting is ok though). It is made even worse by quick time events to get out of grapples, which randomly choose nonsense input such as waggling the mouse or pressing WSAD.

Frustration and annoyance seems to be the ultimate goal of this game, because nearly everything is designed for that. Looming over it all are the hard time limits; time management is a critical feature of the game. There is a long term countdown until the game ends, though it is reasonably long and not much of a problem (except how every time you zone the timer takes up a large part of the screen for several seconds, nearly blinding you and making shooting nearly impossible). There is another timer for giving your daughter medicine, which has to happen at a specific time every day. It is annoying, though not a huge deal. I understand why it is important to the main character, though I do not see why he can’t give the medicine to one of the other survivors to give to the daughter, even if just as a precaution in case he could not make it back in time. The worst time limits are attached to each mission. All of them (including side missions) have a bar which goes down with time. It seemed to me like the first 25% of the bar went down slowly, and then after that it started going down faster, giving a false illusion of time. If you fail a main mission, then your current playthrough is pretty much ruined and you will have to try again on newgame+. I have heard that the game is designed to encourage multiple playthroughs by making it likely that a player will fail on the first time. That is bad game design.

I spent the entire game rushing around and being annoyed. Failing a side mission is not a big deal, but the false illusion of time can screw you over if you decide to try and get a couple side quests done before starting the next main mission. The entire game then becomes about scumming the clock as much as possible. Exploration? No screw that, you have a deadline to meet. Killing zombies? No, just run past them. Stopping to fight not only uses up time, but you will almost always take more damage than if you had just run/jump/roll whatever past them. Every time a zombie grabs you, it becomes an annoyance because of the extra time taken to deal with it, and stopping to fight tends to snowball into larger battles because of the inability to move and attack at the same time. As much as I disliked rushing past the zombies though, I will say that it created some very tense moments as you try not to die, or at least get through with enough health to complete your objective; especially late game and at night when the zombies are harder.

Side missions are mostly escorts, where you must perform some kind of task for a survivor, and then bring them to base. The tasks are somewhat varied, though are mostly fetch quests. As a bonus you can give them weapons (and healing items to heal them), and they can handle themselves reasonably well in combat. You can even take them to help against bosses, and possibly also main missions (I never tried), though you have to balance that with their permadeath and losing out on the rewards for getting them to base. Keeping them alive by running past zombies is not too hard (except during late game), though you will have to rescue them from grabs. The biggest problem though is friendly fire, especially if you use sweeping melee weapons. If you are not extremely careful, you will end up with them dead or hostile. The story missions are a bit more varied and action oriented.

Bosses are a major part of the game, both side and story. They are very difficult and annoying because of their massive health levels. While zombies most often die from a single headshot from any gun or a few melee strikes, the bosses take ridiculous amounts of punishment. Some even have invincibility frames on top of that, not to mention that their health and damage output greatly exceeds your own. Combine this with the silly nature of most bosses (some of them should have no combat ability whatsoever), frequent knockdown from their attacks, limited durability/ammo for weapons and the random nature of learning new moves when leveling up; bosses are frustrating, though they can be beaten with enough practice and preparation.

The best part of this game is the fact that you can use almost everything in the environment as a weapon; cash registers, benches, garbage cans etc. The very limited weapon durability and limited inventory mean that you will have to use these improvised weapons to defeat any significant number of zombies. The most fun in this game is in trying to clear out an area, and these kinds of tools you will have to use to do it. It is also cool that you can combine 2 items into a more powerful weapon, even though some make no sense (boxing gloves + flaming oil is a good idea? How about making an unwieldy sledgehammer even more unwieldy by combining it with an axe? And so on).

Time limits, escort quests and quick time events. While the game does have plenty of good features and fun, these 3 mechanics seriously drag the game down to the point where it becomes a niche game. I never tried the multiplayer.

