Peak Dead Rising Co-op Fun
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is a non-canon alternate universe, what if scenario for if Frank West was in Fortune City from the beginning of the game instead of just showing up late like in Case West. In this wacky alternate universe, we play the same Dead Rising 2 but with new areas, new survivors and psychos and a new alternate twist to the story.
Gameplay: Off the Record obviously plays very much like regular DR2 and with some new changes and additions to the gameplay. Dr2 is a 3rd person open world, Semi-RPG adventure, comedy, horror game with a mixed gameplay of hack and slash, beat em’ up and shooting. A game where anything and everything is a weapon and since Dead Rising 2, we can now create combo weapons by combining other weapons to make something new. In this version we see a bunch of all new items, outfits and cloths along with new weapons, combo weapons and some things and assets from Case West. The whole idea of everything being timed and saving survivors, killing psychos and solving the main story is all still present but made with some improvements to the AI and now aside from manually saving you can load a check point at the beginning of a room or loading screen which makes for escorting survivors so much easier. A new area that was added to the game was Uranus Zone, a space themed park that came to town. I do like Uranus Zone, but I do wish it was used more in the side quests. You do go here for one of the final missions and a couple NPCs are in here but aside from that I feel like it’s underutilized. I was expecting a weird space themed psycho mission in here or something cool like that but it’s mostly for free roaming. The combat and controls are all the more improved in this game, making it an even smoother experience especially with the return of the camera mechanic Frank had in DR1. Instead of having a clone of yourself as a Co-op partner Chuck is the co-op partner in this game similar to Case West which was a lot of fun having them together in Co-op. There is no TIR multiplayer in this game though which wasn’t a huge deal to me since I felt it was a hit or miss anyways but the sandbox mode saw a return here and much better than it was in DR1 allowing you to actually save so the overall experience was much better. Sandbox mode also has a bunch of challenge on both solo and Co-op mode giving you a bunch of replay value and things to do if you wanna go for gold on all of those. The launch version of this game also got a cheats DLC that gives you things like over sized heads and weapons along with other mod like controls which were a lot of fun, but the digital only rerelease/ remaster of this game does not have that DLC for some reason which is a huge let down for me.
Graphics, Voice Acting, Music: Graphically this game looks very similar to DR2 with not a whole lot of improvement, but it still looks visually good overall. I had a few graphical errors and a really wacky glitch happen where a still image of Stacy appeared on the entire slot machines as a texture when I broke them one time when I was playing (never seen a glitch like that before) and a few cutscene glitches where it played the ending cutscene over the first one at the same time. aside from crazy stuff like that the game did crash on me a few times too. The voice acting is still just as good as regular 2 with some great performances from the main cast with many funny moments. The music in this game is mostly the same as regular DR2 with a few new additions for the new area and new bosses all of which was pretty darn good.
Story/ Minor spoilers: Off the Record takes a news twist on the story where Frank arrives in the city and sort of takes Chucks place from the original game. I don’t want to spoil much of the story because there is a different twist to this story and a few new areas but overall, it follows the same idea of a big Phenotrans conspiracy and Frank getting framed for the outbreak. There are parts where the game not only changes cutscenes and you go to new places but parts where the cutscenes are exactly the same but dubbed over with new dialogue and Frank is swapped in instead of Chuck, which is for the most part a fast majority of the game and I don’t crazy mind the parts that are the same but some of them are just flat out dumb and make less sense now. For an example (Minor spoiler) the Slappy psycho fight now happens not because he thinks frank killed his gf in the outbreak like he saw on TV but now he thinks she is a toy and is broken…? So dumb. I would have preferred them to make the cutscenes the exact same, but this time maybe swap him out for her and have her be the psycho or something. A lot of these side quest survivor missions still happen but at different times and places along with some new ones including a lot of hidden ones that half the time I couldn’t get to spawn in. The way survivor missions spawned before flowed a lot better with them spawning in at certain places that go along together but now this game has you running all over the place in a way that doesn’t make sense making some hidden quests get accidently skipped. I should also mention the ridiculous and silly troll achievements in this game like having the first survivor Denise do damage to Sgt Bolkin at the end of the game which is crazy annoying and hard to do but a lot of this is fun co-op which I can’t mention enough, play this game with a friend! Replaying the remastered version, I didn’t run into any major glitches like before and for the most part I had a lot of fun replaying this game with my buddy once again after years. If you like Dead Rising, DR1, Frank or Co-op games I’d recommend this one and though I do like 3 a lot I think this is probably when Dead Rising Peaked in terms of fun, environments, characters and co-op but that’s just my opinion. If you are wondering why I feel this way, I’ll get into 3 when I review that one.
