DEAD RISING 2 [ Capcom | 2010 | PS3/360/PC ] Review – the Lazarus effect…
“We must stop the killing…
….or we will lose the war”
[Jesse Del Gre / Priest – Dawn of the Dead 1978]
When did the zombie become the figure of fun of the horror world? Zombies are fucking scary. An army who’s legions will only run dry on annihilation of the human race. An army who’s number is populated by mans innate desire to empty the contents of his scrotum in the nearest female. An army inextricably` linked to the root of our survival – that’s a scary prospect, no?
Yet in Dead Rising 2, you’re encouraged to jam shower heads into their faces and giggle as they stagger around spewing their brains like a faucet. Or maybe you’d prefer to stick a battery-powered carnival mask on one and giggle as it wanders around electrocuting all in sundry, popping heads as it goes. Dead Rising 2 isn’t played with a straight face. It’s a seamless blend of interactive comedy and action – and not because of scripting, but because of a highly polished game engine ripe for comic effect and massive (bloody) destruction.
The sequel to 2006s document-and-decapitate-a-thon is an emphatic follow up. It’s producers Capcom paying homage to the slightly more garish aspects of American culture: with all the subtly of a Japanese Elvis impersonator wearing Nike Jordan’s eating a Big Mac.
The story is a mash of the fear of home-grown terrorism, human greed during times of crisis and the US pharmaceutical dependency. All played out in a world where zombie-bite antidote is advertised like contact lens solution.
You take up the mantle of Chuck Green – ex-dirtbike star, now single parent and owner of quite possibly the most perpendicular face in videogame history. It’s the near future, zombies are part our lives, and are gleefully massacred in a dystopian version of Gladiators called Terror is Reality. Chuck is in Nevada’s neon theme park of Fortune City (read: Las Vegas) for the next season, in it to win the big bucks and save his daughter from a zombie bite.
Suffice to say it all goes a bit wrong in the green room post transmission, Chuck gets framed for the ensuing massacre and he has to band together with slutty investigative journo Rebecca Chang and zombie sympathiser Stacey in an effort to clear his name and collect enough Zombrex medication to stop his daughter turning into a rotting succubus with a penchant for live brain. Chuck spends the majority of the game being menaced or flirted with, but his stoic square jaw and surprisingly sleek one-liners makes him far easier to like than the prequels totem-nosed Frank. It’s also refreshingly nice to see an 18-rated game absent of the adolescent levels of incidental foul language (I’m looking at you, Rogue Warrior). I guess in the zombie apocalypse people are too busy to swear.
With the first Dead Rising, Capcom managed to create a functional world set to a time limit (You’ve got 72 hours before rescue arrives). Shambling flesh hungry sacks of reanimated gristle became another part of the landscape. Just like the traffic in GTA 4 – an avoidable yet omnipresent hazard. DR2 ramps up the head count exponentially. So much so, combat regularly verges on a Dynasty Warriors-style exercise in crowd control. Like GTA4, its third person perspective is invaluable to moving and defending against assailants from all angles. Controls are more responsive than the original, but the omission of the ability to run can labour travelling
Luckily though, the gameplay involves completing ad hoc missions sent to you during the game, all organised through the map in a far more coherent manner than its predecessor, so its easy to indulge whatever is occurring nearby. Each chapter is a series of narrative missions to clear Chuck’s name (referred to using the classic Capcom vernacular of Cases) – each ‘day’ is bookended with administering Zombrex to your daughter. I felt the first game suffered from a distinct lack of direction. Now, each case gives you time in between to potter around, completing sub-missions and gaining development currency in the form of ‘PP’ to receive new abilities (such as wrestling moves, curb stomps and flying kicks).
Individual ‘boss’ battles involve dispatching various maniacs around Fortune City. Pooling elements of possibly every evil bastard in every horror film ever made, these characters provide some of DR2s genuinely nasty moments (normally as happy dispatching survivors as well as the undead). DR2 also brings the world of multiplayer to the franchise, allowing you to compete in Terror is Reality – a series of simple mini-games against 3 other online competitors. The quality is inconsistent, but the ability to transfer your winnings to the single player game and purchase upgrades from various shops in the game is a very smart inclusion. Between friends, it’s an absolute riot.
If you’ve seen the website www.tapeitordie.com you’ll already know the games big hook is the ability to construct your own weapons. This takes place at the network of Maintenance rooms around Fortune City. Each DIY construction delivers more effective zombie clearance and additional PP than standard weapons. While the root of some of these not all-together logical, you receive bonus ‘cards’ to offer recipe suggestions along the way.
Each location provides enticing options, heavy with weaponary, the majority with 2 attacks (hack blindly with a chef’s knife, or deliver a Pyscho-esque melee, complete with an authentic jarring audio accompaniment to each stab), taking a leaf out of Rockstar games’ Manhunt’s book.
But it’s totally worth spending the time collecting ingredients to make your own. It’s hard not to get excited dumping a bucket laced with power drills onto an unsuspecting zombie. How about igniting a ball gun and bouncing globes of flaming death off their putrid faces, lighting up all nearby? Fashioning fireworks with a lead pipe into an impromptu rocket launcher, hoofing 50 rockets into a zombie horde and watching bits of them comically burst, taking out all in sundry. Even a IED (gas canister studded with nails) gets a look in.
This creative slant hints at one of the primary successes with Dead Rising 2. It might not be on a geographical par with the likes of Mass Effect 2, but for freedom of expression, it gets a big thumbs up. There’s plenty of reason for getting creative with your killing . The game offers you potential weapons (monster trucks, cars) through the early missions, and the more PP Chuck gains, the more ridiculous his offence becomes– which is lucky, as the zombies become more aggressive and abundant as the game continues.
Which brings me neatly onto the main problem with the game. On the PS3 version I playtested, sometimes there is just too much going on. Some points in the game are crippled by the slowdown in frame rates, especially when you’re trying to deal with a fiend and the zombie hordes start raining down, sometimes the game can slow to a crawl, delivering some frustrating deaths. Additionally, the item management system storing food and weapons where a fumble can sometimes lead to you facing the horde with a slice of pizza. And, on a nit-picking level, the presentation is fairly perfunctory (why do Capcom still insist on using Arial Black painted in primary colours in all their games??)
But, these are moot problems stacked against such a grand vision. Capcom have managed to really shine up the original formula, providing a wealth of entertainment. But Dead Rising 1 had to wrestle with infant possibility. Again, DR2 is a collection of mini-games with RPG elements, played out in a zombie filled sandbox world. It might not be drastically different, but the immersion is far more directed by the game in the sequel should you want to ‘play the game’.
Competing online in Terror is Reality, and cashing out your winning $ to the single player, to buy bigger and better weapons will boost your interest till you rinse every award from the game (with Capcom’s love of customised downloadable content, I expect more TIR events coming soon) providing a far more gratifying experience
Every situation is a riot of horror, comedy and chaos. The more you do, the more you discover. In these times of austerity, it’s great to see a game brimming with value and ideas. It might not always hit the mark, but it’ll leave a big grin on your face from start to finish. You’ll also be full yup to speed on the zombie rulebook – when the inevitable zombie apocalypse occurs, I’m holing up in a B&Q with a Black & Decker Workbench. Where are you going to be?
Dead Rising 2 is available from 24th September in UK on PS3, Xbox 360 + PC.
It gets a highly recommended 8 masticated human fingers out of 10.
Super Video Graphics Array 