Dead Rising 2 (Classics) reviews

Much fun is to be had in Dead rising 2, other than the game including all the features listed on the box, dead rising 2 has improved on the two major faults existing within the first game, these being the poor shooting system and the lack of zombie models (the fact that large numbers of identical zombies would be on the screen at once). Although these things didn't stop the first game from being excellent, they did break the immersion a bit. These problems completed solved in DR2, along with the ability to combine weapons, the comical story-line and unusually likable characters aid with the player spending shameful amounts of time in front of their screens.

The games major fault is the save system and load times. The load times in DR2 are painfully long, as well as loading a game after dying, I went to the trouble of installing the game onto my hard-drive, and still load times reaching up to 20 seconds (doesn't sound like much but it adds up, especially when moving from area to area). The save system is also troublesome as there are nowhere near enough scattered around the huge environment.

Dead Rising 2 is a solid game with tonnes of replay value, although the load times really break up the story, this is made up by the sheer joy of hacking zombies to bits.

I'm a huge horror fan and although it's no left 4 dead, it's still pretty awesome. Your daughter has been infected and you have to find antidotes for her…big problem…ZOMBIES! The coolest thing about this game is the weapons you can make. It becomes pretty brutal. On the way you have to rescue others aswell, so your never short of things to do! Awesum hack and slash game. A must for zombie lovers everywhere. A massive improvement on the first 1.

Awesome game, improves on the first in so many ways. The weapon customization is incredible. A must buy for fans of the dead rising series and action games alike.

Dead rising 2 is much better than the first, although I highly recommend installing in to your xbox harddrive, otherwise sometimes the game will LAG when mashing thousands of zombies at once. Very fun game to play, and nothing beats the 7,000 zombie limit at one time. This is a great hack and slash game, with traits of survival. Take some food, hit some nails into that baseball bat, and swing!

From what I've seen after playing this game and its predecessor for a couple of hours each, it's basically more of the same. Good if you liked the first one, not good if you didn't. I personally didn't, although I loved the concept. I'm a big zombie fan, and a game where you fight for survival in the midst of a zombie apocalypse is basically my fantasy game, but I just didn't like this game very much at all.

Like the first Dead Rising, the odd thing about this game is the concept that it's not intended to be played once. I doubt you can even finish it the first time you play. You're supposed to play for a while, level up a bit and get an idea of where the objectives and survivors are, then start a new game with your more powerful character. To quote the game manual “Saving your game and then restarting at a higher level is a big part of Dead Rising 2. Levelling up and exploring Fortune City before attempting to get through the main story will allow you to enjoy the game much more.” This is a concept that I have a really hard time wrapping my head around. I tried to go along with it but I think it just sucks. It is totally counter-intuitive to me, and boring frankly. I don't want to play the game over and over.

The game ends in 72 hours one way or another. In that time you have to complete the main story, escape the city and do all the other things like rescue survivors and find medicine for your daughter. Every mission is time sensitive and crucial stuff goes on in the game whether you're there or not. To quote the manual “Time is very important in Dead Rising 2. Events continue to unfold in Fortune City regardless of what Chuck is doing. If he isn't in the right place and the right time he may miss a key event and lose his chance to escape the city.” That is not my idea of fun. If you're like me, you groan when whatever game you're playing gives you a mission with a time limit. Well this entire game is a time limit, and EVERY mission is time sensitive.

I also didn't like the big, arcade-like lettering of the onscreen display. I would have preferred something more minimal. I got annoyed with the gameplay being constantly interrupted by cutscenes and loadscreens. And I eventually just got bored with hacking my way through the hordes of respawning zombies. Getting from A to B quickly became a drag for me. That's not good considering that's a big part of the game. Maybe it's the fact that my weapon kept breaking, or the zombies keep respawing so you can never clear them out of an area. I guess that would have got boring though.

I will say the save/load system has been improved. You can save your game at any restroom (so you have more than one location where you can save), any time and as many times as you like.

I'm sure this game has a lot going for it. If you don't mind the issues mentioned above, and you enjoy mindlessly hacking your way through waves of respawning zombie, then go for it. But I'm glad I only rented it.

I've wanted this game for ages now, it's so creative and fun!

A good all round game but I found the lack of save points annoying.

Such a wide variety of ways to finally take your secret longing for an actual Zombie Apocalypse to a new level by decimating them in countless ways. A must for any true Zombie fan!

Awesome game to play. Do what you want in the game and choose what missions you do which is good. Defiantly recommending this is a game you buy.

Dead Rising 2's strongest point is it's combat system, there are 5 basic methods of attack which include melee, ranged, thrown(explosi­ves/melee weapons), drive and attach (try attacking a zombie with a male mannequins left arm).

There are a huge number of different weapons with which to kill zombies: ranging from your own fists, half a dozen different firearms, a coathanger, a wheelchair, a difficult to count array of other melee / ranged weaponry (including a battleaxe and a giant perfume bottle) and also 50 combination weapons which chuck obtains by combining two able ‘weapons’ at a workbench with the liberal application of duct tape. In addition, a lot of these weapons have custom zombie death animations; some examples being: when throwing the Sticky Bomb your character will throw the bomb up into the air and if it lands on a zombies head will explode after a few seconds, sending surrounding zombies flying and disintegrating the top half of the unfortunate recipient, also using the secondary attack (by holding down X) with the bowie knife results in chuck forcing the knife into the abdomen of a zombie and then pushing them off the blade and onto the ground, where they remain. Not all attacks damage zombies, whacking them with a newspaper or spitting in their face simply stuns them for a second.

The main storyline is a little bit of a letdown, while entertaining the way they integrated it into the game can prove frustrating the first couple times you play. The game has a time progression system where events occur based on a preset timeline and forces you to ignore an event every now and again due to time constraints with the main quests, while most likely possible to get every single event, you would need to have a good knowledge of weapon placement, have a high level and just run past almost all zombies.

The game was obviously designed from the start to be a time sink, if you find yourself in need of burning 30+ hours and enjoy going on zombie massacring rampages every now and again, I would highly recommend this game for you. However, if you have little patience for loading screens and restarting for higher scores / higher completion you might want to try this one before buying.

Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed the game and can honestly say that theres nothing more satisfying then rending a zombie in twain with a battle axe leap attack.