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Top 20 Things We Want in the Dead Rising Sequel
editorial
game: Dead Rising 2
posted by: Chris Martin
publisher: Capcom
developer: Capcom
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date posted: 04:47 PM Thu Aug 23rd, 2007
last revision: 09:07 PM Sat Aug 25th, 2007


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Click to read.It\'s officially unofficial according to Capcom reps. But you know we\'ll probably see a Dead Rising sequel some time in the near future. Dead Rising sold over a million copies worldwide and became one of the staple buys for adopters of the Xbox 360. It was an excellent survival horror game with some great humor. The sandbox environment, multiple endings, and various side quests gave it longevity. Basically, we know it\'s coming on one platform or another. Not if but when it gets announced, here are the top 20 features we would like to see in the sequel.

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#20: More Uses For Clothes
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We\'ll start the countdown off on a transvestite note.

Frank had a thing for dressing up, almost Bird Cage-esque. He\'d just as soon throw on a frock as slice up a zombie with a katana and that, my friends, be freaky. If you\'re one who, like me, got a good laugh the first few times from dressing Frank up like a woman but then, as the giddiness wore off, felt a little \"over-exposed\" and silly? Well, you should. But that doesn\'t mean Frank can\'t use clothes to fight zombies! Zombies are notoriously poor at removing things from their heads (as Dead Rising has taught us) and so what if you could grab some clothes and toss them (rag-doll physics permitting) over the heads of unsuspecting zombies? And if that doesn\'t do the trick, how about some golf-balls in a tube sock to really bash some brains? Fore!

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#19: Bodies Stay
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It\'s technically possible now, to leave the dead bodies where they were when you killed them. While it might be a little too taxing for the systems (I\'m no programmer, mind you), but wouldn\'t it be sweet to have all the bodies pile up? We can imagine all sorts of situations where zombies start tripping over their own bodies and that could be used as a method of escape for our protagonist. Wouldn\'t you like to climb to the top of the mounds of undead and look out over your lumbering, brain-crazed enemies? We thought so.

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#18: Easier-to-Pull-Off Special Moves (Of Various Hilarity) [/COLOR]

Frank was great at the spinning backflip, the wall jump, the spinning lariat...but the controls of clicking the analog stick while pressing another button was a tad imprecise. We want to be slamming zombies\' heads into the floor with ease! We want to be disembowling the shit out of the undead! In the sequel we\'d like to see that feature reinvented with simplicity in mind - specifically removing the \"click analog stick\" feature. The whole control setup would have to be reworked to some degree, but that wouldn\'t be such a bad thing. I remember getting my neck gouged by teeth several times when I could have avoided it, had I successfully pulled off my disembowel.

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#17: Explosives
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Sure, Dead Rising had Propane tanks, but where was the dynamite? Where were the frag grenades? Satchel charges? Where were the goddamn high-explosives?

Setting up the propane tank/9mm combo in Dead Rising was always a good time, and the creatively minded gamer appreciated how Capcom allowed one to invent ways to dispose of zombies. But in the time of need, one just want to blow shit up and watch the body parts fly. Good times indeed.

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#16: Camera Upgrades
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Imagine collecting and customizing your camera with more righteous \"ammunition\" upgraded shutter speed and rack focus abilities. You could deck out the lens and get some deep focus, or flip on the macro and go close up of a zombie\'s fetid wound. It takes a dedicated photographer to do disembodied limbs in B/W with a heavy contrast.

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#15: Fewer clothing stores.
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If we don\'t get the extra uses from clothing (although, I can foresee the various uses of clothes hangars), we should definitely get fewer clothing stores and more stores unique to malls. For instance, a video game store (where you can grab kiosks and use them as bludgeons...) and more department \"all-in-one\" stores, where you can find anything from bicycles to paint-ball guns...

And that brings me to...

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#14: Ability to Shoot/Attack and Ride a Bike/Car/motorcycle at the Same Time!
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This was a disappointment in the game, that I could ride my bike, but not slice heads off with my katana or fire off 9mm rounds into bodies while I did so. If I can drive a car and fire a SMG in Grand Theft Auto 3, why the hell can\'t I fire while I ride a bike? I might fall over, but it\'d be priceless.

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#13: A Second Infinity Mode Sans Health Depletion
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I know, it was a design decision. Still, there\'s nothing better than just messing around in Dead Rising, depleting health or no. Working your way from one side of the world to the other without time or health against you. One fun thing we did here at GF was play the infinity mode for kicks, not trying to survive for the seven days, but just seeing what kind of havoc we could cause. Let\'s call it \"Freedom Mode\" and let\'s see it in the sequel, please?

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#12: That Bad-Ass Sniper Rifle Isabela Keyes Has in that Screenshot
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You know, this one. I liked to believe that gun was there because it was useful, but I don\'t think that\'s true. How effective is a sniper rifle against zombies? No one can say for sure, but it\'d be sweet capping zombies from a distance before you ventured forth.

