Review: Dead Rising 2

When developing Dead Rising 2, Blue Castle Games walked a fine line between merely taking away a few broken parts of Dead Rising, and completely dismembering it. If they’d gone too far, its sequel might’ve collapsed, with various detached parts twitching on the ground in a bloody, unplayable mess. If they didn’t go far enough, cries of cash in, safe sequel or soulless continuation would’ve been shouted.

In the eyes of many, it was destined to fail. Blue Castle would be damned if they tore the original to shreds, and damned if they didn’t.

Surprisingly, they’ve proven everyone wrong.

Dead Rising 2 gets a great balance between shedding some of the original’s dead weight whilst keeping the quirky Japanese-ness of it intact. But be warned, if you couldn’t enjoy the first game and its unique ideas, then forget about Dead Rising 2 and play something else. Yes, the boring photography mode is gone, and now you can move and shoot, but essentially Dead Rising 2 is the first game, only prettier and more refined. For me, that’s nothing short of a great thing.

As in the first game, the juxtaposition between mostly serious storytelling and light hearted, arcade-sandbox gameplay feels right. Telling the story of a man and his zombie infected daughter, Dead Rising 2 takes the events of the plot ­– namely Katey’s required 24 hour injections of Zombrex — and ties it to the series’ staple timed gameplay. One thing I felt the original lacked was a clear sense of urgency for some of the cases; the life or death of the protagonist’s daughter laces this urgency throughout the whole narrative.

Though to say the story is completely serious would do a disservice to what the series is. Just like in Dead Rising, number two has a sizable collection of psychopaths — odd and unstable citizens who have become insane due to the lack of law and order — who add humour and scariness to the plot. Knowing how difficult psychopaths are to kill, the cutscene in the build up adds tension and fear, whilst defeating them creates a great feeling of relief, and lightens up the mood with their hilarious and gruesome deaths. None are quite as funny as Adam the Clown’s in the first game, but Dead Rising 2 has its fair share of amusing psychopath moments, and I could tell Blue Castle had fun making them.

For what it’s worth, its plot does the job. It’s not a hugely gripping story, and its characters aren’t the most developed or interesting out there, but the circumstances surrounding the Fortune City outbreak are mysterious enough to drive players to complete the missions, and serves the scenario of zombie killing well, which is what Dead Rising 2 does best.

Killing zombies and psychopaths builds up PP (prestige points, essentially Dead Rising‘s version of EXP), which in turn allows Chuck to level up, which is a hugely important feature of Dead Rising 2. Keeping players interested by giving them new moves to play about with isn’t the only useful function of Dead Rising 2‘s levels, because improving stats is vitally important to progressing through the game’s tougher challenges near the end. Whilst the high level special movies that Chuck learns are nowhere near as fun or effective as Frank’s (the star of Dead Rising), if you’re underpowered by the late game psychopaths, you may struggle to get by with fewer slots to store items and a smaller health bar. Finding ways of acquiring bonus PP is important.

One of the ways to gain bonus PP is through a new satisfying gameplay mechanic: weapons construction. Combining certain pairs of items up at work benches placed around Fortune City will allow Chuck to build custom weapons. From a simple and functional spiked baseball bat (a baseball bat combined with a box of nails) to the more elaborate Fountain Lizard (lizard mask mixed with fireworks), the weapons show off the creativity of Blue Castle’s designers, and also reward players for blindly mixing and matching items too.

Most of the combined weapons have little practical application, but play well into the game’s humorous open sandbox nature, whilst others are designed to allow you to lay waste to hundreds of zombies at a time. What they all have in common is that they’re damn good fun, and they allow you to level up a lot faster.

Whilst weapon construction is a fast way of climbing the levels, the quickest way is through rescuing survivors. Thankfully, unlike in the original, survivors aren’t so stupid this time around. A major source of annoyance from the first game was how the zombies could easily surround and kill people you were escorting. Sure, they could do the same to the player, but at least we could evade them. Survivors couldn’t. Thankfully Blue Castle realised this, and made sure they have a hard time dying to the zombie hordes this time around.

However, for all the steps forward in Dead Rising 2, it’s also taken quite a few back.

Survival mode — an extremely difficult extra which added hours to the original game’s replay value — has vanished, as has Dead Rising‘s steady framerate. In contrast, Dead Rising 2 chugs along in places, especially in outdoor areas, and whilst it’s not to the point of it being unplayable, it’s certainly a distraction. Another annoyance is the introduction of psychopaths not listed as clear objectives (such as Snowflake), especially when escorting survivors to safety.

My last frustration is co-operative play. I’m frustrated that it’s only two players, frustrated that we’re both trapped in the same area, and I’m frustrated that it’s actually quite buggy. If the host saves the game, it will eject the guest from the session, and the lag can sometimes be unbearable.

Besides this, the story remains unchanged when a second player is present; we’re merely saddled up with another Chuck. On the whole, the co-op mode feels largely uninspired, and I was hoping that Blue Castle would’ve given co-op buddies more things to do together. Instead, the whole thing feels like an afterthought.

All this said, Dead Rising 2 also has things which should be annoying, but aren’t. In a generation where the connect between controller, animation and physics, not to mention the tightness of combat controls, are considered art forms in themselves, Dead Rising 2‘s general disregard for these triple-a standards should immediately set alarm bells ringing. However, it works incredibly well and plays into the game’s almost tacky charm perfectly. Loose and inaccurate shooting and melee combat would normally be enough to bury a game, but with Dead Rising 2 you’re bound to hit something, even if it’s not what you wanted to.

Similarly, a big hate of mine is arbitrary time limits, yet just like the first game, Dead Rising 2‘s are fun and make you think very, very carefully about what your priorities are. Whilst it’s much easier to complete every objective within the time frame than it was in the original, Dead Rising 2 certainly piles the pressure on in the later segments, and an especially tricky psychopath battle can lay waste to your well thought out rescue plan very quickly.

When it comes down to it, Dead Rising 2 is relatively simple: it’s a series of linked plot events in a semi-open world filled with zombies and awesome homemade weapons. But whilst it’s simple, it’s also an immensely rewarding experience that fans of zombies, sandbox gameplay and unobtrusive narratives will enjoy through to level 50 and beyond, with or without a friend.

Because of what it does right, Dead Rising 2‘s flaws are very easy to forgive.

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Chris apologises for doing lots of reviews. I want to write a feature too, I just need a good idea I can run with. So please don't berate me on Twitter for not doing any these days.