Capcom’s 2006 action adventure Dead Rising was, for all intensive purposes, absolutely crazy. There’s no clear way to explain its strange structure—it wasn’t normal. But it had the potential to be fun, just as long as you were patient enough to tolerate its myriad of missteps. Dead Rising 2, its sequel, is totally another Dead Rising game, like it or not. It adds many neat features that may or may not increase your overall enjoyment; you just need to like Dead Rising to appreciate it, simple as that.
That’s the catch—Dead Rising 2 is, and forever will be, another Dead Rising game. If you never cared for the quirky, somewhat frustrating, time limited quest system, then you will continue loathe the concept. Everything from the frustrating boss fights to the annoying but satisfying escort missions are all back and feel like nothing has changed. And when in reality, nothing has changed, really. Besides the few changes here and there, Dead Rising 2 is, again, Dead Rising... Again.
Dead Rising 2’s narrative involves many familiar concepts but includes some new hooks to keep it feeling, a bit, fresh. You play as an entirely new character, Chuck Greene, as he gets himself into some trouble after Fortune City—the new Las Vegas—has succumbed to the zombie invasion once again. His daughter, Katey, has also been infected and needs a drug called “Zombrex” every 24 hours to keep her from turning. I highly doubt you’ll play Dead Rising 2 for its story but it’s a surprisingly decent and constant narrative to drive you forward.
Most of your time playing Dead Rising 2 will be progressing through the assortment of “Case Files” which are your basic story missions, but you’ll also have lots of down time to mess around in Fortune City. There’s usually a collection of survivors you can hunt down and save but there’s also a considerable amount of boss fights, too. These boss fights are labeled as “Psycho Paths” and are usually more frustrating than fun. But they’re dumb for a very simple reason: Dead Rising 2’s gameplay structure isn’t built very well for them.
Actually, Dead Rising 2’s gameplay structure isn’t built very well for a lot of different things. Killing zombies is sure fun, absolutely, but having to kill some of these psycho paths for story based missions is a pain in the ass. But like the original you can level up by killing zombies and saving survivors which will eventually make you stronger, thus making the bosses easier. This makes the “starting the story over” option more and more appealing as you keep all of your boosted attributes.
By far the best addition to Dead Rising 2 is the new combining feature that let’s you (not kidding) duct tape two different weapons together. So, for example, you could tape a box of nails and a baseball bat together to make a spiked bat. Or you could tape both a kitchen knife and boxing gloves together to Wolverine-type boxing claws. It doesn’t just stop with the “sort of obvious” combinations, either—you’ll try to combine two completely crazy items but to your surprise some of them will actually work. I tried combining random items together like a box of TNT and a fire extinguisher which miraculously created a useful explosive. Another crazy weapon was for combining a saw blade and a leaf blower together for a saw launcher.
The new weapon combining feature can really put your creativity into overdrive; the amount of buck wild combinations you can make is up to how wide your imagination can stretch. There’s lots of different maintenance rooms all over Fortune City so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to make some pretty sick weapons.
These combinations are sometimes very useful. The Spiked Bat, for example, is a great crowd-clearing killing machine that can be created right at the entrance to the safe room. But while the combinations are pretty awesome, and add a lot of variety for killing zombies, I didn’t see much use for the majority of items I created. This is especially evident during the Case Files where your survival depends on the weapons you have. So say you have some awesome combinations like the electric mask (which zaps the the zombie that’s wearing it). It would be useless against a psycho path where something like a normal fire axe would suffice.
It sort of sucks when you think about it: the best part of Dead Rising 2 is creating these super-crazy weapon combinations, but the most useful combinations are the most generic ones. It’s almost as if the Case Files are there for you to NOT use the maintenance rooms—or at least use them for the spiked bat. Killing zombies is great fun, but it can only get you so far. Your main bulk of playtime will come from the Case Files but are usually best played with certain weapons and healing items.
As if the normal campaign—which can run anywhere from 7 to 15 hours—wasn’t enough, Dead Rising 2 also features a pretty cool online multiplayer mode called “Terror is Reality.” TiR is a Mario Party/Fusion Frenzy-style mini-game collection which features many different types of zombie killing games. Some games include the “Slicecyles” where you drive a motorcycle with chainsaws attached to both sides of the handlebars, trying to kill as much zombies as possible.
While these mini games are pretty fun and are sometimes hilarious, I never found a good incentive to come back to them for anything other than the money. Win or lose, TiR awards you with a good sum of funds which can then be transferred to your Dead Rising 2 save. It almost seems as if it’s there for the purpose of buying Zombrex for Katey, which can run you up to $75,000. It’s a neat idea and works for the most part, but it’s nothing more than a mere distraction.
In terms of presentation Dead Rising 2 is a mixed bag. It can definitely look, and sound, pretty decent in some situations, but when you actually get into the action the game can chug pretty heavily. The character models look pretty good from afar but when you up close, like in the cutscenes, they can look dull. The environments for the most part look nice.
The voice acting in Dead Rising 2 is pretty generic and may sound too “Canadian” for some as most of the voice actors are from Canada (where the game was developed). While this was never problem for someone like me (who lives in Canada and didn’t notice it much), someone in other countries will find it a bit odd. The rest of audio is pretty good, though. The zombie grunt and growls still sound disturbingly funny and the sound effects have a good punch.
The crux holding Dead Rising 2 back from being a real tour de force is the fact that it’s still Dead Rising. While I never expected Capcom to stray too far from the zombie killing romp they released way back in 2006, I felt like they never changed, well, anything—It’s definitely still Dead Rising. If you can still appreciate the game for being “different” for the plethora of odd design decisions, then I guarantee you’ll find many redeeming qualities in Dead Rising 2. Just be aware that, yup, this is still Dead Rising all right!
