Dead Rising 2 is my introduction to the series, as the PC port of DR1 just wouldn’t work on my new Gigafuck 983478 desktop PC but works fine on my shitty laptop that’s over a decade old. Despite that, this seems like a pretty good sequel that understands the appeal of the original very well. Tonally, the first two DRs are the closest thing Capcom had to the Yakuza series, games with some pretty serious stories and are willing to try to touch some interesting themes (these ones through a satirical lens, much like Romero’s films, which I don’t think other zombie games have done), but completely embrace their own gameyness when it’s time to play, which serves as a great form of comedy. Videogames are almost inherently absurd and Japanese devs understand this very well, western devs usually struggle, and DR2 does have some crude and tryhard elements that from what I know, the sequels only amplify, like whenever the game tries to be “sexy” (every single cutscene with Rebecca), but it still manages to live up to the original, it doesn’t need to call attention to the fact that there are vending machines that give you guns. Partly, it lives up to the original because it repeats a lot of things from it, a negative for many, but it deserves to be commended as from what I know, they didn’t let them use the source code from the original, they recreated its systems from scratch, even if they copypasted some ads, music and the gym from the first game.

But while the structure and jank of the original remains, there’s actually a lot they put on top. Escorting survivors is better thanks to improved AI and an icon that tells you when they leave an area with you. They added a money system and shop that kinda works without taking away from the “survival” aspect, many minigames (including strip poker on the safehouse, which you could probably play for most of the game while ignoring the story) though many cost money, don’t earn you money and increase in price each time; a competitive online mode based around a reality TV show, co-op, and of course combo weapons. A great thing about combo weapons is that there are multiple ways of discovering them, just seeing that you can combine two items on the table without unlocking their card is great, but you also get combo cards by leveling up, defeating psychos that use them, or looking at posters for wacky movies. What I don’t like are scratch cards, if I made the weapon I should unlock the combo card, all they do is hide what attacks you can do with them and it’s not like they use a lot of buttons, so they’re kinda pointless.
Another big addition is Zombrex, every 24 hours you need to make sure you have some for Katey. Unfortunately, it’s not used to all its potential, the complaint that the locations where you find it should be randomized is common, but I think it could’ve been used in more missions as well. How about a survivor that will only give it to you if you do something for them with the option to trigger a boss fight as well? Or a rival for Chuck that also needs them for a loved one and randomly takes one from the map? Hell, even Leon could’ve been a cool Vergil if he kept coming back with different weapons.

As a newcomer, what really surprised me about the series was the music during the boss fights, and it’s weird that it’s not talked about more often. You just don’t expect nu-metal vocals to start blasting when fighting something as silly as an evil chef that throws pans at you and gorges himself on food to heal, but it’s very much welcome. After listening to the first game’s psycho themes, they seem a lot more varied, but I gotta respect the decision to have Celldweller of all groups to make all the themes here. It’s like they watched all those DMC4 combo MADs and said “yeah ok, let’s call this band Capcom fans like so much”. The fights against humans looking so jank and unlike what you usually see in games with this kind of music during battles only makes the whole thing even funnier.

The story shows a world trying to adapt after a zombie outbreak that was controlled, something I always like to see, it’s a bit muddled, asking the player to care about the cruelty of killing zombies for entertainment when it’s one of the main draws of the game and having some protesters be extremists that would rather see zombies kill their oppressors, and Chuck is a pretty boring, more typical hero compared to Frank West, but ultimately, “big pharma is evil” is a message I like, and one of the better endings has the unsettling implication that despite everything, the company only made more profit.

Some additional things I like and don’t like and don’t know how to structure:
- There’s a great sequence near the end where zombies enter your safehouse and you get to see survivors fight them off while you look for certain items in order to close the gate where they’re coming from, I just wish how many survivors you rescued factored in the difficulty.
- There’s no infinity/sandbox mode, feels kinda necessary with the additional Zombrex countdown this game has, you also can’t keep playing after Katey dies, it skips to a bad ending, but not immediately.
- When you learn the city is gonna get bombed, the countdown that used to show how long until you get rescued that you got so used to seeing is now on fire. Add that to the mutated zombies and how in the safehouse survivors act more desperate and have less and worse food in the kitchen as the game goes along, and you really feel how serious things are, since the game is usually weirdly comfortable with its routine-like gameplay loop, just nice little details.
- They never ported the DLC campaigns to PC! Two mini Dead Risings with new locations and psychos and they’re still stuck on the Xbox 360, what the hell?
- I really wish you could put markers and communicate in some way on multiplayer.
- The true final boss is fine except for one baffling design choice: you gotta use a crank every once in a while to stop Katey and Stacey from being killed, but the crank counts as an item in your inventory, so the only way to stop using it and not get sucker punched by the boss is to switch items instead of pressing E or something. Took me many deaths and hours until I realized that.