If zombie games have taught me anything, there are two ways to survive in a zombie apocalypse. 1) keep to the shadows, don’t let the zombies see you and get to the safe house in one piece. Or 2) run through the zombie ridden enviroment taking out every single zombie with a whole array or weapons and blunt objects till you finally plough your way through to the safe house. As you can probably guess the latter is my favorite, games like Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising to rank highly in my books. So am I excited for the next installment in the Dead Rising zombie apocalypse?
To be honest I didn’t play much of the first game, this is because I had the smallest standard definition TV ever. Meaning I had no idea what time it was when I looked at my watch and I couldn’t see half the text. The first Dead Rising game was built for HD and I am hoping the next outing will cater more to the skint gamers out there who can only use standard def TV’s.
Now that’s all my complaining out the way let’s get down to what Dead Rising is all about. For those of you who don’t know, Dead Rising is about surviving a zombie apocalypse and within a certain time limit. In the first game you played Frank West and you were dropped off on the roof of a mall during a zombie break out, to find survivors and save them. The choppers would be back in two hours to pick you up, if you weren’t back on the roof in the allotted time you would fail the game. This was a different way of playing the game, luckily game hours weren’t the same a human hours which gave the game a sence of urgency but not enough to completely stress you out.
Anyone for a spot of shopping at the mall?
Dead Rising 2 is set in Capcom and Blue Castle Game’s answer to Las Vegas. You play a biker called Chuck Greene and you have been framed for unleashing the zombie horde on the glamorous city and it is up to you to find survivors and clear your name. Much like Dead Rising 1 you are against the clock to fulfill your objectives, if you miss your objectives or die, you lose the game. Mind you this time round you have save slots, which can be a relief for some gamers out there or utterly blasphemous for some hardcore Dead Rising players. But then again you do have the choice not to save and just play the game old school Dead Rising 1 style (and I bet there will be an achievement with that)
The biggest change is the weapon combos. Now I don’t mean fighting combinations,. I mean sticking 2 things together to make an uber weapon. For example, the pitch folk shot-gun, or the knife blade boxing gloves. These things can be constructed in the maintenance room. Once created these then unlock combo cards which give you the recipe for these awesome weapons, so if you need to construct them again you can simply look at your cards. This also goes for concocting health tonics and all sorts of manner of things, the game also supports vehicles as well, which again you can strap weapons too making for all sorts of carnage.
Anyone for boxing?
Dead Rising 2 is shaping up to be one hell of a Zombie slayer. With the inclusion of custom weapons and vehicles as well this game is set to separate the true zombie slayers from the bunch.
Dead Rising 2 comes out in the UK on the 24th of September, till then, you better get the practise in on Dead Rising 1.
Garv