Pro

• Good story, characters, dialogue, voice acting
• Side multiplayer mode that gives benefits for singleplayer
• Newgame+
• Almost every boss has unique abilities not found anywhere else
• Map shows names of stores and types of products they sell, so it is easy to find weapons and health
• Can change clothing, which shows up in cutscenes
• Almost every object can be picked up and used as a weapon, as well as thrown as a weapon
• Can combine weapons and healing items for more powerful versions
• Good gore, especially how powerful bladed weapons (like swords) can cut zombies in half from head to groin
• Progression by way of leveling up, and learning new combat moves
• Interesting locations
• Npc followers can handle themselves, and can be given items and weapons
• Variety of endings, and you can keep playing if you screw something up (such as let your daughter die)

Con

• Time limits; for overall game, for each mission and having to get your girl zombrex each day by a certain time. Too much rushing
• Can’t give zombrex to other npcs to give to daughter
• Quick time events to get out of zombie grabs; shaking the mouse back and forth is especially bad because it messes up the camera
• No control list (except for special combat moves)
• No changing keybindings
• View map button does not close the map, so you have to press 2 different buttons to check the map
• No mini map or compass; navigation is a pain
• Map sometimes opens off in the corner, showing nothing useful
• Controls and menus are optimized for console, not PC
• Time limit takes up a large part of the center screen every time you zone
• Mission to save the safe house has extremely short time limit and is pretty much impossible on the first try (unless I missed something)
• Level up improvements are random, including when you learn the important dodge roll
• Switching weapons/items is slow; 2 buttons to cycle through the list with no ability to use a selection wheel, pause, or different button for each slot
• Makes poor decisions for what weapon to automatically switch to when current breaks
• Clunky combat; pressing attack locks you into an attack animation. You are not able to do a quick hit while on the move, or any kind of running charge. No blocking
• Save points (though they are the coolest save points I have ever seen; bathrooms)
• Bosses have way too much health and guns do far too little damage to them
• Some bosses are too silly and should not be able to handle zombies, let alone fight other people. Others (such as the hunters, soldier and security guard) should arguably be better at combat than the player and easily kill the player
• Enemies do absurdly low damage to the player when using guns; getting shot is not a big deal
• No gameplay benefits for clothing (such as damage reduction or carrying capacity)
• Most weapons are far too fragile compared to reality
• Some weapons are too heavy and/or bulky to realistically be used by even a strong person
• Annoying special attacks that change the camera orientation in a mini cutscene
• Special attacks are done by holding right click, while normal attack is right click. It is far too easy to accidentally perform the one you did not want
• Special attack for spear is a throw (you can already throw at any time!), which makes this a lousy weapon because you will often accidentally throw it in melee combat
• Some large weapons (like chainsaw) are dropped if you take a hit or jump down from height
• Hard to pick up the item you want when multiple items are close together
• Loading screens take too long
• Zombies (and items) respawn every time you zone. This breaks immersion and gives even less reason to kill the zombies
• Too easy to simply run past zombies, especially while carrying someone
• No penalty for being bitten other than simple health loss. Why doesn’t Chuck need zombrex?
• Loading a save respawns zombies and items, and more importantly wipes any items or vehicles that were on the ground
• Story aspect relating to when the military arrives is bad
• Time does not stop while talking to side npcs, and you have to skip dialogue multiple times before they finish talking and you can proceed
• Most side missions are fetch quests leading to escort quests
• Melee friendly fire, which encourages running past zombies even more, and can be a problem if you have multiple followers and have to get one out of a grab

Dead Rising osoittautui suureksi menestykseksi Xbox 360:llä, joten ei ole ihme, että jatkoa seurasi. Rauta oli kuumaa jne jne. Jatko-osaksi muodostui mielikuvituksellisesti nimetty Dead Rising 2.

Dead Rising 2 on siitä hyvä jatko-osa, että se korjaa ja hioo montaa edeltäjänsä rosoa. Isoin parannus on se, että pelastettavat ihmiset eivät ole täysin aivottomia, vaan monesti seuraavat aika kiltisti. Monesti, mutta ei aina: edelleenkin mukana on raivostuttavia tuskanhetkiä pelastettavia paimentaessa. Tekoälyn parantamisen lisäksi tallennuspaikkoja on paljon enemmän ja etenkin pelastettavista ja tarinan tapahtumista tiedottava radiopuhelin toimii huomattavasti sulavammin. Kontrollitkin ovat periaatteessa helpommat ja sulavammat tällä kertaa (miinus saatanallinen määrä raivostuttavia QTE:tä), vaikka pelituntuma tuntuu aluksi nihkeällä tavalla erilaiselta kuin ensimmäisessä osassa. Miljöönä toimiva kauppakeskus on myös nyt paljon isompi. Joskin tästä syystä se on kanssa sekavampi ja vaikeammin hahmotettava.

