Dead Rising 2 review by Tyson
Overall
Pass
I found the original Dead Rising to be a fun but very flawed game. While Dead Rising 2 does add a few improvements from the original it still carries over it's rotting zombie flesh flaws. Because of this I cant really recommend anyone to pick up this game. If you need some zombie killing fun then stick with the original game.
Gameplay
I found it pretty neat to play as the new character Chuck Greene instead of Frank West for the sequel. Our main man Chuck has gotten himself and his daughter stuck in a zombie apocalypse but what is worse is that Chuck is being blame for the whole thing. Chuck now has 72 hours to find the cause of this outbreak and clear his name. The story setup is very similar to the first game which is a bit disappointing. You will need to complete various missions or be at certain areas at certain times throughout the game. What I really didn't like is that you are now required to find some anti zombie medication for your daughter during the game. I just found this part boring and a bad distraction from saving people or killing zombies. Also like in the first game you will gain levels for Chuck as you rescue people or kill zombies and bosses but like in the first game you have no control of what new ability you get while you level up. It just is disappointing that they couldn't try something new with the sequel.
Much of the gameplay hasn't changed much from the original Dead Rising. You adventure around some casino and mall like areas in search of weapons, food, and survivors. Like in the first game you can pick up lots of weapons to use against the zombies or other enemies but now you can create these combo weapons as well. The combo weapons are a neat idea in that you can combine some items like say a baseball bat and some nails to create a nailed up baseball bat but there are serious flaws with the combo system. The main issue is that you can only create combo items at certain workbenches in the environment. The games limited inventory hurts the combo weapon system as you don't have the space to hold multiple items for later combo creating. What really sucks is that many of the combo weapons are only good at killing zombies, many in a very humorous way, but are totally garbage against human enemies. Only a few combo weapons like the lightsaber like flashlight sword or the knifed up boxing gloves are useful on non zombie enemies. Also the fact that combo weapons still break shortly after use also sucks.
The boss fights also haven't been improved from the first game. Boss fights are still these cheap and frustrating battles. Bosses will take way to many hits and are just super frustrating when you have to fight them at the lower character levels. The only thing I enjoyed about the boss battles is that the character themes are still as crazy as the first game. Fighting some crazed chef or some lunatic trying to force woman to marry him are some great boss characters.
Thankfully where they did make some improvements is with the survivor A.I. No longer are survivors getting stuck in door ways or by objects like potted plants anymore. This makes rescuing people so much better then the first game but it also isn't the funniest thing to do. It sucks that they didn't try to do something new here. Another improvement is now you have 3 slave slots to use instead of one when saving your game. While these improvements are nice they still don't help out with the games other flawed gameplay designs.
I also wanted to mention how there are so many items bunched up together in the environment and how it is so frustrating to try to pick up the item you want. You will always end up picking up the wrong item and the amount of character or camera movement you need to do to get the item you want is super frustrating. There is nothing more control shattering frustrating then trying to stay alive in a boss fight by trying to pick up some life giving orange juice but you keep picking up some other random piece of junk over and over again. I also want to give a big middle finger to the load times here. Seems like the games takes longer to load then in the first game.
Control
I didn't find any improvements on the control side of Dead Rising 2. You still use the analog sticks to move Chuck and control the camera. You can use the trigger buttons to manage your inventory and the face buttons will do various actions like jumping or using items. The main thing I liked is that I didn't trigger the dive ability accident ally as much as I did in the first game.
Graphics
Sadly I didn't notice changes in the graphics. While it is nice to see tons of zombies onscreen it still sucks that they didn't do anything new here. You can still see problems like object detail or items just popping into view. I was also a bit confused on why the developers thought that putting in playboy magazine cover posters in the game was a good idea. It just feels so out of place.
Sound
This is another area of the game that is okay but not improved on from the first game. Character voices sound good but why is the mall background music from the first game reused here? Seems like a really lazy choice to reuse it. Sadly the other background music used in the game isn't very memorable as well.