Gameplay
The player controls protagonist Chuck Greene as he fights off hordes of zombies while accomplishing specific missions. The game includes several new objects that can be used to attack the zombies. Up to 7,000 zombies can be seen onscreen at the same time.
Dead Rising 2 allows players to manufacture their own custom weapons at various points in the game by collecting items and combining them together in maintenance rooms scattered across the game map. The player also has the ability to unlock "combo cards" that reveal weapons that can be combined together. Such combinations include the "Hail Mary," a hand grenade duct taped to a football, "Dynameat," a stick of dynamite duct taped to a piece of meat, the "Paddlesaw," two chainsaws duct taped to a kayak paddle, and "Spiked Bat" which is a baseball bat with nails hammered through the item.
Like the first game, boss fights are represented by 'psychopaths', people who have either been driven insane by the zombie outbreak or are taking advantage of it to fulfill their cruel desires.
Story
Five years after the events of Dead Rising, former motocross champion Chuck Greene is in the fictional casino town of Fortune City, Nevada, to take part in Terror Is Reality, a controversial sports entertainment game show where contestants kill zombies. Chuck needs the prize money to buy Zombrex (a daily medication that suppresses the zombification process) for his daughter Katey, who was bitten by her zombified mother during a previous outbreak in Las Vegas. While backstage after the show, the show's supply of zombies is released; Chuck rescues Katey and makes his way to an emergency shelter, which is sealed after their arrival. Raymond Sullivan (the only security guard to reach the shelter alive) is initially reluctant to let the infected Katey in, but Chuck promises to keep her supplied with Zombrex until the military arrives in three days.
Chuck needs to venture into the overrun city to find a dose of Zombrex, entering and exiting the shelter via an air duct. Another survivor, Stacey Forsythe (leader of the Nevada branch of zombie rights organization "Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality", which was in town to protest the treatment of the zombies by Terror is Reality) supplies him with a map and two-way radio; she promises to keep watch on the shelter's security monitors and direct Chuck to any other survivors or points of interest in the area. After returning with the first dose of Zombrex for Katey, a news report implicates Chuck as the cause of the Fortune City outbreak. Chuck tracks down the reporter, Rebecca Chang, at a nearby hotel, and offers her the story of a lifetime if she gives him a chance to prove his innocence and helps him determine who was really behind the outbreak. Following this, Chuck has three main objectives to complete: discover the origin of the Fortune City outbreak by following the "Case File" missions, rescue as many survivors as possible (either from zombies, or from the 'psychopath' boss characters), and find enough doses of Zombrex to keep Katey alive until the military arrives.
Chuck and Rebecca discover that Terror is Reality host Tyrone "TK" King is using the outbreak as cover to rob Fortune City's four main casinos. Chuck foils the robberies and prevents the host from escaping in his helicopter. TK is locked up in the shelter, and reveals that another organisation responsible for the outbreak paid him to frame Chuck for it. Three days after the outbreak, the military arrives, but a green gas begins emanating from underground and causes zombies to mutate into a more powerful form. The convoy is unprepared to deal with the super-zombies, and is wiped out almost completely. A second military force would normally arrive 24 hours later, but media reports claim that the first convoy reached the shelter and found no survivors, so the city will be cleansed by firebombing at that time. The safe house is also sabotaged, and Chuck must quickly repair the door before too many zombies enter. Regardless of the player's actions, TK is bitten, and needs Zombrex to survive. Rebecca reveals the cause of the gas seems to be in the underground access tunnels, and Chuck finds a hidden facility where pharmaceutical company Phenotrans, the makers of Zombrex, is harvesting the zombies. The drug is manufactured from the queens of the genetically modified wasps that create zombies; the gas released by the Phenotrans facility is intended to increase the number of queens in a zombie horde. Chuck recovers a satellite phone and a laptop from the facility and takes them to Rebecca as proof the Phenotrans orchestrated the outbreak in order to harvest more queens, while driving up demand for Zombrex. Just as Rebecca attempts to contact her news station and report the discovery, Sullivan shoots her dead. Sullivan is revealed as a Phenotrans operative; he was the one who let the Terror is Reality zombies out, and the one who sabotaged the shelter. He escapes with the phone and laptop, and Chuck follows him to a casino rooftop, where he plans to escape by skyhook, but Chuck handcuffs his harness to the rooftop, ripping him in half when the recovery aircraft catches the skyhook. Chuck contacts Rebecca's channel and offers to give them proof of Phenotrans' involvement in the outbreak if they send helicopters to rescue the survivors.
