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The first Dead Rising seemed like a surprise hit for the team over at Capcom.  It featured a host of “features” that infuriated gamers all around.  Whether it was the artificial time limits for quests, the obtuse save system or the terribly difficult psychopathic bosses that you would find scattered around a mall, it still found a huge following on the Xbox 360 to the point that a sequel was a foregone conclusion.  This time however, Blue Castle Games were brought in to continue the madness from the first Dead Rising, but move it to a new location.  Dead Rising 2 has fixed up several of the flaws from the first game while keeping a few in for good measure, but still manages to be a huge bundle of fun for hours on end.

Dead Rising 2 can be considered a standalone sequel of sorts, because while the overarching story of a zombie infection is present, the characters and plot have no link whatsoever.  Gone is heroic journalist, Frank West, and in is Chuck Greene, former motocross champ that competes for sport in a zombie killing game show in order to get money to buy Zombrex to keep his daughter, Katey, from turning into a zombie.  Sure, the plot sounds as corny as something you might find on a 3AM direct to DVD marathon but is what the Dead Rising franchise has always strived for – fun and camp.  Along the journey, Chuck is framed for a zombie outbreak in Fortune City, the replacement for Las Vegas.  The rest of the game, you spend your time trying to clear your name and of course, traversing Fortune City killing zombies.

The story really just exists as a framework for the mayhem of battling massive hordes of zombies, and it is this combat that makes Dead Rising 2 so much fun to play.  Just about everything you come across in the environment can be used as a weapon against the zombies.  Newspapers, safety cones, hangers, and all the way up to handguns, sledgehammers and fire axes are all fair game to use on an unsuspecting zombie that gets in your way.  All of the weapons have different weight and power and it shows with each unique attack animation.  While a broom will push back zombies, it never does enough damage with one swing to kill them.  But pick up a sledgehammer and when you swing it around, you can tell that whatever moves in the way is about to die.  While all of this weapon carnage sounds like fun, it is only the beginning, as a new weapon crafting system has been put in place by the developer and it adds a new layer of depth to the gameplay in Dead Rising 2.

Certain weapons in Dead Rising 2 will be marked with a blue wrench.  This means that the item in question can be put together with another to make a new weapon that will inflict extra damage upon zombies.  The combinations are sometimes rather obvious, like a bat and a box of nails, but others might be a little more obtuse, like a fire extinguisher put together with a water gun to make a mini freeze gun.  While it may seem like a small mechanic, I actively sought out workbenches to find new ways to combine stuff to see what insane mechanical creations could be concocted in the game.  To help out with formulating ideas, you get special combo cards for saving survivors, for finishing plot lines and even for leveling up sometimes.  And if that was not enough, there are hidden combo cards that you have to find in the environment.  It is a well implemented crafting system that actively has you thinking while you are collecting items and weapons during the story.

It also shows that Capcom put a lot of time into optimizing Dead Rising 2 for the PC, instead of just cultivating a quick port of the game from a console version.  The game runs rock solid at a smooth 60-80fps with every detail turned to full on the review PC.  Load times are brisk and there is a complete lack of framerate issues that have been prevalent in the Xbox 360 version of the title.

New to the formula for Dead Rising 2 is multiplayer and co-op play, something that was wanted by many fans, but seemed to be panned in a lot of the early previews from news outlets.  I was actually surprised by how well the co-op worked on the PC.  Sure, it does not go through any great lengths to provide a reason for the other person in the game.  Capcom does not even change the model of the player coming into the game.  You just end up with two Chuck Greenes, running around the landscape.  It would have been nice to see some more creativity go into it, but it never really bothered me.  I did enjoy the fact that adding a person into your game is as simple as the request coming across the radio in game and saying yes to the other person’s request to join the game.  After a short load screen, the other person is in your game.  Multiplayer is also fun the first few times you play it, but after awhile the games start to get a bit stale.  It also does not flow as well as the co-op, and it seems to take forever to find enough people to play, as the multiplayer game will not start until all four positions are filled.  However, money earned in multiplayer will transfer into your game, so if you need to load up on Zombrex, just hope for a full multiplayer game, and you will end up with at least enough to buy a few doses.

There is only one real flaw that I can find with Dead Rising 2 and it is a strange flaw to have with the game.  Essentially, this is still more of the first game.  I mean, you start the game in a mall, and you travel to a few casinos and a bit of the strip, but for the most part, you are in malls that are adjoined to the casinos.  It lacks a lot of creative inspiration from Blue Castle Games.  They saw what worked in the first game, and said, rinse and repeat, but add in a new city and a crafting mechanic and call it a day.  It is not a flaw in the sense of being bad, but it just seems like the idea could have been fleshed out more.  It also does not help that I never felt connected to Chuck.  Frank West was never all that personable, but he was an interesting character and became identified with the series right off the bat.  It is strange to say that, as Chuck has far more going on and a reason to be in the situation in question, but he just did not resonate with me as a main character.  Neither did most of the other main characters that we meet during the main storyline.

Dead Rising 2 turns in a solid performance as a sequel to a very popular game on the Xbox 360.  The PC version runs like a champ and constantly finds new ways to entertain you with the multitudes of weapons and combination weapons that can be crafted.  Sure it is more of the same that came in the first, but when the game is rock solid and entertaining, does this really matter.  Dead Rising 2 gets 4.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

Check out Dead Rising 2 and other PC reviews at Test Freaks.