Geekscape’s Dead Rising 2: Case 0 Review
Frank West is an idiot. In the original Dead Rising, Frank decides he wants the story of the century and gets himself flown into the middle of a zombie outbreak. Good idea, Frank! As much fun as the original Dead Rising was to play, I never warmed to the idea that this guy was in the middle of this mess for very selfish reasons. When Capcom announced Frank was being replaced with Chuck Greene, an extreme sports action type, I thought we were going to get more of the same in a different package. After playing through Dead Rising 2’s demo/prequel “Case 0”, I am happy to report that selfish protagonists is not the story here.
Case 0 starts with new protagonist Chuck pulling into a small town outside of Las Vegas called Still Creek, he needs to gas up and get some supplies for his daughter. It is revealed at the outset that his daughter has been bitten and needs to get a shot of the experimental Zombrex every 12 hours to put off turning into a zombie. Zombrex, I’m assuming, is a pharmaceutical grade version of the cocktail Frank West has to inject in the original Dead Rising.
Just from the brief intro, I already like where the story and character of Chuck Greene are headed. Frank West had no personal stake in the original outbreak. This time out you have a daughter to protect and keep safe, and to be honest, I totally bought in. Chuck’s truck is stolen in the opening moments and you are stranded in the infested town. Without a car and the drugs his daughter needs, Chuck knows he has to find a way out of town, or she’s done for. The prequel’s major component is rebuilding a dirt bike so that you can get your daughter to safety before the military quarantine arrives and takes her away. Along the way you have to save civilians, build weapons, and of course, kill massive amounts of zombies. You end up running into a variety of survivors. Just like the first time, they are counting on you to lead them to safety, but luckily (at least in this prequel) the survivors don’t seem as useless as they did before, and you can now kick zombies away if you have to carry a survivor.
The new combo weapon functionality is really fun, but the time limit that you’re on to complete the bike doesn’t leave a lot of time for exploration and experimentation. There are 8 custom weapons you can build in this demo, but according to Capcom their will are dozens more in the full game. I had a lot of fun with the “boomstick”. And the Psychopaths are returning as well. This time though they may not seem as crazy. For example, the lone psycho in Case 0 isn’t just a nut trying to kill you. He’s a redneck who’s aware your daughter has been bitten and wants to be the guy to put her down. You definitely have more at stake in DR2.
For those of you that turned off the original Dead Rising quickly because of having to travel all the way back to the safe house to save, your fits of rage have been heard. Capcom has made bathrooms the new save point and they are littered across the landscape. There will always be a convenient save point somewhere nearby. The addition of the pawn shop isn’t great, as part of the appeal of the first game was being able to steal whatever you wanted to kill with, as long as you knew the right store to go to.
Case 0 has gone a long way in convincing me that Dead Rising 2 will be a major improvement over the original. It has fixed or improved all of the major griping points most gamers had with the original (saves, useless survivors) and is telling what feels like a much richer and engrossing story. The prequel is definitely worth the 800 XBLA points and you get to carry over all of your stats to the full game when it releases later this month.
