Dead Rising 2: CASE Zero has zombies. Lots and lots of zombies.
It also has that other thing most often associated with anything undead and rotting – gloriously gratuitous violence. Double WIN, yes? So you may find it a bit strange that to me, what defines this XBLA game is neither the sea of zombies nor the accompanying bloodletting, but the concept of releasing a prequel chapter as a demo for a full-release game. It isn’t something you see everyday, and I can’t think of another recent game off the top of my head (barring the first Half-Life) whose ‘demo’ had all original content. In addition, the fact that CASE Zero was developed simultaneously with the main game has allowed Capcom and Blue Castle Games to semi-rationalise the pricing without compromising on quality to the extent that anyone dropping the 400 Microsoft Points shouldn’t feel like a zombie being clobbered over the head with a cricket bat (cookie for the reference).
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CASE Zero is set three years after the first game and two years prior to the events of the upcoming Dead Rising 2, and it introduces you to Chuck Greene and his daughter Katey on one of their stops en route to Fortune City. Stopping for gas promptly gets them in deep trouble and your immediate mission is to get them out of the small town they’ve found themselves in before either the zombies get them or the nefarious military folks comes calling.
This is not a demo, so do not let the price deter you. What Capcom has delivered is a standalone taster that maintains the same level of cinematic, graphical and gameplay quality that the retail release will have (and hopefully improve on). The cutscenes are wonderfully directed and voices (lets forget Dead Rising Sun ever happened, shall we?), and are deliberate enough to build atmosphere and tell a fully coherent story with oodles of character. Special mentions go to Chuck (with his obviously referential IJIEK motorcycle jacket) and the impossibly cute Katey. You do meet a succession of survivors scattered around town, but they have limited voiceover (charming, but something that hopefully won’t be an issue in the retail release) and your interactions with them are limited to a few errands and escort missions to your safehouse. Barring the wonderfully evil boss character, whom I wanted to see more of, you will come to care for Chuck and his daughter and the fix that they have found themselves in. I also found myself actually liking the cheesy guitar rock ditties that play during certain sequences in the game.
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This might also be a good time to warn you lot against believing everything you read on teh intarnet. You can (and most likely will) finish this game in under two hours, but the key to enjoying any Dead Rising experience (however big) is in replaying it over and over. I took me four playthroughs to complete all the tasks that you need to perform to get the best ending. Make no mistake, playing the game like a standard third-person actioner will get you nowhere fast. Not only are you not levelled up enough to deal with the epic numbers of zombies the game chucks at you, but their wanton slaughter will also waste crucial time that could otherwise be spent doing your adventuring tasks. There are six endings in all, and just staying in your safehouse and watching the time run out, or just stepping out of the safehouse, clobbering a load of zombies and then running back in, will get you an ending if that’s what floats your boat. The persistent game world and levelling up (which can be carried over to Dead Rising 2) ensures that even if crucial story events pass you by, you’ll still retain your character level on your next restart.
Adding to the time management mechanic that has been carried over from the first game is the added responsibility of keeping little Katey alive by way of a 12-hourly dose of the anti-zombification drug ‘Zombrex’. How this works within the framework of the game is that you take ever-so-short detours between running errands, rescuing survivors and trying to find a way out of town to either ferret out any Zombrex left around town by unfortunate previous owners, or by buying some from the pawn shop. Keep in mind that the pawn shop may not be available if you do miss out on a certain persistent event. Other notable additions to the previous game are the work benches that you find around town. These allow Chuck to fashion together new tools to maim the undead horde with, using anything he finds around town. Bolting one of these combo weapons together is also the only time Chuck cracks a smile in the entire game. It just works.
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Another carry over is the bathrooms, where you save your progress. You’ll still need to hoof it to the nearest lavatory every time you finish a mission, irrespective of whether you have any health or health recovering food items left over. This may sound annoying, but it is nowhere near as frustrating as it was in the first game. As someone who just couldn’t get along with Dead Rising, I can assure anyone on the fence that just the fact that the number of save games has been increased to three relieves a lot of your stress and allows for a fair bit of experimentation in the order as well as the method in which you approach different missions. Going from not playing over an hour of the first game to playing through CASE Zero four times and getting the best ending to boot is some leap. Props to Blue Castle Games for fine tuning the difficulty and to Capcom for not insisting on watching me punch myself a second time.
There’s very little I didn’t like about CASE Zero. The game does look great in terms of art direction, lighting and assets, but the load times entering and exiting safehouses is a pain to deal with, and the draw distance certainly isn’t what it should be. Do they deter the experience? No, but I certainly would like to see them fixed come September-end. Another point of note is your horrendous running speed. Granted, you are meant to level up your attributes as you start racking up the PP, but the only thing that could conceivably be slower than you when you start off would be, surprise, a zombie. Dead Rising 2 also has the ignominy of having one of the worst driving sequences in recent memory. There are no two ways about it. Not only does your vehicle control like a boat, but the camera is so skewed that you’ll never have a full view of the road in front of you. The only upside is that it doesn’t last very long.
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Conclusion
There is no way I cannot recommend Dead Rising 2: CASE Zero, especially at the current price point. Capcom should take heart that their experiment with outsourcing was not a complete failure, and Blue Castle Games have proven that they can hold their own against any established studio. It’s hard to think of another experience quite like Dead Rising, and in a risk-averse medium such as gaming, that is the biggest endorsement any game can hope to receive.