THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

The Dead Rising series returns with this zany sequel set in a Las Vegas themed, Fortune City. Since the Willamette outbreak of the original, Zombies are now the unwilling participants in a brutal new TV show known as Terror is Reality. However, when the hordes of undead kept in captivity within Fortune City break free, the player, taking control of human contestant Chuck Greene, must fight their way through this chaotic terror-scape until help arrives. With Chuck's daughter bitten in an earlier event and needing regular doses of Zombrex, the patented new drug that keeps the infection at bay, this task is not as straightforward as it sounds. Oh yeah, and not far into the game, it's apparent that someone is trying to frame Chuck for unleashing the caged-up Zombies in the first place - not really something to help matters.

MY VERDICT:

Following from the huge success of the first Dead Rising, I had high hopes for this sequel. Right from the get go, the graphics have improved considerably, the AI (Artificial Intelligence) of computer-controlled characters has been given a somewhat successful overhaul (there are still minor issues here and there) and the control, both of the player character and of the vehicles he rides, have been tightened up. There is also co-op, allowing you to slay Zombies with friends, and multiplayer in the form of the Terror Is Reality game show - despite being relatively docile, it's nice to have this extra game mode. Still, there are some major drawbacks littered around making Dead Rising 2 a subpar experience. First of all, and perhaps the biggest reason players of the original will look away is the whole "sameyness" feeling to the gameplay; the fundamental concept of 'Zombie slaughter among insurmountable hordes and survivor rescue' is totally unchanged, the only new features coming from a change in locale. Then there's the game's balance; the difficulty of the psychopaths is phenomenal, clearly being designed for co-op play and not scaling for solo combatants at all, meaning that most players will, like me, just avoid them, missing much of the game's most entertaining content. The Zombies on the other hand, are pathetically easy - even in large numbers they can't really do much. You then get Mercenaries, human hostiles that fire machine guns at you with deadly accuracy, leaving you pretty much out of any option other than to simply bumrush them, soaking up their bullets until they stop to reload.