Endings
There are six possible endings for Dead Rising 2, depending on the player's actions during the game.
The two primary endings are:
- Ending A (achieved if the player completes all Case Files and gives Katey all required Zombrex doses, but does not give TK a dose of Zombrex; revealed canon ending)
- The station sends a convoy of news helicopters to evacuate the shelter, one of which collects Chuck from the hotel roof and drops him at the shelter. Stacey brings a sleeping Katey to the helicopter, but Katey's bag, containing her mother's possessions, is accidentally dropped by the elevator. Chuck goes to grab it, but is ambushed by the zombiefied TK and several other zombies. He throws the bag to Stacey, and tells her to take care of Katey as he is dragged into the elevator. The epilogue states the city is bombed, but Chuck is cleared of his accused involvement in the outbreak and is praised as a hero. However, Phenotrans shares rise in price, and Chuck's fate is unknown. This ending is a canon ending to Dead Rising 2: Case West in the intro where Frank West finds Chuck almost being bitten by the zombie TK and rescues him.
- Ending S (as above, but TK is given Zombrex)
- Chuck calls off the bombing. He arrives back at the shelter to find the civilians being evacuated, but Stacey and Katey are not among them. He searches the control room and finds Katey's backpack. The game then goes into "Overtime Mode". Chuck receives a radio transmission from TK, who has kidnapped Stacey and Katey; he tells Chuck to collect several items from around Fortune City and bring them to the Terror Is Reality arena by noon (10 hours away). Chuck does so, but is tasered on arrival by TK and wakes up suspended over a pit of zombies, alongside Katey and Stacey. Chuck frees himself and climbs up to the rafters, where he fights TK. After overpowering TK and throwing him to the zombies, Chuck frees the other two, and they leave the city hand-in-hand. If the player fails to collect the items within the time limit or does not defeat TK in time, the two girls are lowered into the zombie pit and killed. This ending was the original canon ending of the game before the release of Dead Rising 2: Case West. (Although it is possible that TK zombifies after the fall, and the rest plays out like Ending A, thus making this possibly canon with Case West.)
The other four endings occur if the player fails to complete particular tasks:
- Ending B occurs if the player fails to complete a Case File mission after the attempted military rescue occurs, or fails to defeat Sullivan before the "Firebombing" timer runs out. Fortune City is bombed, as the U.S. government cannot contain the zombie outbreak any other way. The end text states that there were no recorded survivors of the outbreak, although if they were killed by the zombies or the bombing is unknown.
- Ending C comes from the failure of a Case File before the attempted rescue. Chuck, Stacey, Rebecca, and Katey watch the arrival of the military on the shelter monitors, but are startled by the sound of gunfire. Chuck goes to investigate, but as he reaches the open security room door, he pauses to look at the attacker (offscreen, but most likely Sullivan) before being shot. As with Ending B, the end text indicates the failure of the rescue, the subsequent bombing, and the death of the survivors.
- Ending D is the result of Chuck not being in the emergency shelter when the military arrives on the third day, regardless of the status of the Case Files or Katey's Zombrex missions. The screen blanks, and Chuck comes to in the back of a military vehicle, surrounded by soldiers, who have been ordered to detain him for prosecution. The vehicle is surrounded by the sound of heavy gunfire, then suddenly stops. As the door opens, the green super-zombie gas appears and the screen cuts to black. The end text claims that the rescue operation was a disaster, as the military was not prepared for what they found. None of the people in the shelter are recorded to survive, and Chuck was remembered as the sole cause of the Fortune City outbreak.
| Reception | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Aggregator | Score |
| GameRankings | (X360) 80.28% (PS3) 79.81% (PC) 77.19% |
| Metacritic | (X360) 79/100 (PS3) 80/100 (PC) 78/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| 1UP.com | B+ |
| Eurogamer | 8/10 |
| PrideGameingNetwork | 8.5/10 |
| Game Informer | 9.5/10 |
| GamePro |   |
| Game Revolution | B+ |
| GameSpot | 8.5/10 |
| GameSpy |  |
| GamesTM | 7/10 |
| GameTrailers | 8.1/10 |
| IGN | 8.0/10 |
| PrideGamingNetwork | 9/10 |
No comments:
Post a Comment