I'll just lay this out: Dead Rising 2 is awesome. How's that for an unbiased and informative review?
* Combo Weapons - I can't overstate how fun these are. From putting knives into boxing gloves to combining gems and flashlights to make lightsabers they are just awesome. Many do unique things. Add a machete to a toy helicopter and you can set it to hover with a blaring siren that attracts zombies into its whirling blades. Drills + bucket gives you a one use instant kill for a huge XP bonus. Whenever you enter an area it completely respawns, so you soon learn where the parts for your favorite items can be found. You can experiment to find all the combos (it would take a LONG time) or they are revealed as you level, complete missions, or by examining objects in the environment.
* Killing Zombies - Really, this is obvious. It's just plain fun no matter how many times you do it.
* The Clock is Ticking - The game takes place over 72 game hours (about 6 hours in real time not counting reloads.) The story unfolds through events that take place at specific times. When an event begins, Chuck has a certain amount of time to complete the event. Once completed, there's usually a period of time till the next story event.
* Weaving Stories - In addition to the main storyline, Chuck must find a dose of medicine for his daughter each day and give it to her within a one hour window. Also, there are side missions popping up constantly, and each has a time attached before it will disappear. You don't have to do any of them, but they give you a lot of XP and unlock new Combo Weapons or items.
* Little Touches - There are so many cool little things about this game. You can actually play the slot machines. There's an entire crafting system around mixing different drinks together for effects. The characters you run into are cool, funny, and sometimes complex. The zombies have a wide range of appearances based on where they you find them. If you throw the giant dice in the mall and they come up a 7 you win some XP. The list goes on and on.
* Co-op - you and your friend can play in each other's games to help out or just have fun. Wow.
* Failing on purpose - This is a big one, and what I love most about the game, and what others may hate most about it. The game is not just designed for replay value, it's designed specifically to be replayed. You can start a brand new game and play through your 72 hours, muddling your way through, and hopefully complete the story and keep your daughter alive, but it would be pretty hard. It's pretty likely that you would fail somewhere along the way.
Here's the thing, though. If you fail to get your daughter the medicine or if you fail a story mission you are given a choice. You can go back to the beginning of the timeline or you can keep playing. Why would you keep playing after you've failed to protect your daughter or when you can no longer get new story missions? Well, you get a different ending to the game, but that's minor. Mostly because you can continue to gain levels and unlock things in the game, and this is important because when you eventually do reset to the beginning you get to KEEP EVERYTHING. That's right. If you are level 10 when decide to reset the game you start at the beginning, on the first mission, at level 10. If you had $2 million dollars, you still have $2 million dollars. You still have the key to the SUV parked in the outdoor mall that you can drive over hundreds of zombies at a time. It's great! So even if you fail you might want to keep playing to the end to do a bunch of side missions and rack up some levels.
This isn't as broken as it seems, though. Leveling isn't as powerful as in other games. Any particular level can give you another hit point or an inventory slot, which are very good but not godlike. You might get an occasional increase in damage, but even that just means it might take a couple less hits to kill a boss. Overall a level 20will have a much easier time at the game than a level 1, but will still have fun doing it and will still find plenty of challenges, especially in the boss fights.
The REALLY brilliant thing about this mechanic though is that if you want to be particularly clever you can lose on purpose to get a big advantage in the game overall. Normally while playing the game you spend a good chunk of time working on the story missions. Some of them just take a lot of time and some of them require a lot of preparation. It takes even more time if you're low level and you're constantly worried about getting taken out by zombies on the way to a story mission. However, if you decide to dedicate a playthrough of the game to leveling and unlocking things, not only can you do so at a much more leisurely pace, but when you finish you can start all over again but from a much more advanced place not only in terms of character advancement but also of player knowledge. You'll already know where you can get a leafblower or where the hidden Zombrex is. You don't have to search for them.
