Dead Rising 2 -- Final Opinion.

I've completed Dead Rising 2 with the full one-thousand points. It took numerous playthroughs to accomplish. The game doesn't have an in-game timer but if I had to estimate it would be around seventy plus hours. The game's basic mechanic revolves around replaying the game but even then it's rather surprising it takes that much time or maybe I'm just not remembering the effort put forth for the original Dead Rising correctly. Either way you're not going to put in such a major amount of effort on a title that's lackluster. Dead Rising 2 is a great game. Not a perfect game by any means, but a great game. A game that's more refined than the original while offering up everything that made the original what it was. Dead Rising's story as pure cheesy goodness and Dead Rising 2's story retains that cheesiness. Chuck Greene's adventure through Fortune City is every bit as entertaining as Frank West's adventure through the mall in the original. As far as gameplay mechanics are concerned, the controls feel improved over the original. They're tighter and a lot more responsive. The survivor AI is so improved as to make the difference night and day. Graphically the game is also improved. More zombies on screen at once and the world is filled with more detail. There seems to be far more to look at and notice in Dead Rising 2. Musically the game doesn't really feature any sort of standout tracks. Everything is just there. What's there is appropriate for what's on screen. Dead Rising 2 does have a few flaws. Mostly dealing with the psychopaths, the game's bosses. They are all conceptually sound, and a few of them are rather inspired in design. The problem comes in some awful hit detection and some cheap use of invulnerability frames. In the hit detection, you're literally swinging right through them. Do a jump kick and you literally go through the enemy? And when you do hit them, they get an extreme number of frames where they can't be hit again. Another area that's flawed concerns the case files and the timing. A timer appears on screen under each case or scoop. You only have so long to find them and deal with them. That sound fair. It is fair. I took my time and got a few things done while a case was active. I went to deal with the active case and had plenty of time. I deal with it and it moves on to the next case, but it then reveals that the timer was for the whole run of cases in that chapter. Not just 6-1 for example. But 6-1, 6-2, 6-3, and 6-4. I had no way of completing the following cases because it decided to switch things up on me. This is happens rather late in the game and I found it to be truly cheap and annoying. The game also features some rather long loading times while transitioning between areas. Those issues aside, Dead Rising 2 is great fun on the whole. I enjoyed the rather long time I spent with the game. I'm giving Dead Rising 2 a 9. I'm looking forward to Dead Rising: Case West. I'm sitting on Castlevania, and The Force Unleashed 2 and Fable 3 are out Tuesday. What to do...