Dead Rising 2: Case Zero Review

Capcom has decided to give us a little bit of a “TASTE” for what Dead Rising 2 will have to offer on the 28th. Dead Rising 2: Case 0 is a prologue to Dead Rising 2 and give you a bit of a back story to Chuck and how he ended up in Vegas. The game takes place in a desert town of Still Creek, 46 miles from Las Vegas. Chuck’s daughter has been bitten and he is fighting to keep his daughter alive and get them to safty. While stopping for gas, Chucks truck gets stolen, along with the “Zomberex” antidote used to keep his daughter alive. The two of you hold up in an abandoned gas station, and since the antidote can only be administered every 12 hours, you have that amount of time to find another antidote. The prologue will roughly take about an hour and 45 minutes to beat, but with all the zombie slaying you’ll be doing, you be coming back for more.

However this game does have some major drawbacks. For starters the load times, much like the first game, are horrible. It seems like it takes forever between cut scenes, and every time you head back to the safe house. The games’ main focus is you trying to get parts back of a bike that has been dismantled. You go through the small town finding clues from people (that need to be rescued) on where to find the other bike parts. That wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t have to return to the safe house every time you retrieved a new bike part. Then you run into the load times again, and again. Platforming in this prologue is not very well planned either. It felt almost unnecessary and without purpose. There was plenty of times I would miss a jump, not once, not twice, but three times, just to get to the roof to talk to Bob, a survivor who is looking for his daughter. I’m glad to see they have a somewhat better save system, as after every checkpoint it will give you the option to save. However you still have to find a bathroom in the game anytime you want to save, and finding them was a pain in the ass. The graphics looked much like Dead Rising 1. There seemed to be not much of an upgrade. Parts looked very grainy, and Chuck himself looked very blocky and unpolished.The good news is it’s just a trial game to the main release on the 28th.

What Dead Rising 2: Case 0 gets right is the game play. Who doesn’t have an awesome time just to melee zombie heads off, or cutting them in half with a sword. Much like the first game, guns take a back seat to the melee weapons. The added functionality for combination weapons works out very well also. You can find items throughout the town that can be combined with others, for instance, combine a baseball bat with a box of nails and you got the Nail bat. Combine a rake and shotgun for the shotgun poker. There are many different possibilities here and this game nails that. Seeing combo points built and your zombie kill meter increase with every swing never seems to get old. You can use a regular attack by hitting “X” or if you hold “X” he will perform a different, more powerful move with that weapon. You earn more “PP” points with every kill with a combined weapon. In case you were wondering, whether the AI survivors that you rescue are better than in the previous? Oh yes indeed. It seems like the zombies focus on you and leave the survivors alone, which is a major plus.

This is a decent prologue with some flaws that can leave some scared for the release later this month. I have faith that the load times will get better, and the save system gets a re-tweek. AI seemed to have gotten much better, I just hope the graphics get a little bit better as well. Dead Rising 2 aims to be fun, and this prologue is an indication of many good things to come, or some very troubling things to come. The games mechanics work well, but pacing is a disaster. I just hope for Capcom’s sake they address these prior to the release of Dead Rising 2. Case 0 is now up on the XBox Live arcade for 400 Points.

Rating: 5/10  

+ Solid game play mechanics

+ Weapon combinations area blast

+ leveling system works well

+ Awesome premise

- Blocky graphics

- Horrible Pacing

- Long Load Times

- To Redunant

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