Overall current version is a: 9.5/10
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is a non-canon alternate universe, what if scenario for if Frank West was in Fortune City from the beginning of the game instead of just showing up late like in Case West. In this wacky alternate universe, we play the same Dead Rising 2 but with new areas, new survivors and psychos and a new alternate twist to the story.
Gameplay: Off the Record obviously plays very much like regular DR2 and with some new changes and additions to the gameplay. Dr2 is a 3rd person open world, Semi-RPG adventure, comedy, horror game with a mixed gameplay of hack and slash, beat em’ up and shooting. A game where anything and everything is a weapon and since Dead Rising 2, we can now create combo weapons by combining other weapons to make something new. In this version we see a bunch of all new items, outfits and cloths along with new weapons, combo weapons and some things and assets from Case West. The whole idea of everything being timed and saving survivors, killing psychos and solving the main story is all still present but made with some improvements to the AI and now aside from manually saving you can load a check point at the beginning of a room or loading screen which makes for escorting survivors so much easier. A new area that was added to the game was Uranus Zone, a space themed park that came to town. I do like Uranus Zone, but I do wish it was used more in the side quests. You do go here for one of the final missions and a couple NPCs are in here but aside from that I feel like it’s underutilized. I was expecting a weird space themed psycho mission in here or something cool like that but it’s mostly for free roaming. The combat and controls are all the more improved in this game, making it an even smoother experience especially with the return of the camera mechanic Frank had in DR1. Instead of having a clone of yourself as a Co-op partner Chuck is the co-op partner in this game similar to Case West which was a lot of fun having them together in Co-op. There is no TIR multiplayer in this game though which wasn’t a huge deal to me since I felt it was a hit or miss anyways but the sandbox mode saw a return here and much better than it was in DR1 allowing you to actually save so the overall experience was much better. Sandbox mode also has a bunch of challenge on both solo and Co-op mode giving you a bunch of replay value and things to do if you wanna go for gold on all of those. The launch version of this game also got a cheats DLC that gives you things like over sized heads and weapons along with other mod like controls which were a lot of fun, but the digital only rerelease/ remaster of this game does not have that DLC for some reason which is a huge let down for me.
Graphics, Voice Acting, Music: Graphically this game looks very similar to DR2 with not a whole lot of improvement, but it still looks visually good overall. I had a few graphical errors and a really wacky glitch happen where a still image of Stacy appeared on the entire slot machines as a texture when I broke them one time when I was playing (never seen a glitch like that before) and a few cutscene glitches where it played the ending cutscene over the first one at the same time. aside from crazy stuff like that the game did crash on me a few times too. The voice acting is still just as good as regular 2 with some great performances from the main cast with many funny moments. The music in this game is mostly the same as regular DR2 with a few new additions for the new area and new bosses all of which was pretty darn good.
Story/ Minor spoilers: Off the Record takes a news twist on the story where Frank arrives in the city and sort of takes Chucks place from the original game. I don’t want to spoil much of the story because there is a different twist to this story and a few new areas but overall, it follows the same idea of a big Phenotrans conspiracy and Frank getting framed for the outbreak. There are parts where the game not only changes cutscenes and you go to new places but parts where the cutscenes are exactly the same but dubbed over with new dialogue and Frank is swapped in instead of Chuck, which is for the most part a fast majority of the game and I don’t crazy mind the parts that are the same but some of them are just flat out dumb and make less sense now. For an example (Minor spoiler) the Slappy psycho fight now happens not because he thinks frank killed his gf in the outbreak like he saw on TV but now he thinks she is a toy and is broken…? So dumb. I would have preferred them to make the cutscenes the exact same, but this time maybe swap him out for her and have her be the psycho or something. A lot of these side quest survivor missions still happen but at different times and places along with some new ones including a lot of hidden ones that half the time I couldn’t get to spawn in. The way survivor missions spawned before flowed a lot better with them spawning in at certain places that go along together but now this game has you running all over the place in a way that doesn’t make sense making some hidden quests get accidently skipped. I should also mention the ridiculous and silly troll achievements in this game like having the first survivor Denise do damage to Sgt Bolkin at the end of the game which is crazy annoying and hard to do but a lot of this is fun co-op which I can’t mention enough, play this game with a friend! Replaying the remastered version, I didn’t run into any major glitches like before and for the most part I had a lot of fun replaying this game with my buddy once again after years. If you like Dead Rising, DR1, Frank or Co-op games I’d recommend this one and though I do like 3 a lot I think this is probably when Dead Rising Peaked in terms of fun, environments, characters and co-op but that’s just my opinion. If you are wondering why I feel this way, I’ll get into 3 when I review that one.
Overall current version is a: 9.5/10