Good
I couldn't have been more wrong, and I couldn't be happier about it.
While certainly not without its own batch of flaws, Dead Rising 2 improves on its predecessor in a number of ways, starting with the story. Hero Chuck Greene is a motocross racer grieving the loss of his wife during an unseen zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, wandering the country with his infected (but not yet zombiefied) daughter. When he's framed for intentionally causing a new outbreak in the adult playground of Fortune City, Chuck must uncover the truth while trying to keep his daughter from becoming the cutest lil' member of the ever-growing zombie horde. It's a simple, straightforward narrative, but the story is much better than the one in Dead Rising, mainly due to its downright likable leading man. It's impossible not to want to see Chuck to succeed in his goals -- and the streamlined plot is engaging enough to pull you through to the very end.
When he's not hunting down the truth, Chuck has the option to venture out into the malls, casinos, and all-you-can-eat buffets of Fortune City. Saving stranded survivors is a relatively easy way to gain precious prestige points (as the game's experience currency is called) and earn rewards like shortcuts or cold hard cash, but a few unique twists keep things interesting. You might need to carry a hobbled old woman or strip down to your underwear (don't ask), but the would-be victims eventually follow you to safety. Survivors do a much better job of, well, surviving this time out, thanks to some noticeably improved A.I., so I found myself yelling at my TV far less often than I did while playing Dead Rising. Actually, that's not entirely true: I should say that I spent plenty of time yelling angrily at the tube, it just wasn't at the inept survivors. Instead, my anger was directed at the occasionally frustrating Psychopath event battles that pop up from time to time.
Now, I should note that not all of the Psychopath battles are frustrating. More often than not, my anger was directed at myself for not saving before I entered the fight, or for not coming fully prepared with a stockpile of weapons and food. But in some cases, all the spiked bats and steaks in the world couldn't save me from the wrath of poor design decisions. Some of the battles (final boss, I'm looking at you!) were just plain cheap, while others were only beatable thanks to some obvious glitches that kept my enemy from attacking me. It's a shame, as the Psychopaths themselves are varied and always entertaining, running the emotional gamut from the pathetic to the downright frightening. It's not often that one element can be lauded as one of the best and worst parts of a game, but that's the case here.
One element that should be lauded as a great addition to the franchise: Combo Cards, which basically allow you to fuse two of the many weapons scattered about Fortune City into a superweapon that makes zombie-killing not only easier, but more lucrative. Earning significantly more PP for caving in a zombie's head with the Defiler (fire ax + sledgehammer) or bisecting one with the Laser Sword (flashlight + gems - copyright infringement letter from George Lucas) was the perfect impetus for collecting items that I wouldn't otherwise consider picking up. The special weapon kills are so much cooler than the regular ones, too. Really, the only thing I didn't like about the Combo Card system was the fact that your safe house still has no storage locker to keep your excess goods in. That's not too much to ask for, is it?
The most surprising addition is the one I was expecting to dislike the most. While co-op play was a natural fit for Dead Rising 2 (and surely one of the most requested features), I've never thought of this as a franchise that needed competitive multiplayer action in any way, shape, or form. Although the "Terror is Reality" online game isn't going to make anyone give up on Halo: Reach or Civilization V multiplayer, it's a fun little distraction that's definitely worth checking out a few times -- especially if you like zombie-killing minigames that turn traditional carnival games on their respective heads. Games revolving around dressing up zombies in Sunday finery or rolling over them in giant hamster balls are particular standouts, while I could have done without the game that required me to hit moving targets with Dead Rising 2's poor excuse for a sniper rifle.
As for the "technical issues" that I mentioned earlier, I'm happy to report that Dead Rising 2 runs surprisingly well from start to finish. I was prepared to see the game stutter along when the onscreen action got too frenetic, yet it rarely did. I was ready to watch the A.I. survivors following me commit suicide-by-stupidity by wandering idiotically into a group of the undead, yet they didn't. More than anything, I was steeling myself to deal with another frustrating save system, perhaps because I was one of the many battle-scarred gamers that managed to beat the first game despite one of the most maddening single-save systems ever conceived. I still screwed myself here and there by neglecting to get back to the safe house to start a time-sensitive story mission, but at least in those cases, I could just curse myself and reload a previous save. Having multiple saves has even piqued my interest in playing through the game a second time, just to experience all of the stuff I missed the first time through.
Dead Rising 2's replayability is a testament to the fully realized burg that is Fortune City. I want to meet more nutjob Psychopaths; I want to try more games of chance scattered around the casinos; I want to spend an afternoon shirking my in-game responsibilities to create new tools of destruction with my hard-earned Combo Cards. More than anything, though, I want to see where Capcom takes Dead Rising next.
