Dead Rising: Off the Record
So you played Dead Rising and you played Dead Rising 2. What now? Well, now there is a new re-imagining of the second game, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. And it’s just in time for Haloween. Off the Record has new missions, new cut scenes, different environments and most importantly new and inventive weapons.
Photojournalist and zombie-killer-extraordinaire Frank West is back, and he's ready for action in the new Dead Rising 2: Off the Record.
Game Specifications: Tech Details
For all of the software technically-minded of you gamers out there I’ll give you a bit of the techy detail – in this new version there are several system upgrades including faster loading times and improved network performance. All thanks to the clever boys and girls over at game developers Capcom.
Photography Mini-game:
Fans of the photography mini-game from the original Dead Rising will be pleased as this element has been brought back and taking photographs scores you PP. Note… PP allow you to ‘level up’ as well as improving your character’s health and giving him extra item slots. The photograph mini-game is inventive as with the rest of the game, there is a certain dark humour of course with PP being awarded for photographs that are especially gory, brutal or even erotic. That said it took me more than a few attempts to get used to taking photos. Which leads us nicely to controls.
Controls:
The controls are fairly simplistic (apart from the aforementioned photography), hit, jump, run, aim… and it’ll not take you more than a few minutes to familiarise yourself with the required buttons. Although you may find that extended play leads to aching fingers and thumbs as there is a lot of repetitive button pressing required. Especially if you’re the sort of games player to finish a game in a weekend or to spend the majority of a weekend playing a game in order to review it. Ouch.
Co-op:
There is also a co-op mode. I can’t tell you much about this because I didn’t get a chance to play in this mode.
Sandbox Mode: It’s a Stroll in the Mall
This is where the game scores highly. The new sandbox mode – made so popular by other games such as Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead – means that you can now just pick up a controller and explore Fortune City for as long as you want to without the inconvenience of a timer counting down or the need to complete a specific task in order to progress. In sandbox mode you can wander around the mall killing zombies in the most exciting and inventive of ways and whilst it won’t get you anywhere in terms of completing the game there are various challenges to complete to increase your Prestige Points (PP) score and you will no doubt enjoy spending time perfecting the most gruesome ways to kill zombies as well putting together some of the most exciting and murderous combo weapons. I know I certainly did! Some gamers might feel that the sandbox mode is an unwarranted addition but I loved it. I think it’s worth the price of the game itself just to be able to play in sandbox mode.
Custom Weapons: The awesome Paddlesaw and more...
To create your own custom weapons you must first collect various weapons that can be combined together to make something new and then head to one of the numerous maintenance rooms which are located around the game of play. Cards suggesting which weapons can be combined are unlocked along the way so you’ll not just have to guess, but be guided in what to do. It’s not exactly as obvious as it might at first sound. I tried on occasion to combine several different weapons and, to my dismay, found that they couldn’t be combined. However I needn’t have worried because the game designers have come up with some real gruesome beauties such as my personal favourite the ‘Paddlesaw’ which is made up of two (yes two!!) chainsaws duct taped to a kayak paddle… simply awesome… also available for your killing delight is the less inventive - but still rather handy to have in a fight with the undead – ‘Spiked Bat’ quite simply a baseball bat with nails hammered through it and the ‘Hail Mary’ which is a hand grenade duct taped to a football – genius! Or the ‘Dynameat’ similar in premise to the ‘Hail Mary’ but slightly more sadistic - a stick of dynamite duct taped to a piece of meat… just throw it and stand back. The blood… the death… the fun… … ah the sheer insanity of this game is well worth the (discounted) asking price of SRP of £24.99. The only problems with the combo weapon making element is that Frank never seems to have enough item slots to carry everything that you might need. Which I guess is why you have to go to the maintenance rooms to store items and then combine them.
This reminds me of the Spectrum 128k game ‘Dizzy’ (the game with the egg that was the hero and you had to save the Princess and his extended family by using objects to achieve various tasks… it’s a classic). A friend of mine once used to use a specific room to store particular items that might be needed at a later juncture in the game to do something specific. I always thought it was a very intelligent idea and used it myself to good effect. I’m not sure that I ever finished a single Dizzy game but I imagine that my friend completed them all.
Big Bosses: Die Harder
So the zombies are pretty easy to kill right? Well they are undead. So you need more of a challenge. Okay, understood, try this… big bosses are included in the game, but they’re not mindless zombies that can be smashed, slashed or bashed to death with a simple baseball bat, machete or a mall bench or vending machine to the head, but humans driven mad by the zombies. They have their own weapons and a health bar that make them much tougher to kill than the zombies.
Final Thoughts:
The whole game is very entertaining, the dark sense of humour is just right and whilst it’s not for kids it’s not overly gory for your average gamer. I wasn’t overly excited by the photography mini-game, although I’d be lying if I didn’t say it evoked more than a few laughs. And I really liked the inclusion of the occasion third-person pull back from the action when you kill a zombie in a particularly interesting way, which means that you can see the kill happening from above or the side rather than from Frank’s point of view. I also loved the combo weapon building.
