Overdue

Ok, so this week I'm a little late with my posting. I can attribute this to one thing. Dead Rising 2.
If you've not played Dead Rising before, its pretty much an exercise in zombie genocide.  At its heart, dead rising 2 is a dumb game. Its got a wafer thin plot about a extreme motorbike rider who is trapped in a Vagas like casino complex that has been overrun by hoards of the undead. You mission (whether or not you choose to accept) is to kill lots of zombies, get the medicine your daughter needs to survive, and clear your name. Not exactly from the pen of William Shakespeare.

What Dead Rising 2 does well is Killing. Whether that is killing thousands of zombies, murderous psychopaths or marauding looters. At your disposal are a huge array of weapons. Everything from hand bags to park benches can be picked up and used to beat a zombies head in.  Then there are combo weapons. These are combination's of two other weapons to make an instrument of mass zombie destruction.  Some examples are boxing gloves with bowie knives stuck to them, to a cement saw the spits plates out. There are so many different choices you can make that it never seems to get old.

There have also been some drastic improvements from the first Dead Rising too. Survivors AI has jumped ahead, choosing to follow you through a crowd of zombies rather than try and kill everything that comes with in 50 meters. That's my job.This makes the task of retrieving survivors from various locations a lot less painful.  Couple that with a more open environment and less pressing time constraints than the first game and you can see that Capcom have really set out to raise the bar.

Now the downside, and yes Dead Rising has its fair share of annoyances.  Firstly the psychopaths. I imported my character from Dead Rising: Case Zero, so I already started at lvl5. Even with this head start I found the psychos impossible at early levels. It seemed that to beat them you really had to find ways to bug them out. Now most of the forums online suggest ignoring them as long as you can, and if need be restarting with the character at a higher level, it feels as though these are things that you shouldn't be required to do to enjoy the game first time.

Poker. Several of the missions you're given revolve around playing some poker, hell there is even a group of people who won't let you rescue them till you've beaten them at a high stakes game seemingly ignoring the swarm of brain eaters massing around them.  Combine that with the length of time it takes to play and win, you really start getting pushed for time.

Finally Multiplayer. This comes in two flavors. Co-op or TIR. Co-op feels a little tacked on. You both play Chuck Greene, and if the host saves you get booted out of the game.  While Co-op could have been awesome, it always feels like your running around in someone else's game.  TIR on the other hand truly surprised me. It plays like a game show where you and three opponents are pitted against each other in a variety of zombie killing games.  What ever money you win you can cash out and add to your saved game, increasing Chucks bank roll.
Over all I am enjoying Dead Rising 2, despite its flaws, and I know that as soon as I've finished the main story, I'm going to be starting again and seeing if I can save some more of those damn survivors I missed.

Next Week: Spiderman Shattered Dimensions. Can this game finally break Spideys run of craptacular games?