OK, I will admit --- I was hardly fond of the first Dead Rising. I will say it is probably the single most bizarrely critically acclaimed 360 game to date. It had a wealth of abysmal game mechanics, an atrocious save system, and seemed to be based largely around the single most irritating gameplay mechanic in gaming over the last decade. It was a paean to escort missions, which is just a pain in the butt in the most annoying manner out there.
So, I approached the sequel with VERY guarded optimism. I knew, heading in, that a lot of the annoyances were still there, but I had hope.
My hopes, sadly, were destroyed against the rocks of the coast.
Dead Rising 2, in many ways, is worse than the original. The original, for all of its faults, didn't have itself as an example of what not to do. The save system that was such a pain in the butt is marginally improved (the save option after a major incident is a definite improvement...the multiple save slots, for me, wasn't) but it's still clunky and stupid. Having to find a restroom to save the game isn't exactly convenient or easy to deal with. It's inexplicably terrible and such an unbelievably terrible system that one must wonder why they brought it back. Horrible game mechanics shouldn't be a series' hallmark.
The fragile weapons also return. I can appreciate the goal to try and make you use other weaponry, but making the weapons fun to use would pull that off nicely. Making you switch weapons after a few minutes of use is not enjoyable. The customization of weapons is a really nice touch but having to only use it to kill about 25 enemies before it is discarded is tedious.
Escorting people is improved (some of the your escorts can actually help you fight) but, in the end, it is still escorting people. At its best, it's still REALLY not very fun. And that's still the case here. It just isn't fun to escort people around a casino with lots of zombies attacking incessantly. A few of them require you to carry them around...can you imagine just how much bloody fun that is? Every inch as much fun as it sounds.
The boss fights aren't all that much fun. They weren't a ton of fun last time, but they are, somehow, a bit less enjoyable. I can't even put my finger on it, because it is just not fun on a lot of levels. The fights are both a bit tedious and not all that brutally difficult.
We won't even go into the irritating time limit-based gameplay. The game doesn't give you all that much openness and the map will not permit you to place waypoints for anything except mission objectives (so exploring is not exactly made easier). Animation is janky as all heck to boot.
Dead Rising 2 is an inexcusable mess. As said earlier, they had the original game as an example to work with. They knew the shortcomings and kept most of them quite present in the game. I can give some leeway to the original because it was a solid idea with poor execution. Here? The poor execution is certainly not accidental. They knew it was going.
