Some people, when walking through Wal-Mart or Home Depot, see grand symbols of Western capitalism and freedom. Others see arsenals.
Then again, maybe the two groups actually aren’t so different. Who among us has walked through a big-box store, with their rows of axes, sledgehammers and nail guns – and all sorts of more innocuous things, like oranges or liquid soap, that we imagine could be easily weaponized – and not secretly hoped some emergency would arise that would force us into some giant “Home Alone”?
Capcom took this primal human fantasy — primal among male humans, at least — and made it the premise of 2006’s “Dead Rising,” which locked you in a shopping mall with hordes of zombies. Pretty much, the game boiled down to “You can shoot zombies with a water gun!” Problem is, shooting zombies with a water gun doesn’t affect them much, so you were forced to turn to conventional weapons, negating the promise of the game’s premise.
“Dead Rising 2,” which ties its zombie outbreak to a “Running Man”-style game show called “Terror is Reality,” changes the location to a facsimile of Las Vegas, so zombies are standing around in front of slot machines instead of storefronts. It also tries to liven up the action by introducing a weapon creation system, by which you can combine two components for a new weapon — strap a grenade to a football, and you have a Hail Mary. As you progress through the game, you collect cards cluing you in to new combos, from knived boxing gloves to a machine gun-mounted wheelchair. Playing the game strictly for collecting these cards is a good time, as they provide momentary pops of humor, but the problem remains that most of these novelty weapons are ineffective, and the regular weapons provide an all-too-predictable experience. Using the marquis weapon, the chainsaw, whether by itself or strapped to the end of a canoe paddle, all you’re doing is hitting the attack button, after which torsos are separated from legs. Such repetitive fighting would be boring in an average action game, but it’s a particular disappointment in light of the chaos promised by this kind of scenario.
There’s a lot to do in “Dead Rising 2” — you can even just ride around doing tricks on a skateboard, if you want — but fighting funny enemies with funny weapons warrants little more than a rental. Once the “ha!” factor wears off, there’s not much here.
