Video Game Reviews- Dead Rising 2

Taking place five years after the events of the first game, Dead Rising 2 follows Chuck Greene, a former motocross champ who is now surviving in Fortune City. The story is nicely put together, and is surprisingly deep for a zombie game. Once you get past the fun of killing endless amounts of zombies, you'll find a surprisingly interesting story that combines horror and comedy...

...If you can get past the fun of killing endless amounts of zombies. As the first game was, this is a sandbox game, which means you can just go through the entire thing mindlessly finding new ways to kill the walking dead. It's incredibly addicting. The setting of this game, Fortune City is huge. There is a lot of ground to cover, and many things that can be turned into weapons. In fact, that's one of the biggest draws of this game; Using the godly power of duct tape, you can combine objects found all over the place and turn them into destructive weapons. This new creativity brings multiple hours of variety as you discover new weapons with which to kill zombies. It will be a very long time before you get bored.

Unfortunately, there may not be a long time before you start to get annoyed. There are some problems that just keep this game from being perfect. The main one is with save points. You have a time limit to complete the story, and if that limit runs out, you will fail the campaign and be booted back to your last save point. If you save too close the deadline and still have a lot to do, you may have to start the whole game over again.

The graphics are good, with animations smooth and environments ripe with lots of color. The music during cutscenes matches the events happening in them, and the music in gameplay all comes from sources throughout Fortune City. Controls are tight and easy to figure out. Multiplayer is also added in this time around, but it seems more like an afterthought. It's nice to kill zombies with a friend, but it feels like the multiplayer was added in at the last minute.

Overall, Dead Rising 2 is a very good entry in the series. As with the first, endless fun is all right in this game, only with even more. The large environment, the creativity, and the surprisingly good story all work in this game's favor. Its flaws do hold it back a bit, however, but it's still a good addition to a gamer's library.

4/5

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.com