Off the Record is a more challenging and outright better version of DR2, but it also marks the start of Capcom Vancouver's Frank West botch job. In Dead Rising, Frank West was a commentary on America's presence on the world stage (Where'd you think "West" came from?), but Capcom Vancouver took Frank's arrogance and desire to be the solution to everyone's problems at face value, turning him into a poor man's John McClane. Any nuance is gone, and you're left with a jarringly snarky one-liner machine.

Billed as a non-canonical DR2, Off the Record remixes the story in a way that doesn't feel like enough. Aside from Frank acting as the main character beats play out almost identical aside from it's over the top finale. You're interest in this title is completely revolved around your individual love for Frank West. While I do like him a lot, personally I prefer Chuck Greene.

Its enhancements and added features also feel like push and pull. There is a new environment and combo weapons. But changes to stats make psychos harder to kill and survivors harder to keep alive. The game does add a freemode which is great to see. But aside from that when you look over the list of changes between versions it doesn't feels very substantial

But at the end of the day is Off the Record fun? Of course it is. It's a Dead Rising game not ending in 4.

Very fun as a coop experience. Perfect at creating tense moments where you and your partner need to plan ahead, if you intend to do more than just rush the story cases. In addition to that, the game is full of charm, between the inventive psychopaths to hunt down and the (overall) enjoyable weapon combo system. The story may be all over the place, but no one is coming to Dead Rising for a perfectly crafted narrative experience. It's cheeky, over the top, and I wouldn't want it any other way. Most of this could be said about the base game, but it's more fun to experience it all as Frank.

However, if you play it coop, your partner NEEDS to be patient. You lose your entire inventory when you disconnect/reconnect, which will happen often thanks to random crashes, bugs, and network issues. While finding and creating strong weapon combinations is part of the point, it's incredibly frustrating to lose all of those weapons in the middle of a boss fight, and then lose even more time waiting for someone to reconnect and try to rebuild their kit before another attempt at said fight.

I beat this over a week ago and am not really sure what to say other than it's just kind of dumb fun. It's better than OG Dead Rising 2 but only because it adds stuff and gets rid of your annoying kid.

I played dead rising 2 when I was a kid and enjoyed it a lot back then. Playing it again, but the version that I never played is great fun.

The remixed story is cool even if it's just as dumb as it was the first round of dead rising 2. Combat is still clunky but fun with the new combo weapons. I barely explored the new area. Kind of surprised I didn't because I remember being pretty hype about this game when I was younger.

Stupid, dumb fun. Can't complain about that.