Dead Rising 2 Revisited

Dead Rising 2 was actually a decent follow-up to the first game introducing a number of combo weapons, a larger world and an interesting story aside from having to inject your daughter with medicine on the daily. The story follows Chuck Greene, a different protagonist from the first game that is down on his luck. He's just trying to be a good father to make money so that he can buy Zombrex, a miracle cure for the zombie virus for his daughter. This has driven him to compete in Terror is Reality, a reality show where players compete in wild zombie based games. There's a zombie outbreak and then Chuck has to deal with the aftermath of that.

Dead Rising 2 released in late 2008 for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. The game was published by Capcom and developed by Blue Castle Games. After release there were two downloadable side games with one being a prequel and the other a sequel. A full game followed called Dead Rising 2: Off the Record which brought in Frank West as the main character, but that's a revisit for another time. Dead Rising 2 was also later made available as a remaster for Xbox One and Playstation 4 with improved resolution and frame rate. It's certainly a game that received a pile of support and remixes as is the Capcom way.


I found the idea of having Chuck be a father was interesting, but like many couldn't care less for having to find Zombrex for the daughter. I did really love Fortune City though with its large open spaces and hilarious themes. The gambling town setting worked well and it provided a solid selection of unique locations to move through. These spaces were further highlighted by the array of exciting zombies crawling around all over the screen and the strangest psychopaths. They really amped it up for this one with more memorable and crazy people running around. The survivor missions were also somewhat better having little fun stories to go with many.

The quantity of combo weapons was fun creating some strange items that one couldn't possible imagine and the ultimate laser sword which was glorious. Going back to the story I found the overall tale to be interesting and slightly different to the first one. It was just one guy trying to be a good man while watching out for his daughter. There were memorable characters and I found the length to be solid. The loading was however horrible on the game and I'll never forget sitting there forever. A personal memory from this game is actually pre-ordering it, going to the story and then finding out they sold my pre-order copy. To make up for it I got the super Zombrex edition for the regular price, so not bad. Overall this was a solid game despite some slight problems and the multiplayer was also fun even with its silly style.

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