Isoin uudistus edeltäjään nähden lienee kuitenkin ns. "komboaseet". Pelaaja voi kauppakeskukseen ripotelluissa työpajoissa yhdistää kaksi esinettä toisiinsa jonkin levottoman astalon aikaansaamiseksi. Kaikkia esineitä ei kuitenkaan voi yhdistää, mutta mahdollisista kombinaatioista saa reseptikortteja joko levuttamalla, vapaaehtoisia bosseja voittamalla tai toimintaleffajulisteita pällistelemällä. Aluksi vain yksi komboase (nauloilla ehostettu pesari) tuntui tarpeeksi helpolta kasata, mutta loppupuolella käteen tarttui useampaakin erilaista yhdistelmää. Hauska lisä peliin eittämättä.

Siinä missä pelattavuutta on paranneltu ja piristetty, meno on muutoin latteampaa. Musiikit ja ääninäyttelyt seuraavat aika paljon ensimmäisen pelin sapluunaa, joskin vähemmän muistettavina. Grafiikat ovat periaatteessa paremmat, mutta ruudulla on vähän väliä outoja värifilttereitä, joiden merkitystä en lopultakaan tajunnut. Mitä tarinaan tulee, övereissä psykopaatti-bosseissa on valonpilkahduksia ja huumoriarvoa, mutta muuten narratiivi on melko kämäistä katsottavaa. Ei tarina huono ole, mutta uusi päähenkilö Chuck on tylsä luotsi tämän seuraamiseen ja muutkaan hahmot eivät kiinnosta samalla tavalla kuin ensimmäisen pelin hahmokaarti onnistui tekemään. Peli tekee myös monta asiaa samalla tavalla kuin ensimmäinen osa, oli niissä järkeä tai ei. Esimerkiksi myös tässä pelissä on aikaraja, jonka aikana tarinan Suuri Totuus paljastuu ja jonka jälkeen tulee vielä lyhyempi pelattava Overtime-epilogi. Overtime tuntui Dead Rising 2:ssa todella päälleliimatulta. Oli se osittain ontuva kyllä ensimmäisessäkin osassa.

Pelin tekijöillä tuntuu myös olleen kulli kovana koko pelin kehityksen aikana: pelissä on outo seksuaalissävytteinen viba monessa kohtaa. Pienempi ilmentymä tästä on se, miten kauppakeskus on täynnä playboy-mainoksia tai muita rintavarustusta esitteleviä kuvia. Selkeästi pahempia ilmentymiä ovat pelin naishahmot. Esimerkiksi yksi tarinan keskeisimmistä hahmoista, lahopäisesti flirttaileva journalisti Rebecca, tuntuu olleen tekijöille kätevä tapa tyrkyttää tissejä pelaajalle cutsceneissä. On pelissä myös neitsyenä kuolemista pelkäävä psykopaatti ja pelastettavia "maksullisia naisia", jotka vitsikkäästi paljastuvatkin henkivartijoiksi. Ja dominatrix-asuun pukeutunut laulajarouva, joka lähinnä voihkii kaikki dialoginsa. Ja dildo aseena.

On harmi, että vaikka Dead Rising 2 tekee monta asiaa paremmin kuin isoveljensä, se tekee monta asiaa myös huonommin. Kyllä pelin parissa silti ihan hauskaa oli, mutta mitä pidemmälle peli venyi, sitä kyynisemmäksi pelaaja muuttui.

Pelistä on tehty myös ns. uudelleenfilmatisointi, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, jossa päähenkilöksi on vaihdettu Frank West ja peliin on tuotu muutamia QoL parannuksia sekä omaan tahtiin pelleilyyn perustuva Sandbox-pelimoodi. Tätäkin tuli jo testattua, mutta voi olla, että sen pelaaminen jää myöhemmälle.