Following up on the financially successful and critically welcomed Dead Rising from four years ago, Capcom is releasing Dead Rising 2 at the end of the month. As a precursor to DR2, the developers of the game, Blue Castle Games, are releasing a Xbox Live Arcade title, Dead Rising 2: Case Zero. This downloadable title (priced at $5) sets the stage for the opening of Dead Rising 2 and also allows the player to start building their character stats up early. The narrative is structured around Chuck Greene, a father trying to keep his daughter Katey safe from becoming zombie food. Also, Katey has already been bit by a zombie and is only staying human while Chuck can supply he with a steady stream of Zombrex, a medicine that keeps humans from turning into the undead. Their story picks up in Still Creek, a town outside of Vegas. Chuck’s supply of Zombrex gets jacked (along with his ride) and he has 12 hours to find more before his daughter turns as well as get some new wheels.



If you played the original Dead Rising, you will be extremely familiar with the design of the gameplay. The clock has returned to set a time limit on your progress throughout the game. It’s still just as frustrating to run out of time for completing all the tasks in the game world, hence you have to play the game over again to try and do things faster. There are still plenty of fetch quests as well as saving other humans and protecting them from being eaten. There are still plenty of different outfits for Chuck to wear and weapons for him to swing around like the first game.

There are a few key differences though. There’s a new combo system that allows Chuck to combine objects to build more powerful weapons or drink mixtures. Want to charge up a metal yard tool with a household battery for electrocuting zombies? You can do that. Want to duct tape firearms to melee weapons? You can do that. Want to turn your bat into a makeshift mace with a box of metal nails? You can do that. The combo system brings more personality into the game as well as making the weapons more durable. The magazine system is back as well, offering boosts to Chuck for carrying them in his inventory. It’s a bit tough to assign an inventory slot to a magazine though as Chuck only gets 4 slots for weapons and magazines.



The controls are pretty much identical to the previous title, which may be good or bad from your perspective. The main character isn’t as responsive as he should be and situations like driving are still hopelessly flawed. There’s only one boss battle in the short prequel which is pretty entertaining, however short lived. The fight lacks in difficulty, but I’m guessing that it revs up in difficulty in the main game later this month.

Once you complete a run though of the game, you will be assigned a score, basically rating your performance. Starting a new game uses the stats earn in the previous game and builds on them. In addition, these stats will carry over into Dead Rising 2. There are also multiple endings in Case Zero, extending the life of the title a bit. The achievement set is pretty complex and will likely require playing the story a few times. Killing 100 zombies or building a combo weapon is easy enough, but saving all the survivors or spending $100K in the pawn shop takes some time.

Graphics

• The visuals in the game may look dated to you and rightly so. Dead Rising 2: Case Zero seems very similar to the first Dead Rising. Textures can be a little fuzzy at times and there are some pop-in issues when there are too many characters on the screen. Animations are slow and clunky as well.


• There’s also a variety of loading time issues reminiscent of old school Resident Evil on the Playstation. Every time the player exits or enters a building, you get to wait on a loading screen. It’s pretty annoying and something that shouldn’t be happening this late in the life cycle of the Xbox 360.

Audio

• There’s a limited number of voiceovers in the Xbox Live title, pretty much just the voices of Chuck Greene and his zombified daughter. The remainder of the characters use on-screen text to “speak” to the player. I hope this is only limited to Dead Zero as the plethora of cutscene voiceovers in the first title were pretty decent.


• The sound effects are solid though, many of which simply comprised moaning zombies and the satisfying crunch of zombie brain from Chuck’s nail bat. The town is relatively quiet though and there are few musical tracks in the game.

Conclusion

This type of Xbox Live title has been done before. Similar to Fable 2 Pub Games, Frank can take all that PP experience, money and combo cards into Dead Rising 2 at the end of the month for a slightly extra boost to your starting character. Some may claim that Dead Zero is simply an overpriced demo of the upcoming sequel, but there’s enough content and features to claim otherwise.

That being said, the graphical issues, loading times, slow narrative and occasionally frustrating control scheme doesn’t really do the game any favors. If you were already planning on picking up Dead Rising 2 in a few weeks, Case Zero is right up your alley. Those looking for a standard action-adventure Xbox Live title should probably look elsewhere.

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