The year 2006, a lot of important things in my life happened. I turned 16 years old, started sophomore year of high school, and most importantly, Dead Rising was released. Being an impressionable, easily pressured young man - a typical teenager - I was convinced I needed an Xbox 360, if only for the sake of being hip and down with it. I only had a PC and an old, sand filled Xbox that went with my dad when he served our country in Iraq. I followed most of the bigger games being released with jealous eyes. But one title not only caught my eye, but managed to get stuck in it - like a piece of dirt or a cat hair. But what a glorious cat hair that game was. This title was Dead Rising.
I read reviews of Dead Rising, watched every video I could find and absorbed every screenshot possible for months, until I finally was given the ultimate gift of an Xbox 360 with Dead Rising for Christmas that year. Boy, oh boy was I excited. We spent a lot of time together, and would have spent more if tragedy had not struck. You see, Sophomore year was also when my mental illness began to progress. Hallucinations, delusions, paranoia and mood swings filled more and more of my mind.
Fortunately, I had the ultimate distraction to fall back on. Yes, believe it or not, killing zombies and psychos with my ol' buddy Frank West managed to keep me sane for a while. Or so I believed. Instead, as I sucked in more and more zombie slayings, they began to effect my state of mind outside of the game. I began having dreams every night, where I would be hangin' out in the nearby mall mowing down zombies with baseball bats or whatever else my mind could imagine. I forced myself to stop playing Dead Rising and switch over to something less...addicting, shortly before my first hospitalization.
<img width=220>http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n511/Sinodaq/dr2title.jpg
Flash forward a few years. I've been stable for over two years. Begin following videogames, but with less bias, and more intelligence when it comes to criticizing them. And Dead Rising 2 is released. Since I had been stable for so long, I decided to pick it up. Try to enjoy it without entering a grandiose delusion involving me and the zombie apocalypse. AND HOLY HELL IT'S AWESOME.
In Dead Rising 2, we play as Chuck Greene. Former stunt-guy or something that's never really developed, and father of a zombie-infected little girl named Katie. We must find medication called Zombrex for her, or else she will turn into a zombie and Chuck will be sad. It is revealed that Chuck participates in a zombie-slaying game show so he can afford money to buy Katie more Zombrex. Somehow zombies get out of their cages, Chuck is blamed. Almost everyone in Fortune City, host of the event, is zombified.
http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n511/Sinodaq/dr2p3.jpg
There are three goals of the game.
1) Get Katie Zombrex and give it to her at specific times in the game's timed-plot.
2) Clear Chuck's name, and find evidence that he wasn't the cause of the zombie outbreak.
3) Rescue other survivors and bring them to the bunker where Katie is hidden. This sometimes involves defeating people who have been driven crazy by the deaths of everyone around them, and taking real people hostage.
The survivor rescue functions as sidequests. All of them are escort missions, unfortunately. This wasn't too big of an annoyance, as they would occasionally give zombrex or money. In one case someone even showed me a shortcut to a spot near the safehouse. Every psychopath defeated and survivor rescued gives Prestige Points. PP serve as experience points. Once Chuck has enough, he levels up and either learns new skills, gets extra inventory space, or just increases his health/speed.
Like the original, Dead Rising 2 is a flowerbox. It's not as big as a sandbox, where you have an entire city to explore. The size of Fortune City is good, as it takes a while to get to the safehouse from any point, but not too long. I mentioned above the timed storyline. Each 'case', or story mission, begins at a certain time and ends at a certain time. If you don't manage time well enough to do both survivor missions and the regular cases, you get the option to start over with your current stats. Or you could continue and just do survivor missions until the game's planned 72 hours ends.
http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n511/Sinodaq/Dead20Rising--article_image.jpg
The biggest problem I had about the game was that it didn't really develop Chuck, or use it's potential to expand on his relationship with his daughter. I also wasn't sure why he was rescuing survivors, other than the fact that he was nagged to by text messages all the time.
Oh, that reminds me. Remember in Dead Rising 1, you got a call from the janitor every five minutes that would interrupt play with extremely small text that wouldn't close for just long enough to get Frank killed? Well they fixed that. Chuck only gets phone calls occasionally, but can press the skip button to speed them up. Everything else is a text message. It really is a huge improvement.
Another big improvement was the survivor AI. In the original, they were barely more capable than the zombies. Now they're able to escape from being chewed on, and even avoid obstacles to reach Chuck. And the interface tells you if they're close enough to go into the next map with you.
I had a helluva time playing Dead Rising 2. It brought back all of the good memories of my homie Frank, without many of the bad. I definitely recommend picking it up if possible. Thanks for reading!
