By Leo Stiles
We have to admit, when Dead Rising 2: Case Zero was announced as a special demo we were a bit sceptical, especially as we were expected to pay for something that traditionally has always been free. Imagine our surprise when the final game turned out to be not only an enormous amount of fun but brilliant value for money too
Case Zero acts as a prequel to the soon to be released Dead Rising 2 and puts you in the shoes of Chuck, who has 12 hours to find some anti-zombie drugs that will stop his recently infected daughter turning into a mindless walking corpse. Unfortunately for Chuck, the hick town of Still Creek he finds himself stranded in is overrun with the undead and now a sea of zombies stand between him and the medicine he needs to save his daughter.
The highlight of the first game was the sheer variety of ways to turn the zombies into bloody chunks and Case Zero offers much the same pleasure with just about any object doubling up as a weapon. From beer bottles and baseball bats to traffic cones and wheelie bins, the amount of destructive tools at your disposal means that killing zombies never gets old.
This is just as well because you will be doing rather a lot of killing with the streets clogged with hundreds of the bastards; far more than the original and no matter what kind of goodies you have to fight them off there is always the sense that you are just about holding them off giving the game a real tension.
New to Case Zero is the ability to combine objects into even more interesting and lethal weapons; some are logical like the spiked baseball bat and some are hilariously mad like the broom-shotgun combo called the Boomstick. All you have to do is bring two objects with a blue icon to one of the workbenches scattered around the town to and start experimenting.
The main mission is to find the drugs for your kid and the bike parts needed to make your escape but there are a number of side missions you can complete if you have time. The rewards for these missions are experience points to boost your abilities, along with money and some rare weapons. To top it all off, there are a number of achievements for all the hardcore completists and anything you earn in the game carries over to the sequel, giving you a head start when Dead Rising 2 is released on September 24.
Like the first game, Case Zero has a strict time limit and you will have to be punctual for the in-game events and missions or things will get a lot more difficult. This time, however, the save system has become a lot more forgiving with the addition of multiple save slots that will stop you from saving yourself into a corner with no weapons or health.
Sadly missing from the mix is the anticipated co-op mode from the sequel which promises to allow two people to tear up the place and use player combos to take out zombies with a greater flair than ever before. The developers have said that they wanted to save something for the full game but the fact that users are paying for this demo but are not getting a taste of this feature is something of a bitter pill to swallow.
The whole affair should last you about four hours if you just follow the story but if you add in all the side missions, achievements and the constantly amusing variety of zombie deaths then it should last a whole lot longer
As a demo, Case Zero is in a class of its own and even surpasses what was thought generous for downloadable content. It won’t change your mind if you didn’t like the first game but for newcomers and fans this is a great way to spend those points. Bring on the sequel.
Dead Rising 2: Case Zero is available now, exclusively on Xbox Live Arcade and costs 400 Microsoft Points (€4.80).
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