If you're really dedicated you can do what I did, which was to get some items that increased my luck at gambling and then go play the slots to roll up a really big bank roll first thing in the game. It's a surprising amount of work. You have to go get the items (tough at low level) then clear out all the zombies near the highest paying slots and defend them against occasional newcomers all the while pulling the handle over and over and over and over. Your weapons wear out eventually and you have to go get new ones. If you leave the building, though, all the zombies respawn and you have to clear them again. It took a while, but by the end I had enough to pretty much buy everything I will ever need in the game and a surprising number of levels under my belt. I had long since lost the story missions, but had given Chuck's daughter the medicine so I played through the rest of the days doing side mission and unlocking things, saw my horrible ending, and restarted with a huge advantage the second time around.
The downside, of course, is that you have to be prepared to sink the time into the game to do this. But the cool thing is you don't have to! Play it however you want. It's still going to be fun!
The bad things about the game:
* Surprises - some of the missions can surprise you and leave you unprepared to face them. Then you have to reload a saved game and spend some time getting stuff together for them. This can be really tough if your already under time pressure for that mission and now you have to go prep for it. This isn't only for surprise fights. Some missions are to fetch items and if you start them too late you'll never get them in time.
* Zombies - for 90% of the game the zombies are just fine. But sometimes they can be annoying. When I was at the slot machine, I cleared out every zombie in the area but regular as the seasons zombies would shamble over from the farthest reaches of the casino to attack me.
* Friendly Fire - Many weapons swing in wide arcs and they all damage NPC humans if they hit them. This makes it really hard to kill a zombie that's latched onto the NPC you are supposed to be protecting, and is basically unnecessary.
That's about it. This game is one of my all time favorites, just like Dead Rising was back in the day. I highly recommend it to anyone who even thinks they might enjoy something like what I've described here.
Dead Rising 2 is a third person adventure game. You play Chuck Greene, a star on a reality TV competition where contestants kill zombies for sport. When the zombies get out, Chuck finds himself struggling to clear his name as well as secure the medicine his daughter needs to not turn into one of the undead. He must continue doing this for 72 hours while waiting for the military to come rescue everyone. Along the way are plenty of side missions, people to rescue, and psychopaths to kill. And zombies... thousands and thousands of zombies.
Combat is basically face the bad guy and press the button. Almost anything is a weapon, but mostly you want the items that you can combine together to make Combo Weapons. They do more damage and give you more XP as well as being generally cooler looking and often having unique abilities. Weapons degrade over time so you are constantly collecting parts for the next weapon. You have a limited inventory (which grows over time) and you also want to carry food to regenerate health and possibly magazines which give specific benefits like increase damage or discounts on purchases.
The good things about this game:
* Killing Zombies - Really, this is obvious. It's just plain fun no matter how many times you do it.
* The Clock is Ticking - The game takes place over 72 game hours (about 6 hours in real time not counting reloads.) The story unfolds through events that take place at specific times. When an event begins, Chuck has a certain amount of time to complete the event. Once completed, there's usually a period of time till the next story event.
* Weaving Stories - In addition to the main storyline, Chuck must find a dose of medicine for his daughter each day and give it to her within a one hour window. Also, there are side missions popping up constantly, and each has a time attached before it will disappear. You don't have to do any of them, but they give you a lot of XP and unlock new Combo Weapons or items.
* Little Touches - There are so many cool little things about this game. You can actually play the slot machines. There's an entire crafting system around mixing different drinks together for effects. The characters you run into are cool, funny, and sometimes complex. The zombies have a wide range of appearances based on where they you find them. If you throw the giant dice in the mall and they come up a 7 you win some XP. The list goes on and on.
* Co-op - you and your friend can play in each other's games to help out or just have fun. Wow.
* Failing on purpose - This is a big one, and what I love most about the game, and what others may hate most about it. The game is not just designed for replay value, it's designed specifically to be replayed. You can start a brand new game and play through your 72 hours, muddling your way through, and hopefully complete the story and keep your daughter alive, but it would be pretty hard. It's pretty likely that you would fail somewhere along the way.
