Dead Rising 2: Multiplayer

Welcome to Part Two of my review of Dead Rising 2, in which I address the games Cooperative play, Multiplayer modes, and some other stuff I might’ve missed in my initial review of the Single player Campaign.

Now, like some other reviews and many other gamers, I, on average, prefer a single-player campaign or story over multiplayer. Co-op is perfectly fine, I mean, Left 4 Dead is just stupid fun for me, but, I hate it when developers focus too much on the multiplayer aspect than the story or main selling point of the game (see: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, BioShock 2). I don’t believe in Multiplayer being a box blurb. I believe in it as a fun feature (Halo) but in addition to something that I could pick up and play if I was offline.

Loved:
Co-op Doesn’t Break things: The drop-in/out cooperative features behind Dead Rising 2 are actually pretty simple, and I like that. Two players (both as their chosen save files version of Chuck Greene) basically in the same game space, playing through the game, or just having some Zombie killing fun. Going out into the outside portions of Fortune City, taping some Chainsaws (or stuffed animals. . .) to your Dirt-bike and heading straight into a horde is just as much as fun as before. The co-op adds some fun and keeps things moving when you may be replaying the story for some achievements, and want some companionship outside the game’s needy survivors. The co-op isn’t revolutionizing – it’s just there. And I’m comfortable with that. Two Chucks are confined to the same space, and have to voluntarily be near each other to transition to another.

Terror is Reality. I’m a big fan of World War Z and just Zombies in general. While Dead Rising conveys a world where Zombies, while not the norm, are still a real thing, Terror is Reality perfectly conveys to me what we (or at least, America) would do if we got the situation contained and had a couple thousand left-overs. Enter the multiplayer mode of Dead Rising 2, in which four players compete in American Gladiator-like challenges in the form of ‘Terror is Reality Seventeen: Payback’. Things are simple enough, you’re given an objective and go nuts with three friends (Or online opponents) compete with you. The player can win cash that they can use in-game, and anyone who enjoyed the beginning of the game with the ‘Slicycles’ will revel in these challenges. I encountered some glitches while playing, but nothing game-breaking, and I didn’t mind the challenges difficulty as they were pretty balanced.

This multiplayer mode, like the Co-op, fits into its own little niche that really isn’t a bad thing. It’s there as a feature and isn’t something as devoted to as other games. It has Ranked Matchmaking but from what I can tell, Ranks are invisible and limited to victories or kills, not so much overall skill (They’re A.I Zombies, not Jimmy-Screams-A lot in Jersey). The events are narrated by two commentators not unlike those in professional wrestling or Football. These two are fun to listen to and will make some jokes that may catch you off guard (See: Sparkling Zombies).

Hated:

You Won’t Chop Til’ You Drop. Maybe I’m missing something here, and haven’t unlocked it or something, but, the first Dead Rising had a game-play mode in which the player was perpetually in the Willamette Mall, and was basically just seeing how long they could survive, and how many Zombies/Psychopaths they could kill. This would be so freakin’ awesome with two (or, dare I suggest. . .four?) people, but instead, you can’t even play it with one as it has been removed (or is cleverly hidden…). Now, I understand if the Single-player is easy enough to just save and then go nuts, dealing with a bad ending later down the road, but come on. This was a missed opportunity for some shenanigans that would’ve added a good amount of replay-ability. Maybe it’s because this Dead Rising feels easier, maybe it’s because missing the first Case just kills the story missions anyway, but I would’ve liked this mode.

Dead Rising 2’s prologue, and epilogue (CASE: Zero and CASE: West, respectively) are downloadable content that are (that we know of) exclusive to the Xbox 360 version of the Dead Rising story. Now, other than “Chop ‘Til You Drop” on the Wii, the first Dead Rising remains an Xbox 360 exclusive. ‘Chop’ had way less content than the 360 version (not all because of technical limitations). Normally I don’t really care about exclusitivity (I don’t own a PS3, and a good chunk of the time, 360 gets most of the exclusives) but since Zero and West are out so close to the launch of DEADRISING 2, I wonder why the game couldn’t wait a few months to just add these onto the disc. Maybe they came about after the game was ‘completed’, or maybe the game had gone gold before they were ordered but with them being launched so close to the full release, they may as well have been bundled in the game or maybe even just ‘High-Stakes’ Editions of the game getting early access to West and a free download to Zero. I’m sure down the line the ‘Game of the Year’ or whatever edition will come out and it’ll have this content booted in, but, just to nit-pick a little, it would’ve been nice gesture to add these into the full game.

Dead Rising 2 is everything that they said she’d be – and that’s a good thing. The co=op and multiplayer are balanced in the fact that this is a game about killing zombies. Even if players controlled the Infected, they’d just limp slowly. It’s balanced because of the medium. I just hope Dead Space 2 takes a page from this and makes sure the Co-op isn’t breaking. . . .