Dead Rising 2

[mjc0961]

Too true. I lost my first few tries at Dead Rising, but in 2, I got the best ending on my first go because I already knew a lot about the game from the first one. BTW, wine is better than orange juice in the first game, but not so much in the second because Chuck will puke after three drinks of anything alcoholic unless you have a special magazine or pre-order costume.

Extra Punctuation: Dead Rising 2

And with that in mind, I remembered that my first attempt at the game had been fraught with difficulty. Bosses gave me considerably more trouble, and several of them I'd simply gave up on ever beating. This wasn't just because I was low level and hadn't learned the dodge roll: Until I conversed with a friend about it, I didn't actually know that you could make combo weapons even if you haven't found its recipe card.

Sometimes it's nice that you have to figure stuff out yourself, but there's the huge disadvantage that you just showed, what if you didn't have that friend? Than you would just have ended the game there, and what fun would that be? Is this not a fail for the game? If you have to get out of character knowledge, is that not a fault? Of course, it depends entirely on why you had to seek knowledge outside the game, but when the game doesn't present any knowledge, how can you not?

I doubt that would have ended the game. It would have just come up to strategy and trying again later at a higher level if needed. I played my first run with pretty much normal weapons and spiked bats. You can beat the game without the super powered combo weapons, it's just harder.

 

[Psychemaster]

I remember that accursed ledge in Flashback... Took me hours of fruitless jumping to figure out how to climb the bloody thing, since when I played it I didn't have a manual to hand (It was on the MegaDrive and I'd borrowed it)

 

[Shiro No Uma]

I had Flashback on the Genesis. What's an Amiga? Is it a more feminine Amigo? By the way, the most feared epidemic before cars WAS horse farts and the inevitable poop that came with. The rate of horse ownership and the amount they traveled the streets you would need a constant work force to clean up the mess until eventually you just had horse manure paved roads. What was this column about?

 

[ewhac]

What's an Amiga?

[stunned silence]

You did [em]not[/em] just ask that.

Start here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga].

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

After the first time through a game I usually play "handicap" mode where I try to finish with a sub optimal build.

Diablo 2 was great for this because there were 2 or 3 "best" skills and the other 30 were varying levels of crappy.

However some games just dont warrant a 2nd run, such as borderlands doesn't have enough variety to make running it with anyone except mordecai worth it. Or mass effect 2 is just too bland to play anything except the soldier.

 

[ArmorArmadillo]

So you're a Silent Hill 2 fan who doesn't know the vital game-shattering importance of Orange Juice? C'mon!

 

[drivel]

I'm really enjoying my time with DR2. I was a huge fan of DR1 once I accepted that I was supposed to die and restart a couple of times. That's completely counter-intuitive and unique game mechanic; though, I've read one reviewer who said it just saved them from having to balance the game.

I haven't had to restart the story on DR2 yet, but I've been getting help on the strategy for some of the psychopath battles from the Internets. I'm at around Level 22 and I'm about halfway through the game. Escort quests are definitely a bigger pay off in DR2 than the first game, since the NPCs are much better at path-finding. Even without weapons they can pretty much hold their own against the hordes, and the way zombies conveniently bounce off of you when you're carrying an injured survivor is nice.

The weapon combo system is really cool, but I miss the photography element a bit. Weapon creation fits better with Chuck's character, though.

I bought the game for PC because it was a whole $20 less than on the consoles. The game actually controls pretty well with the mouse and keyboard, especially for those times when you're using firearms against mercs and psychos. Much easier to aim for the head with your mouse than an analogue stick. I'm regretting not being able to get the DLC, though. That really sucks.

Co-op has also been fun, as I leave my game public and pretty much let people jump in whenever they ask. Plus, it's really easy to kick them if they're interfering with your time limits or griefing you.

All-in-all this game is a really solid 7.5 rating out of 10. And I mean 7.5 on a scale where 5 actually means average, not the inflated ratings scale most gaming publications use. It's not revolutionary or life changing, but man is it a hell of a lot of fun. PLUS: Gratuitous cleavage shots of the reporter chick!

 

[Senaro]

Also for the record, telekinesis is a useless piece of shit.

And that's a difference on my end, because Telekinesis is my absolute most favorite plasmid in the game. But there we go again with different play styles.

