Dead Rising 2

[GreenGoo]

So this game is going on 9 years old at this point. I own it because I pay humble bundle a monthly stipend so they will bury me in games that I'll never install, let alone play. Except for some reason I wanted to play this one. I think I watched a youtube video once that spliced all the story cutscenes into a single coherent (mostly) video and so my interest was born. Maybe.

Anyway, I've been trying to play it for a few days now, and I've found myself repeatedly wanting to comment on it but we didn't have a thread. I didn't feel narcissistic enough to start a thread on a game that only I'm playing (probably) and only I'm interested in talking about (again, probably), but today's the day that that's changed.

This game is deceptively, and frustratingly difficult! It looks like and feels like an arcade game, with an overlying story and mostly escort missions (practically an entire game based on escort missions, everyone's favourite type of mission, right? W(ho)tf thought this was a good idea? Lots of people, apparently, since the serious is/was popular). Except you have to find a save point (any bathroom will do) and the game almost never saves outside of manual saves at save points. Long, hard fought escort mission? Better find a washroom quick. Forget to save and lose hours of play. I mean, when was the last time a game didn't automatically save when a mission completed? Frustrating. It's just not a mechanic that I'm used to, and I keep forgetting.

The missions, even story missions, are all on timers. What they don't tell you is that sometimes the current story mission and the next story mission after that share the same timer. Which means if you take too long to do the first mission, it is literally impossible to do the next story mission because the timer is too short and to the best of my knowledge there is no way to extend it. Fail a story mission, game over. Combine that with the 3 slot manual save system and you can find yourself hours into a game only to back yourself into a corner that you can't save scum out of. That's pretty absurd in 2019 (or even 2010 when the game was released).

Now the game is clearly intended to be played multiple times, and if you lose a game and start a new one, you start with all your levels and skills intact, making your second attempt easier than the first. In fact some guides recommend ignoring the story for your first several plays, farming exp first, losing, then restarting. That's...I mean, sure, I min-max with the best of them, but that is remarkably cynical and gamey even by my standards.

Ok, that's mostly what I needed to get off my chest. Next post will be less ranty.

[GreenGoo]

So the difficulties I mentioned were what drove me to start this thread.

However, I have given up on the game "permanently" at least 5 times now, and yet I keep coming back to it after a cooling off period. It's fun. You run around slaughtering zombies by the hundreds, picking up tools, weapons and environmental objects to use against them. You can also "craft" new weapons at workbenches scattered around the map. They are called combo weapons and they are just putting 2 objects together (never 3+). Some of them are fun, some of them are hilarious, and some are mostly useless.

A spiked baseball bat is a staple, and you'll use them in droves. I forgot to mention, all items have a durability. You can't see the durability, and only when it starts to flash red do you know it's about to break. Once it breaks, it's gone. They can't be repaired either. The design is to force you to be constantly finding, building and using new weapons. It works. All weapons are ephemeral. They rarely last (if ever?) more than a few minutes of use. Weapon slots are limited, but you gain additional ones as you level up. Once you make peace with that (and the game makes it clear that anything you're holding is an improvised, temporary solution at best) you can move forward.

The game is clever in ways that I'm still discovering. My most recent rage-quit (well, frustratedly annoyed-quit) was during an escort mission of a little old lady (who's blind, apparently. I didn't realize it at the time). She is SLOW. Zombies are constantly coming at you (the game is infinite zombies, although you can clear paths and such) and your weapons have durability and you can only carry so many of them. So she's slow, zombies are everywhere, your weapons are breaking, you are running out of weapons, and she has some pathfinding issues (I cleared a staircase and she refused to use it. She always diverted to a nearby staircase that I hadn't cleared, mostly because it was filled with zombies). I was pulling my hair out. And the mission was talking so long that the timer on a story mission ran out. Seriously frustrating stuff. Turns out you can just pick her up and run. D'oh. The clever bit is that you can use a wheelchair and drop her in it, then drive the wheelchair through the zombies like a snowplow. Double d'oh.

So despite an fairly simple premise, fairly simple gameplay (on the surface anyway), and annoying save system, the game has some depth that might surprise you, and the fun might keep you coming back, and once you become accustomed to game mechanics, everything annoyed you will probably take a back seat to the fun.

What a weird little game. Since there are 4 of them I guess they are popular enough. This is my first time playing one though, and it's taking some getting used to.

[Smoove_B]

I've never wanted to love a game series more than the Dead Rising franchise. I've purchased, started, restarted and quit all of them, either on my PC or console. For me, the failures always come down to the game play and my feeling that they want you really play the games over and over and over again using what you've earned or have learned to make the next trip easier. I'm just not into that kind of game.

[GreenGoo]

I can't play it. Unlike the timers in, say, Xcom, where my level of play is seriously challenged in an fun way, I want to play this game more casually and the time limits on almost literally everything is killing it for me. I just do not want that additional pressure hanging over me, because I don't want to play Dead Rising 2 at a higher level of skill.

It sucks, but there it is. The timers have killed it for me.

[Sepiche]

FWIW You can ignore every timer and do what you want with the only downside being you get a bad ending (although I think you still need to get your little girls medication).

I recall playing through a few times just ignoring most everything and exploring before I went back and actually tried to finish the story.

[GreenGoo]

FWIW You can ignore every timer and do what you want with the only downside being you get a bad ending (although I think you still need to get your little girls medication).

If the main story timer runs out, the game ends. The main story consists of a number of back to back "cases" each day, so there are multiple timers. Some of these cases are on individual timers, but some share the same timer. To the best of my knowledge you don't know which are which, although there are lots of cool interface features and I wouldn't be surprised to find out I missed this info somewhere.

If the escort missions timers runs out, the escort target dies. Actually I don't know what happens if it runs out mid-escort. I think they still die. But that's all there is to the game, at least all the structure anyway. Without the escort or main story missions, there is nothing else to do but sandbox and kill millions and millions of zombies. The zombie killing is fun, but it's not fun enough to be a game unto itself. Plus I need an overarching storyline to keep me engaged and motivated.

I have tried to enjoy the game. Just writing this post I can feel the temptation to load it up again, but every time I do that, I die a little inside when I find it more frustrating than fun. Honestly, if this was my main game and I was focused and interested in putting in real gaming effort rather than just a quick pickup game, it wouldn't be a problem. The problem isn't the timers, the problem is me with regard to the timers.

edit: There were literally 15+ typos in this post. That's nuts. I'm gonna ask my wife if she thinks I've had a stroke when I see her.

[JCC]

Never played the sequels, but the original just drove me crazy. The damn timer mechanic ruined what was otherwise a super fun game. It's just confounds me that not only did the devs not realize that many people would quit in frustration over this mechanic, AND not only did they refuse to patch in an "easy" or "casual" mode that eliminates it, but that they also maintained the divisive, rage inducing mechanic in the sequel.

(I got angry all over again typing this post. Fuck Dead Rising.)