 | X10: Dead Rising 2 Hands On Preview - Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right, They Make a Weapon Written Monday, February 15, 2010 By Dan Webb View author's profile |
I don’t know about your house, but in my house, killing zombies for sport has become one of our favourite pastimes… it ranks right up there with shooting the neighbour’s cat with a BB gun for pissing on our prize-winning begonias. Luckily for me then (and that neighbour’s cat), nestled away in the hustle and bustle of this year’s X10 sat a handful of Dead Rising 2 stations with more than enough zombies to satisfy my sadistic-zombie killing needs.
Starting off with a trusty sledgehammer, we waded through the relatively sparse maintenance passages of Fortune City. Tapping X while holding one of the game’s many weapons will perform a “light” attack – although a light attack with a sledgehammer was pretty heavy – whilst holding X would get our new main man, Chuck, to perform a “heavy” attack. On this occasion the two resulted in two totally different moves, with the light attack resulting in a quick swipe and the heavy attack resulting in a slow, cumbersome stomp. The difference? The light attack may just be enough to down one of your brain-dead foes, whilst the heavy attack was more than powerful enough to crush the zombie’s skull, rendering the undead... dead.
Even if weapon creation system isn’t for you and you just want to pile into the masses of zombies without having to search for the ingredients of a super weapon, there are more than enough unique weapons lying around to fulfil that need. For instance, jabbing a set of rockets into a zombie’s head using the heavy attack approach will end in hilarity as the zombie becomes a walking time bomb. If all else fails, then the shop’s your best bet, selling a wide variety of weapons for varying prices - our favourite, the lawnmower than can turn a solitary zombie into a pile of mush with its heavy attack. The weapon system in a lot of regards is similar to its predecessor’s, with the ability to hold multiple weapons and of course, the degradability of said weapons. The weapons on the whole seemed to last for a good 30 zombie kills from what we experienced, but therein lies part of the problem, especially so with the homemade concoctions. It seems that you spend so long searching for specific weapons to assemble your weapon of choice, that when you finally do, they literally break a few short moments later. It would be nice to see Blue Castle Games balance this out a little more for the final retail version, making the time spent hunting for weapon ingredients worth it. Killing zombies isn’t the only way to boost PP; you can also visit context specific zones for an added PP boost, although it will cost you. In this instance, a quick $1,000 will allow you to visit a “peep show” where you will net you 250 PP for about 2 seconds of work. Visit all 3 peep shows – which are next door to one another – and you get a 500 PP bonus. Don’t worry… when we say “peep show,” don’t expect to be grossed out by zombie strippers rubbing their junk and dribbling down their chests… it’s simply a cut away sequence. Despite spending time making weapons, exploring, visiting peep shows and other zombie related decapitation, we actually made the 20,000 PP goal with a good minute to spare… naturally. All we needed to do now to see our bonus was to run down the clock… something that actually proved trickier than it should have been. My inability to run down the clock with my roadrunner antics nearly came back to haunt me. Emphasis on nearly.
In my time in the industry, I’ve come to realise there are two types of preview endings: those that end on a cliff-hanger and those that end with a bang. This was most certainly the latter. Our reward for achieving our goal you ask? Why, it’s one minute on the now infamous chainsaw motorbike, which is possibly more fun than anyone can ask for. Seriously. | |
