The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Gamefly sent me a double-whammy: Two dead games! Dead Rising 2, and Dead Space 2. Dead Space 2 I’ll talk about later (Spoilers, it’s fucking fantastic) but today I’m going to talk about Dead Rising 2.

I played it for like… 2 hours, and I was done.

Now, first, I suppose I should talk about Dead Rising 2: Case Zero. I played through all that, and got every single achievement. I loved every minute of it. It was a small, constrained experience that let the game emphasize what’s fun about Dead Rising. It was pretty well the exact right length, and I’d urge pretty well anyone who wants to try Dead Rising just to pony up the five bucks for that instead.

I got into Dead Rising 2, and it was constantly talking at me about plot. Not that there wasn’t plot in Case Zero, but it was pretty minimal. Build a bike, get out of the town. It was straightforward. You could skip all the cutscenes and not be lost. Dead Rising 2 started with a weird sequence of you driving a bike around and killing zombies in a competition (I guess this is from the multiplayer competitive mode that is included for no reason) and then you have to run away from an arena, and find Zombrex, and do all kinds of bullshit before you can actually play. It’s frustrating, because all you want to do when you put the game in is go dick around in the new environment. On top of that, the story in Case Zero was simple. A man cares about his daughter, would like her not to die. You liked Chuck Greene in that scenario. This ridiculous “being set up by the media” crazy bullshit really doesn’t make you care about Chuck at all, and the fact that I murdered many, many non-zombies who were looting Fortune City, just like I was, really makes me feel like Chuck is a much less likable dude this time around. Basically, what I’m saying is, I don’t give a shit about the story.

However, the game is mostly story. There is plenty of dicking around to be done in Fortune City, but the game doesn’t really reward you for it. Things like not being able to collect all the silly outfit parts to play dress-up, or being able to store stuff you find for later, really stops any urges a player might have to explore and just see what’s out there. Even the Combo Cards, the things the game wants you to collect and use, are just impossible to actually make use of in a way that’s any fun. It was more forgivable in Case Zero. It was a smaller game, and you had smaller combo options. There are just a ton of them in the full game, though, but you always just use nails + bat over and over, because that’s what’s easily available every time you exit the safe room. The crazy stuff would be fun, but you can’t depend on it in any way.

All that said, for the bit of running around, dressing Chuck up in silly clothes, and fighting zombies, I enjoyed myself. However, after visiting a sex shop, I walked into a building and met a guy with a tiger. I just wanted to see what was in the building. Apparently, what was in there was instant death via a boss battle I didn’t want to be in. I had even managed to make a light saber, but that broke immediately, and then the tiger pounced on me and I was dead. I then thought about having to start over, and looked to the other envelope on my desk with Dead Space 2 in it, and my mind was made up for me. I sent it back.

I don’t know. There is a core to Dead Rising that is fantastic, but it’s just not coming together into a game I want to play. I don’t in any way want to do the cases or see the story, and it doesn’t really want me to mess around. It’s just not a fun thing. More power to people who managed to push through it, but I couldn’t do it. I had more fun games to work on.