Dead Rising 2: Off The Record Review

After a short break photojournalist Frank West is back in Capcom’s Dead Rising 2: Off The Record. Off the Record is a “re-imagining” of Dead Rising 2. Many of the same gameplay features, and missions are the same, however there are sizable changes made to the storyline and some new additions including a new “Sandbox Mode”.

The story of Off the Record begins with Frank West enrolled in a reality TV show Terror is Reality. After the Willamette incident news story that he broke in Dead Rising, Franks celebrity status has fallen greatly, hence his shot at reality TV. Soon after his WWE meets Zombieland match Frank picks up hints of another incident brewing in Fortune City. At this point Frank finds himself smack in the middle of another zombie outbreak. For those that played Dead Rising 2 this is the point where the two game’s storyline starts to blend together. There are some changes, so if you played Dead Rising 2 you will get a new experience. For those that didn’t, it’s pretty much the same formula as Dead Rising, you have 3 days to survive before the military arrives. During those 3 days you’ll be rescuing survivors and fighting off various psychopaths. But there is a little twist, if you remember during Dead Rising Frank becomes infected, and now every 24 hours he needs to take zombrex, and of course he doesn’t have any with him. So while you save others in Fortune City you are also on a constant hunt for zombrex to keep yourself alive.

Now for those that played Dead Rising 2, you’ll be happy to know there have been some solid changes to the game to give you many more hours of zombie kiling fun. For starters while the overall storyline is the same, there are some differences. Firstly the zombrex angle that I explained above. Next there are a handful of new psychos you’ll encounter. For those that loved the weapon combos, those are back and there are even more combinations that you can unlock and create. And the last big change to the story mode is the new Fortune City attraction “Uranus Zone”. This new area is a space themed amusement park with a bunch of rides and games for you to enjoy.
Now if you aren’t in the mood for the story then you might like the additional “Sandbox Mode”. After playing a bit of both modes, Sandbox Mode is really where the fun is. Pretty much there is no time limit, and you have free rein of Fortune City. But to make the mode not boring Capcom added a great feature, Challenges. Throughout the resort you will find challenge spots that present you with timed tasks, from killing X number of zombies, to eating X amount of PP, and even timed base point to point races. All these challenges are tracked through leaderboards, so you can compare and compete with friends. Oh and if you want even more fun in “Sandbox Mode” you can play co-op with a friend. There is nothing more fun then an evening slaying zombies.

For the most part the game’s graphics, sounds, and control systems have remained the same. There have been some tweaks under the hood to make the game load quicker, and some of the graphics have been polished. Those who played Dead Rising 2 won’t really notice much as far as the visuals go, though if you never played the second game you’ll notice some massive improvements, including many of the areas being larger and even some area transitions not needing to load like in the first game. Though when compared to other more recent titles the Dead Rising series is still a bit behind in the quality of the textures.
The save system though did receive a revamping, the biggest change being the addition of checkpoints. As you enter a new area or complete a mission the game auto-saves. Nothing was worst then racking up kills and PP then dieting and losing lots of work due to the old save system. My biggest complaint and this is probably me be knit-picky is that when Frank gets covered in blood, for some reason they picked a really bright red, it’s much brighter then the blood red that splatters on the environment, and just looks funky on him. Like I said that is really just  knit-picky me.

Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is like the director’s cut version of Dead Rising 2. It’s got all the good things that landed on the cutting room floor, plus some new additions. I think the changes to the storyline and the return of the photo mechanic is enough to warrant those that played Dead Rising 2 to give the story another spin. But the real plus in Of the Record is the addition of Sandbox Mode as an additional standard mode. It’s a great way to just pick-up and hack and slash some zombies. Plus I’m a sucker for challenges and leaderboards, I can spend hours trying to out score my friends. I also have to give Capcom some credit on pricing the game fairly well $39.99 is a great price, I could see many other publishers “re-inventing” their games and then releasing them at full retail. If you are in the mood for some more zombie killing, you should check out Dead Rising 2: Off the Record.

A copy of Dead Rising 2: Off the Record for Xbox 360 was provided to us for this review from Capcom.