And Dead Rising 2 gives the player more than enough objects to play around with. There are scores of items, all of which can be used either as a weapon, or for healing, or as a means of transport or as a buffing modifier to improve your character's stats and abilities. As with much of Dead Rising 2, said items range from the serious to the comical. Even a relatively useless weapon such as a rack of poker chips, that does little to no real damage, provides plenty of amusement just from watching the zombies' reactions as they get sprayed in the face with the little plastic discs. There's a great deal of fun to be had just larking around and discovering everything the developers have managed to cram into the game. At any one time the player is surrounded by dozens of potential death-dealing paraphernalia, to such an extent that it's easy to lose track of any missions you may be on, instead running around like an overly violent magpie as you discover new playthings in every shop window.
One absolutely brilliant feature is the way in which players can now craft their own weapons from the various pieces of equipment scattered around the city. There are a total of fifty different combinations, some of which can be figured out through experimentation, with other, more obscure pairings only apparent once the player is rewarded with the recipes from levelling up or completing side quests. These add a nice hunter-gatherer element to the exploration of the world, and acquiring some of the more exotic weaponry adds another layer of planning to the player's negotiation of the map.
There have been a lot of improvements made over the first game but the single most important change by far has been the reworking of the game's controls. Crucially players are now able to strafe with weaponry, making the use of firearms against the game's many psychotic inhabitants actually manageable now. And a much greater emphasis has been placed on the platforming side of things, rewarding players who explore the game more thoroughly with powerful items and side mission objects. A multi-slot save system has also been implemented so players won't find themselves stranded on the wrong side of the map without enough time to complete a vital mission this time around.
In addition Fortune City's layout has a more interesting and diverse shape than the first game's mall, with a greater variety of locales offset around an elongated central plaza as opposed to the predecessor's rather basic Bluewater-esque circuit. Now set in a more general urban environment, the game sports a wider range of settings including a Las Vegas style strip with casinos, hotels, a sports complex, clubs and so on. It not only makes the game visually more compelling but adds a greater diversity of connections and routes that help to prevent a game which is essentially based on fetch quests from becoming too repetitive and stagnant.
The plot itself is far more personal this time around with Chuck's parental responsibilities adding a greater emotional layer to proceedings. Essentially trying to prove his innocence and keep his daughter safe he may well be the clich'd good guy stereotype but the dialogue isn't corny and the storyline feels much more tightly weaved into the game's fabric. His daughter is particularly well played by a young actress who isn't your usual whiney brat, able to cope with the situation without breaking into tears every five minutes, unlike the nauseating child roles Hollywood likes to portray these days. Dead Rising 2 didn't need a solid backstory to back up its excellent gameplay mechanics but it nevertheless adds to the quality of the setting and provides some genuinely likeable characters to boot.
Blue Castle Games have integrated seamless two player online co-op play into the mix, with players able to wander freely within the currently loaded section of the map. These areas can cover the entire length of the strip or entire shopping malls, and incredibly the two copies of the game appear to remain very much in-sync with respect to the zombies close to the players. If both players have decent connections you will pretty much always see the other person's attacks connecting correctly with the undead in your version of the game. It's a very impressively implemented feature and is one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences out there as you tour the town showing each other different weapons and items you've found. It captures Crackdown's essence of just messing around with friends but in a far more varied and interesting setting, able to provide a great deal more longevity as a result. The other addition to the multiplayer roster is the competitive Terror Is Reality mode, supporting four players. It's a bunch of poorly thought out, boring mini-games suffering from very noticeable lag and frankly isn't worth the time of day. The co-operative game has all the zombie killing mayhem you could need and TIR is just a superfluous and half-heartedly implemented feature.
If there is one negative to the developers' changes since the first game it's that in trying to counteract the criticisms of the original Dead Rising's difficulty they have now swung the balance a little too far in the opposite direction. It's possible for the player to breeze through the game without employing many of the game's more exotic weapon combinations thanks to the over-effectiveness of a few basic weapon builds that are located very close to the safe room. In addition the survivor AI has been improved to such an extent that, if you stick a half-decent weapon in their hands, they now require almost no help from the player to make it back to base. With the new, much laxer, time limits for these missions it's also rare to ever need to group up more than one band of survivors at a time. As a result, barring the Pokemon style satisfaction of trying to grab them all, some of these survivor runs can start to feel a little routine by the end of a playthrough; there's not really any need to have a long term game plan anymore as you can pretty much just run out there and handle them on a first come, first served basis.
And whilst the idea of making the player find medicine for their daughter on a regular basis is a nice touch, with caches of it hidden in hard to reach places around the game, the simple fact is that the money earned from one or two rounds of Terror Is Reality can be transferred into the single player game and used to buy more Zombrex than you will ever need, effectively rendering this challenge mute. So while it's now a bit too easy, with no ability to modify the difficulty level, the simple fact is that it doesn't really matter all that much. With the more player friendly approach you have the time to enjoy the truly fun aspects of the game, larking around with all the crazy weapons and exploring all the little nooks and crannies of the city, be it alone or with a friend. And there will always be parts of the game that you will miss on your first playthrough. So while you can now brute force most bosses with a few simple weapons and health items, at least they are beatable this time. Thereby allowing you to get back to the important work of sticking Blanka masks on all those sad-looking zombies.
In a world full of so many managed expectations with level designers using excessive player clipping patches in their editors and restricting the gamer to very rigid sequences of interaction, Dead Rising 2 is like a breath of fresh air. Unlike many sandbox games which focus on essentially repetitive tasks set against the backdrop of varying terrain the developers here have focused in on providing the variety at the micro level. They've recaptured that joy you get as a child when you first started playing games, full of moments where you get a kick out of realising you can interact with the world in this way or that way. Essentially it does for the sandbox genre what Duke Nukem 3D did for the first person shooter market. By systematically correcting each and every flaw in the first game Blue Castle have perfected the formula that Capcom pioneered back in 2006 and in doing so have created just about one of the most freeform, downright enjoyable sandbox titles out there, and one with online co-operative play to boot! Oh and zombies too.