Dead Rising 2: Case Zero

In Dead Rising 2: Case 0 you play as Chuck Greene, the same protagonist in Dead Rising 2. Your first goal is to find a drug called Zombrex for your daughter, Katie. Zombrex is supposed to prevent people from turning into zombies, provided they take it every 12 hours. Soon after you start playing, Chuck ends up overhearing a government broadcast where they're talking about coming to town. Knowing that the government will take the infected Katie away to a quarantine area, he notices a motorcycle that he can use to get out of town. However, it's pretty busted up so he carts it back to the safehouse, and thus begins the main part of the game... collecting bike parts.

However, that's not all there is. During this part of the game you'll find a bunch more stuff to do. In fact, the amount of stuff they put in here is pretty surprising for a $5 game of this style. You can combine weapons, combine drinks, save survivors, find new outfits, and despite the town being fairly small, there's a good amount of nooks and crannies to explore to get around, unlock some doors, and make traversing the environment easier.

This is useful because like the first Dead Rising, the game works on a timer, keeping the pace of the game quick. In fact, the whole thing feels a lot like the first Dead Rising, right down to some of the zombie animations. However there are some noticeable improvements here and there, such as the ability to now move while aiming. The survivor's AI has seemed to be improved as well, and there's now more than one save slot you can save to.

As far as replay value goes, the game can be completed rather quickly. Although, calling it a demo would not be doing it justice. The game is odd in that you're almost forced to re-play it. Due to the timer mechanic, it's almost impossible to find all of the bike parts on your first playthrough, and like the original Dead Rising, you keep your level and abilities on subsequent playthoughs. This extends the game's length a bit, but feels somewhat cheap, simply forcing you to re-play through the game more than once. Despite that, I completed the game 100% within a few days, and while I was aching for more, I still felt like I got my $5 worth.

Overall, Dead Rising 2: Case 0 is an odd beast. The short length of the game, and the fact that it uses the same exact engine, makes you wonder if this may have simply been the original intro of the full Dead Rising 2 game, but Capcom released it here in order to have an exclusivity deal with Microsoft. This notion is very possible, but if this came out after Dead Rising 2 did as an exclusive DLC add-on, I think it'd be a lot less controversial. Despite all of that, Case 0 is still a fun yet flawed game, but well worth the price of admission.