____________________
ps: I put in the bit about my history of mental illess because, well, I heard telling stories about my experience helps readers realize how awesome the game (or me) are. If you'd like to hear more about my 'craziness', lemme know. I've been writing a lot about what I went through just those few years ago, maybe I'll post some of it if people care. And as always, PLEASE give me feedback on the review? Thanks!
I read reviews of Dead Rising, watched every video I could find and absorbed every screenshot possible for months, until I finally was given the ultimate gift of an Xbox 360 with Dead Rising for Christmas that year. Boy, oh boy was I excited. We spent a lot of time together, and would have spent more if tragedy had not struck. You see, Sophomore year was also when my mental illness began to progress. Hallucinations, delusions, paranoia and mood swings filled more and more of my mind.
Fortunately, I had the ultimate distraction to fall back on. Yes, believe it or not, killing zombies and psychos with my ol' buddy Frank West managed to keep me sane for a while. Or so I believed. Instead, as I sucked in more and more zombie slayings, they began to effect my state of mind outside of the game. I began having dreams every night, where I would be hangin' out in the nearby mall mowing down zombies with baseball bats or whatever else my mind could imagine. I forced myself to stop playing Dead Rising and switch over to something less...addicting, shortly before my first hospitalization.
<img width=220>http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n511/Sinodaq/dr2title.jpg
Flash forward a few years. I've been stable for over two years. Begin following videogames, but with less bias, and more intelligence when it comes to criticizing them. And Dead Rising 2 is released. Since I had been stable for so long, I decided to pick it up. Try to enjoy it without entering a grandiose delusion involving me and the zombie apocalypse. AND HOLY HELL IT'S AWESOME.
In Dead Rising 2, we play as Chuck Greene. Former stunt-guy or something that's never really developed, and father of a zombie-infected little girl named Katie. We must find medication called Zombrex for her, or else she will turn into a zombie and Chuck will be sad. It is revealed that Chuck participates in a zombie-slaying game show so he can afford money to buy Katie more Zombrex. Somehow zombies get out of their cages, Chuck is blamed. Almost everyone in Fortune City, host of the event, is zombified.
http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n511/Sinodaq/dr2p3.jpg
There are three goals of the game.
1) Get Katie Zombrex and give it to her at specific times in the game's timed-plot.
2) Clear Chuck's name, and find evidence that he wasn't the cause of the zombie outbreak.
3) Rescue other survivors and bring them to the bunker where Katie is hidden. This sometimes involves defeating people who have been driven crazy by the deaths of everyone around them, and taking real people hostage.
The survivor rescue functions as sidequests. All of them are escort missions, unfortunately. This wasn't too big of an annoyance, as they would occasionally give zombrex or money. In one case someone even showed me a shortcut to a spot near the safehouse. Every psychopath defeated and survivor rescued gives Prestige Points. PP serve as experience points. Once Chuck has enough, he levels up and either learns new skills, gets extra inventory space, or just increases his health/speed.
Like the original, Dead Rising 2 is a flowerbox. It's not as big as a sandbox, where you have an entire city to explore. The size of Fortune City is good, as it takes a while to get to the safehouse from any point, but not too long. I mentioned above the timed storyline. Each 'case', or story mission, begins at a certain time and ends at a certain time. If you don't manage time well enough to do both survivor missions and the regular cases, you get the option to start over with your current stats. Or you could continue and just do survivor missions until the game's planned 72 hours ends.
http://i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n511/Sinodaq/Dead20Rising--article_image.jpg
The biggest problem I had about the game was that it didn't really develop Chuck, or use it's potential to expand on his relationship with his daughter. I also wasn't sure why he was rescuing survivors, other than the fact that he was nagged to by text messages all the time.
Oh, that reminds me. Remember in Dead Rising 1, you got a call from the janitor every five minutes that would interrupt play with extremely small text that wouldn't close for just long enough to get Frank killed? Well they fixed that. Chuck only gets phone calls occasionally, but can press the skip button to speed them up. Everything else is a text message. It really is a huge improvement.
Another big improvement was the survivor AI. In the original, they were barely more capable than the zombies. Now they're able to escape from being chewed on, and even avoid obstacles to reach Chuck. And the interface tells you if they're close enough to go into the next map with you.
I had a helluva time playing Dead Rising 2. It brought back all of the good memories of my homie Frank, without many of the bad. I definitely recommend picking it up if possible. Thanks for reading!
____________________
ps: I put in the bit about my history of mental illess because, well, I heard telling stories about my experience helps readers realize how awesome the game (or me) are. If you'd like to hear more about my 'craziness', lemme know. I've been writing a lot about what I went through just those few years ago, maybe I'll post some of it if people care. And as always, PLEASE give me feedback on the review? Thanks!
