Thoughts on Dead Rising 2

I got my copy of Dead Rising 2 earlier this week and while I have not had an extensive amount of time to play through it I have given it something of a perusal. My opinion? I like it, but not as much as the first one.

The big issue I have is the size of the game, this time you have a small town to run around and collect stuff from, as opposed to a large mall from the first one. If you're into a sandbox experience it's the very best thing you can imagine, but I found it to be a bit overwhelming.

The part of the DR games that appeal to me are the "quests", for lack of a better term, the rescuing of survivors and gathering of information to solve the mystery. With such an enormous area to cover it can be difficult to make your way around, gather information, survivors, and material for weapons and actually get immersed in the game.

The new weapon system is cool, creating weapons from spare parts, but again it can be difficult to experiment greatly due to the distance you have to cover to find said material. The really crumby part is that the normal weapons don't do nearly the damage that the combo weapons do so you pretty much have to search.

I guess the problems I have aren't that big and can be written off as pluses for the game play (using the same arguments I gave for the save and timer systems in DR1) but they detract from some of the magic of the first one.

At least there is no longer a problem with Otis and his radio of death; you still carry a radio and get messages, but instead of having to stand and listen to them while zombies surround you they show up in a written, pseudo-text, style message that can reviewed at your leisure, the radio signal is essentially just an indicator that a message is waiting.

DR1 was a solid 10/10 for me so I would put this at 8/10; I like it and I enjoy it, but it's not quite as shiny.