 

[Bullfrog1983]

oh, and for the record, my favorite melee weapon is the knife-gloves... owns EVERYTHING!

Yeah, Dead Rising 2 was really easy. Pretty much because of the Wolverine type "knife-gloves" you could make. I remember beating a boss in like 8 punches and a handful of jelly beans.

 

[spartan1077]

Sadly I had watched a lot of gameplay prior to playing it, and looked at a full combo weapon list. I wish I had this "bleary-eyed moment" although I have some cool watercooler stories.

 

[The Random One]

This just adds force to my theory that Dead Rising is the only modern roguelike.

 

[RMcD94]

I just can't play this game because of the save system.

I'm sure it's interesting and all making new combinations and exploring and such, but then you die, and repeat the same fucking thing all over again.

 

[docbox1567]

Yahtzee, is there a difference between DR2 not telling you its secrets and Brutal Legend being tight lipped? You seemed to have hated that aspect in the later.

 

[Dr_Pie]

Me and friend were on co-op yesterday, and we had about 15 minutes (real time, not in-game time) to get back to the safe room to give Katey her Zombrex.

We spent that time throwing chairs at each other, drinking lots of wine and vomiting on zombies.

 

[Not Good]

Go play Minecraft then, that game embodies discovery and if you discover everything there will be more after the next patch.

My Thoughts exactly.

 

[Manhattan2112]

While it may not seem like much more than a Romero ripoff at first glance, Dead Rising, and by extension Dead Rising 2, are incredible games. Especially when compared to a lot of the garbage that's shat out right now. Obviously there are a few big flaws with the game. The AI may not be as retarded as it once was, but it still seems like it's taken a shovel to its face. I found that health does a lot less for your followers as it once did. A lot of stores are just copy-pasted stores from Dead Rising, particularly Nick's Knack's, and like, every jewelry store.

But really, most of what I had in mind as "flaws" are not much more than game-play changes. They may be considered improvements based on how you look at it. The Bowie Knife (which took place of the Hunting Knife) was basically ineffective for killing zombies. However, you weld that shit onto some boxing gloves and you've got the most powerful weapon in the game. The bat doesn't do as much damage as it once did, but you can add nails to it and it becomes a strong-ass weapon. Even when the zombies started taking steroids, I busted out the Tenderizers and didn't once break a sweat - that probably signifies an overpowered weapon. Alcohol (as this is supposed to be like 'Vagas) is EVERYWHERE, but because you start vomiting up all of those cakes you downed earlier, you can't drink twelve bottles in a row, like you could in Dead Rising 1. In fact, you can't drink TWO bottles in a row. But that was perfectly fair - as I previously said, the stuff is EVERYWHERE! Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. I'm really glad Yahtzee didn't write a hate-filled review for it, especially as I'd been wondering ever since I started watching Zero Punctuation (2 years ago) what Yahtzee thought of Dead Rising. Personally, (despite what seems like originality) I feel it is one of the most original games I've played in a long time. As though that doesn't sound paradoxical as all hell.

 

[copycatalyst]

The "fun of discovering what works" melting into the tedium of using the best thing once you find it is, I'm sure, a difficult problem to solve. Scribblenauts was hilariously entertaining for a very short time. Then I just spawned a Pegasus for everything.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

A good article, but these are actually a lot of the things he complained about in Demon's Souls (which, contrary to what he said in his review, isn't actually hard until the third playthrough and is never unfair), which reinforces my belief that he was playing DS entirely wrong. If I had to guess the reason why he did, I would submit that the game seems to have been recommended to him as entirely the wrong genre, a theory corroborated by the games he compared it to (it's an RPG and if you try to play it like a linear action game like he seems to have it will murder you).

I'm always a fan of exploration in games and would like to see it made a core element of gameplay more frequently.

 

[Falseprophet]

For a guy who wanted to ban all sequels [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/6474-Extra-Punctuation-On-Sequels], Yahtzee sure likes to play a lot of sequels. Just sayin'.

Hacker was one of the few C64 games I never did play since none of my schoolyard chums--er, local K-Marts had it in stock. But I found a Flash version online a year or two ago, and it was pretty cool. I can imagine it would have been even cooler to play in the post-WarGames mid-80s.