Dead Rising 2: Off The Record Review

It just wouldn’t be a Dead Rising game without tons of zombies and Off the Record spews out zombies by the truck load. Dead Rising is also known for its variety pack of obscure weapons which you can find and/or make yourself, but to be honest, killing zombies isn’t what it’s all made up to be. In fact it gets to be a nuisance as they just don’t seem to die sometimes. Killing one zombie means about 20 are born which means if you don’t have good enough weapons or a way to kill a ton of zombies at once, you can be sure that you won’t survive for very long. This limits weapons exploration as you’ll come to find that you only really need one or two really strong weapons. Why use the wrench when you can just make a defiler using a sledgehammer and a fire axe? But this of course changes once you move over to the new Sandbox Mode which you can use as a tool to earn extra money and PP as you kill zombies and complete challenges without the need to complete Cases.

Psychopaths are back again and are as obnoxious as ever. Each one requires a very specific strategy which is all well and good until they start throwing things at you and in a game where all you have is a dodge button and very few defensive items, this can prove to be quite difficult to manoeuvre. Thankfully if you die while fighting any of the Psychopaths, instead of being sent back to your last Save Point, you’ll be able to go back to the last checkpoint with the same weapons and health amount as you did before. But to be honest, there are some psychopaths whose attack patterns are just far too mean to get past especially when you’re a lowly level 5 or so.

When stuck on a particular enemy, sometimes it’s just best to start the whole story over as your stats stay the same. You’ll lose all combo cards and such, but all skills remain making for a much easier experience. It might also be the best option if you're finding a specific case too hard - you can just level up a bit and tackle it again later.

The atmosphere of this game is much like you would expect; plenty of areas decorated with flesh eating zombies, frightened survivors, and other extremely obscure things. There’s one new area featured in Off the Record called Uranus Zone which offers new games and a new place for major plot points to occur. Unfortunately it doesn't offer much more than that.

And that's one of the main stickling points with Off The Record. It's the fourth installment into a single game - a very odd scenario and it's hard to really understand why there are four Dead Rising 2 games. It's great that Frank is back and that they could add a few little things in there, but why couldn't more time just be put into the development of Dead Rising 3, or something else that shows a bit more creativity?