A bite of the action to come.
Two weeks before the release of Dead Rising 2 proper saw the release of what can been seen as an experimental game release. All at once a prequel, demo and stand alone arcade title exclusive to 360. Dead Rising case 0 is an interesting experiment.
Allowing people to get used to dead risings new protagonist Chuck Greene and the changes due in the upcoming full dead rising 2.
Case zero is set a few years (as far as we can tell) before the events of DR2, there’s been an outbreak in chucks home of las Vegas and Chuck has fled with his daughter Katey to a nearby town.
Chuck is then faced with a 24 hour based quest to find his daughter the zombification protection medicine Zombrex, which she needs every 12 hours to stave off infection, and to locate a means of escape from the now zombie filled town.
Game play is much the same as the original dead rising. There are no massive changes in game play style or fighting mechanics. The biggest additions come in the form of chucks ability to create new weapons via combining two other items together. This is case zeros first introduction of dr2 based play. And though it does not change the fight system at its core it does give the player many more fun ways to tackle the zombie masses.
The games tight time based format is also being teased here. Less well thought out for this mini adventure then in the earlier game, the early sections of the game feeling a little slow and later sections too short on time for your first couple of playthroughs.
This is how dead rising has always been, but in this it feels a little too ill planned, but this can be forgiven in this smaller game, developed alongside the eventual dr2 proper. Zombies are much more aggressive then they once were and although not as visually attractive as other game modals, far more varied then the original games zombie hoard and much more fun to destroy. The few items on show here all give you a number of ways to carve up, dice and explode a few zombie heads into chunks.
Its not just zombies that you have to contend with, fellow human survivors also provide problems to be solved or confronted with violence.
Bringing back the fun, but frustrating escorts from the first game and even throwing in a last section boss battle. This fight is short and a little disappointing but is a good change of pace none the less.
The game packs a good amount of story into its short run time and gives you a good example of what’s to come. The flaws that were apparent in dead rising past are still apparent here, but they have never been such that they detract from the games overall experience. Also the 400 price point is pretty hard to turn down.
If you’ve not played the first dead rising before then this will not likely convince you of the upcoming 2 games merits right away, but stick to it and you’ll find an addictive formula and fun game play. If you have then you’ll not see a lot of difference but you will likely be gagging to get your hands on the full edition of dead rising 2.
