About a month prior to the release of the anticipated zombie bashing follow up, Dead Rising 2, Capcom released Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, a downloadable episode exclusively for the Xbox 360 that gives gamers a taste of what was to come. An added benefit was that you were able to level up your character, Chuck Greene, up to level five as well as import your levels, Prestige Points (PP), and additional 80,000PP, and any Combo Cards or Scratch Cards earned into your new Dead Rising 2 game.
DR2:C0 takes place in Still Creek, a small town just outside Las Vegas and Fortune City, the fictional locale that is the backdrop for DR2. Case 0 serves as a prologue to the events in DR2. Chuck has escaped the zombie hordes in Las Vegas with his daughter Katey, who has unfortunately been afflicted by the zombie virus after being bitten by her own turned mother. Thanks to a new drug called Zombrex, the zombification can be halted as long as Zombrex is taken once every 24 hours. In the firs Dead Rising game, you had a time limit of 72 hours and in DR2: C0 and DR2, you also have to find Zombrex to give to Katey, upping the challenge even more.
In Case 0, you only have 12 hours until the military arrives and you will need to get out of Still Creek before that happens. Along with finding Zombrex, there are survivors to rescue and a motorcycle to rebuild – your ticket out of Still Creek and on your way to Fortune City. The game takes a few hours to complete and may require a few play throughs in order to complete everything. There are six possible endings to the game. You have the option to restart the game which will carry over all of your levels, PP, and cash so it’s actually worth it to retry the game a few times. By the second or third run though, you pretty much know where everything and everyone is and at what time everything occurs.
There are Maintenance Rooms where you can combine particular items, marked with a blue wrench icon, to make more powerful combo weapons. Combo weapons will grant you more PP for each zombie killed therefore leveling Chuck up faster. Scratch Cards are similar to Combo Cards but do not grant as many PP. If you create a combo item, you will receive the Scratch Card and if a particular event occurs, you will receive a Combo Card. I think everyone’s game will turn out a little different but everyone has access to the same combo weapons in the game.
Dead Rising 2: Case Zero is a worthy download for those interested in getting a leg up in Dead Rising 2 as well as those who may be new to the game and want to give it a try. It gives you a really good idea of what the main game will be like relating to the time constraints and missions. While Case 0 is not quite as open as Dead Rising or Dead Rising 2, it still gives you a good idea of the game’s flow.
The game is not entirely perfect as it would be nice to be able to turn off “friendly fire”. There was more than one occasion when I would accidentally wail on a survivor and they would defect, forcing me to kill them. It does add a tiny bit of “realism” but it is a little frustrating. The AI is a little more intelligent than the first Dead Rising game so that’s a plus. The biggest issue that I encountered was the slow menus. Just getting started and loading your game takes about 3 minutes. When you press a button, it takes 30 seconds or so for the game to react. I notice that this happens on the disc based Dead Rising 2 as well. It’s not a deal breaker, but it is a little annoying.
Dead Rising 2: Case 0 is rated M for Mature and is available now exclusively on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 400 MS Points.
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