|
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record
Frank West is back in this latest installment of Dead Rising. This is my
first foray into the franchise and as a fan of the odd zombie flick or
thirty it was one that I was sure that I should check out and here we
are.
Now there is a touch of back-story and whilst not really
well told, basically it appears that Frank has fought the undead before
and the somewhat cavalier attitude of the non player characters toward
the undead, along with the presence of drugs (named Zombrex) designed to
slow down the infection of a zombie bite. There are enough little bits
and pieces here that I must admit that I felt out of sorts and as though
I’d stepped in on someone’s parade.
The game looks good graphically and the undead and humans
alike look pretty neat. The only downer is that the game is extremely
repetitive and I didn’t find a lot to change it up. There are a whole
variety of weapons to use but they sort of start to feel samey. In
particular some of the melee weapons such as the baseball bats don’t
really feel realistic in the way that you use them or any impact that
they make on the dead you are fighting.
Even though there are missions to undertake during the
game, there is no real feel of pressure during gameplay to hurry up or
even move on. Yes you have to find Zombrex but it’s easy enough to
locate and never enough of an issue to present any sort of problem.
There are a multitude of ways that this game does present new things to
do such as taking certain photos that show brutality, erotica and
survivors. You get points for taking these pictures and invariably it
was during trying to take a good shot that I got swarmed the most.
Something new that has been added is the checkpoint
system. Whilst it doesnt let you save the game properly as such, it will
let you come back close to where you died in the game in order to
progress more readily. It’s something I guess. The other way to save the
game is to go into a bathroom and in there you can do a normal save. It
is a pain in the butt though when you want to finish up a games session
and have to stagger around to find a toilet to save in.
On a positive note however, there are elements that are
extremely true to the movies at least. The undead move pretty slowly for
the most part which makes you sort of not mind them. You can actually
walk amongst them with care, however just as is true of the movies you
tend to take them for granted and at the last moment the hordes do
surround you, and regardless of what you try at the point, you are
doomed to fall under them.
Now I must admit that I did research the previous games
in the series and for those of you who have played them before,
everything that was in Fortune City in the second game is there again.
From what I read, utterly everything from spawn points, to zombies,
landmarks, health locations, everything has been utterly ripped off from
the second game and slapped into this one. The only new location is the
Uranus Zone. Its an amusement park that is only a small part of the
experience.
Final Level
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is a game that is a lot of
fun. For newcomers you are sure to admire the visceral graphics and
attention to detail that has been taken bringing our undead friends to
life. The sheer range of undead at first is amazing, but toward the end
you start to treat them much the same as you would treat random people
on the street in a GTA game; just as more fodder for your baseball bat.
There are issues with hitting sometimes, and I did feel that more could
have been done with the physics of handling larger objects. For the most
part though, this was simply a button masher that provided a few hours
of distraction and enjoyment.
Tory Favro |
