Quick Review: Dead Rising 2: Case Zero
We shall never be free of zombies. This is the one overriding thing video games of the past ten years have continually taught me. No matter how hard we try, there’ll always be green, decaying brain-cravers stumbling their way through our video games. Dead Rising 2’s little vignette/sequel prequel/super-demo brings this zombie infestation to bear, with a literal smorgasbord of dead-walkers coming out to try and ruin the day of Chuck Greene, Dead Rising 2’s rough-and-tumble protagonist.
And herein lies Dead Rising 2: Case Zero’s greatest strength - the extent of zombies clogging your screen at all times. With seemingly zero dip in game performance there are multiple hundreds of zombies shambling towards you at any time. And even with these countless zombies inhabiting every facet of Still Creek the locale still remains beautiful; the dusty, sun-washed surroundings have a clean, crisp look, and those aforementioned brainless shamblers look good and move well too.
I’ll keep the storyline discussion to a minimum (even though there isn’t too much of one, this being a downloadable prequel after all), but you play a fleeing Chuck Greene, who along with his infected daughter Katie are trying to get as far away from a zombie-infested Las Vegas as possible, while maintaining a steady supply of Zombrex, some sort of anti-zombification drug, for Katie. Long story short your truck gets stolen and you’re stranded in Still Creek, a zombified shanty town. How ever will they escape?
The gameplay is much like that of the original Dead Rising, with everything running around a continuous time limit and objectives that need to be found and completed within a prompt time frame, as well as, you know, all them zombies trying to eat you going on as well. There are a few new tweaks added in, such as the ability to combine found objects in order to make new, crazier objects (DRILL BUCKET, that’s all I’m going to say. DRILL BUCKET) But the core gameplay style remains from the original Dead Rising, a game which I adored, but be warned if you weren’t a fan of the first you likely won’t change your mind with this continuation.
I really can’t recommend this game more. It looks beautiful, it plays well, hundreds of zombies (HUNDREDS!) coming at you at any one time, and with a price tag of only five dollars even if you weren’t a fan of the original it’s still such a low barrier for entry you should at least give the series a second chance.
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