Here's the thing, though. If you fail to get your daughter the medicine or if you fail a story mission you are given a choice. You can go back to the beginning of the timeline or you can keep playing. Why would you keep playing after you've failed to protect your daughter or when you can no longer get new story missions? Well, you get a different ending to the game, but that's minor. Mostly because you can continue to gain levels and unlock things in the game, and this is important because when you eventually do reset to the beginning you get to KEEP EVERYTHING. That's right. If you are level 10 when decide to reset the game you start at the beginning, on the first mission, at level 10. If you had $2 million dollars, you still have $2 million dollars. You still have the key to the SUV parked in the outdoor mall that you can drive over hundreds of zombies at a time. It's great! So even if you fail you might want to keep playing to the end to do a bunch of side missions and rack up some levels.
This isn't as broken as it seems, though. Leveling isn't as powerful as in other games. Any particular level can give you another hit point or an inventory slot, which are very good but not godlike. You might get an occasional increase in damage, but even that just means it might take a couple less hits to kill a boss. Overall a level 20will have a much easier time at the game than a level 1, but will still have fun doing it and will still find plenty of challenges, especially in the boss fights.
The REALLY brilliant thing about this mechanic though is that if you want to be particularly clever you can lose on purpose to get a big advantage in the game overall. Normally while playing the game you spend a good chunk of time working on the story missions. Some of them just take a lot of time and some of them require a lot of preparation. It takes even more time if you're low level and you're constantly worried about getting taken out by zombies on the way to a story mission. However, if you decide to dedicate a playthrough of the game to leveling and unlocking things, not only can you do so at a much more leisurely pace, but when you finish you can start all over again but from a much more advanced place not only in terms of character advancement but also of player knowledge. You'll already know where you can get a leafblower or where the hidden Zombrex is. You don't have to search for them.
If you're really dedicated you can do what I did, which was to get some items that increased my luck at gambling and then go play the slots to roll up a really big bank roll first thing in the game. It's a surprising amount of work. You have to go get the items (tough at low level) then clear out all the zombies near the highest paying slots and defend them against occasional newcomers all the while pulling the handle over and over and over and over. Your weapons wear out eventually and you have to go get new ones. If you leave the building, though, all the zombies respawn and you have to clear them again. It took a while, but by the end I had enough to pretty much buy everything I will ever need in the game and a surprising number of levels under my belt. I had long since lost the story missions, but had given Chuck's daughter the medicine so I played through the rest of the days doing side mission and unlocking things, saw my horrible ending, and restarted with a huge advantage the second time around.
The downside, of course, is that you have to be prepared to sink the time into the game to do this. But the cool thing is you don't have to! Play it however you want. It's still going to be fun!
The bad things about the game:
* Surprises - some of the missions can surprise you and leave you unprepared to face them. Then you have to reload a saved game and spend some time getting stuff together for them. This can be really tough if your already under time pressure for that mission and now you have to go prep for it. This isn't only for surprise fights. Some missions are to fetch items and if you start them too late you'll never get them in time.
* Zombies - for 90% of the game the zombies are just fine. But sometimes they can be annoying. When I was at the slot machine, I cleared out every zombie in the area but regular as the seasons zombies would shamble over from the farthest reaches of the casino to attack me.
* Friendly Fire - Many weapons swing in wide arcs and they all damage NPC humans if they hit them. This makes it really hard to kill a zombie that's latched onto the NPC you are supposed to be protecting, and is basically unnecessary.
That's about it. This game is one of my all time favorites, just like Dead Rising was back in the day. I highly recommend it to anyone who even thinks they might enjoy something like what I've described here.
Picked this up based on your recommendation. Had fun with it, beat the main game, the achievements are all either dull or frustrating, though, so I guess I'm done. The characters were pretty interesting and the difficulty level wasn't bad for someone who isn't too into arcade action.
I tried doing the massive kill achievement, but at least on the PC my kill rate seems to be way too low to hit the required numbers, I'm not even close to the numbers posted on the xbox guides on a per-hour basis.
Still, fun for a while, but more expensive than it needed to be. I'm going to give Patrician IV a shot, since it was on speical on Steam for $10.
--David Hewitt
From what I understand, the massive kill achievements require a vehicle of some kind to drive around and run over a ton of zombies. There's even an suv in one of the strip casinos that you can use to rack em up.
Let me know if you like Patrician. I'd have bought it but I picked up Fallout 3 finally!