Dead Rising 2
I had the fortunate experience of purchasing Case Zero prior to Dead Rising 2's release, so I had a good idea of what the final game would be like. It was very enjoyable, but thanks to a tighter gaming and life-schedule these days, I woke up yesterday intent on canceling my pre-order and swapping it to a rental. I thought the game didn't release until mid-October, a false-belief that was wiped clean with the surprise arrival of the game to my front door the moment I went to click on Amazon's website.
Good job on timing, Riot.
I didn't sit down to play until tonight, hesitant to remove the shrink-wrapping while considering a return instead, and I have no idea where the development team comes from, but I can't believe what they did to Dead Rising.
They made it fucking GLORIOUS.
All right, control issues and frustrations aside, the same that plagued the original Dead Rising, the team took everything that I came to hate about DR1 thus far and made it fully enjoyable.
Case in point:
I decided to let the timer expire on the first case. Fuck the story for now. This lets you run around for 72 hours of game-time rescuing survivors while unfettered by plot-based time constraints. Although you could do this in the original, I never felt it had any point. But having capable survivors at your side changes EVERYTHING.
In Dead Rising, it was hard to keep survivors alive. The more you had running alongside of you, the harder and more frustrating it was. They died fast, didn't listen, and were targeted often. As you gained survivors, your damage capabilities decreased.
In Dead Rising 2, it's the reverse. You WANT a fuckton of survivors. The more survivors at your side, the greater you capability to dish out death. They hardly take damage from zombies and hardly get attacked. You can heal them and OMFG you can arm them with weapons. Like BROADSWORDS. I had five survivors slicing zombies to ribbons with those things.
Today's best group:
A drunk whore carried in my arms while a doctor popped brains with a gun. Not to mention we were accompanied by the tag-team duo of husband and wife complete with shotgun and pistol arrangements. And in the back, hobbling along, was a senile old woman, feebly following my lead. No, old lady, the zombies are NOT toys.
Now, the only issue so far is that by clumping survivors into large groups, you're not turning them in right away. You're saving them for an all-at-once safe house trip. However, you're only allowed to have 3 survivor missions active at once. If you have all three active slots filled, you won't get any messages telling you about additional survivors until you free up slots by turning them in. Each has a timer, a window of completion, so if you're clumping survivors like I was, a lot of unseen timers will expire. And for each that does, the related survivors will die.
There's a delicate balance: short-trips of a few survivors at a time to keep rotating missions or clumping to increase your firepower. There's an achievement for nabbing 50 survivors, but there are a LOT more available. I LOVE the replayability. Despite rescuing ALL the survivors available on my map's log, I found that a lot died because I was clumping my missions. If I had been turning them in one or two missions at a time, I'd have encountered something like 5-10 more people that I never knew even existed. And because you can restart the game at any time and carry your current progress (levels and money) with you, there's no sense of failure. Doing it over again means more experience and new experiences.
Good job on timing, Riot.
I didn't sit down to play until tonight, hesitant to remove the shrink-wrapping while considering a return instead, and I have no idea where the development team comes from, but I can't believe what they did to Dead Rising.
They made it fucking GLORIOUS.
All right, control issues and frustrations aside, the same that plagued the original Dead Rising, the team took everything that I came to hate about DR1 thus far and made it fully enjoyable.
Case in point:
I decided to let the timer expire on the first case. Fuck the story for now. This lets you run around for 72 hours of game-time rescuing survivors while unfettered by plot-based time constraints. Although you could do this in the original, I never felt it had any point. But having capable survivors at your side changes EVERYTHING.
In Dead Rising, it was hard to keep survivors alive. The more you had running alongside of you, the harder and more frustrating it was. They died fast, didn't listen, and were targeted often. As you gained survivors, your damage capabilities decreased.
In Dead Rising 2, it's the reverse. You WANT a fuckton of survivors. The more survivors at your side, the greater you capability to dish out death. They hardly take damage from zombies and hardly get attacked. You can heal them and OMFG you can arm them with weapons. Like BROADSWORDS. I had five survivors slicing zombies to ribbons with those things.
Today's best group:
A drunk whore carried in my arms while a doctor popped brains with a gun. Not to mention we were accompanied by the tag-team duo of husband and wife complete with shotgun and pistol arrangements. And in the back, hobbling along, was a senile old woman, feebly following my lead. No, old lady, the zombies are NOT toys.
Now, the only issue so far is that by clumping survivors into large groups, you're not turning them in right away. You're saving them for an all-at-once safe house trip. However, you're only allowed to have 3 survivor missions active at once. If you have all three active slots filled, you won't get any messages telling you about additional survivors until you free up slots by turning them in. Each has a timer, a window of completion, so if you're clumping survivors like I was, a lot of unseen timers will expire. And for each that does, the related survivors will die.
There's a delicate balance: short-trips of a few survivors at a time to keep rotating missions or clumping to increase your firepower. There's an achievement for nabbing 50 survivors, but there are a LOT more available. I LOVE the replayability. Despite rescuing ALL the survivors available on my map's log, I found that a lot died because I was clumping my missions. If I had been turning them in one or two missions at a time, I'd have encountered something like 5-10 more people that I never knew even existed. And because you can restart the game at any time and carry your current progress (levels and money) with you, there's no sense of failure. Doing it over again means more experience and new experiences.