You could at least use it like a club...

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#11: New Control System
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This one goes hand-in-hand with #20. It\'s essential that the sequel to Dead Rising have an upgraded control scheme because it was pretty loose in the original. The controls allowed one to interact, fight, go over the shoulder to throw items, discard items, switch items...etc., etc. And the problem was that it was too complicated and that Frank didn\'t respond quickly enough.

Problem is, we\'re not sure, yet, how to alleviate that problem. Dead Rising 2, like the prequel, will need plenty of input. It will need to use all the buttons on the controller. But Peter Molyneux is doing some fantastic stuff with \"1-button-combat\" so I have faith it can be pulled off, even if it means going first-person for the secondary \"throw\" attacks.

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#10: New Save System
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Dead Rising needs desperately a new save system. It borrowed the system from other Capcom game Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter for the PlayStation 2. Basically, it allowed the gamer to choose to restart from the last save point or start the entire game over with Frank\'s most recent stats. The benefits were that it allowed the player to play through the game with a beefier character - one that could kick a little more ass. The problems were that starting over sucked (and grew very, very tedious) while starting back at the last checkpoint could have been hours ago (seeing as how there were very few checkpoints and it was very easy to get side-tracked).

All we\'re asking for is to get rid of the \"go back to start\" mechanic and replace it with either 1) a save anywhere system, or 2) a game with more frequent (and more obvious) save points.

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#9: More Schlocky Humor
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I almost wrote \"horror,\" because that\'s what people usually associate with schlock. But the truth is Dead Rising was funnier than the average videogame mainly because it didn\'t take itself so seriously. It allowed the gamer to get lost in the world, but also to explore and find all the easter-egg jokes that Capcom hid all throughout the Willamette Mall.

Finding and using ServBot\'s head to block zombie vision was classic, as was the giant stuffed teddybear that really did nothing what-so-ever except give us all a laugh. The over the top gore really contributed to some classic moments such as \"Zombie Bowling.\"

Keep the yucks, and the blood, gushing.

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#8: Zombie Dogs, Zombie Cats, Zombie Babies. Oh My!
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We thought this would be cool. Zombie dogs are cool, but how about zombie cats? How about zombie babies? Let\'s say there\'s a zombie woman carrying her zombie baby, and you kill the zombie woman, but the zombie baby starts toddling after you and screaming. Terrifying? Yes. Will it make it into the sequel? Don\'t hold your breath.

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#7: Frickin\' Lasers
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Yeah, so it\'s not really realistic. I don\'t care. Remember that scene in Congo when they were cutting the gorillas in half with the laser beam right as the volcano was about to erupt, and I think I remember Tim Curry was the bad guy? Did anyone but me see that movie in the theaters?

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#6: Longer Story Mode?
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Dead Rising was reported to have a great amount of replayability due to it\'s constrained and time-based gameplay. By restricting what gamers could do in one sitting, Capcom essentially harkened back to the 16-bit era, when you would go through the same game several hundred times just to see and do everything -- to be the quintessential master of arms. The truth of the gameplay was that, once through, there was severe tedium because you had to go through many of the already-completed quests to get to the new ones. And some of the quests were just \"meh.\" I think that\'s a technical term for poo-poo terrific.

Essentially, it would behoove Capcom to make the time pass slower and to make the game bigger, and thus the story mode longer. Although I enjoyed the quasi-retro gameplay (quite a bit, actually), I always felt that I didn\'t have enough time to do what I wanted to do, and that the experience went by before I knew what happened. I like the feeling of being immersed in Dead Rising but I also want to treasure that feeling of dread and hopelessness that zombie games so often give.

Longer does equal better, or perhaps we just need more time-sensitive events and a bigger mall.

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#5: Upgraded AI
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Okay, so the NPCs in Dead Rising were stupid, cowardly dips. They ran headlong into enemies and became tasty lunches for them. Unless you could hold them by the hand, they were impossible to control. What we need in the sequel is a \"tough\" AI. One that can fight of zombies pretty damn well if you give them the right weapon. And one that will, if attacked, go to a safe area, or look for a better way around.

Of course, those sort of people don\'t exist in zombie movies, so why should they exist in a zombie game? Really, they shouldn\'t. Excepting Shaun and rarely an \"El Wray\", people in zombie movies are dumb, dumb, dumb. I\'m not holding my breath for this feature to be added, but my frustration would definitely appreciate it.

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#4: Unbreakable weapons
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Yeah, I hated having my lead pipe break after the seventh or eighth zombie skull. Seriously, it sucked. And the fact that a sword would \"run out\" of uses was permanently scarring. I don\'t think a battle axe would break from cleaving a zombie, that is, until the twenty seventh hit, at least. And what about that pipe? You could drop it accidentally, sure, but having it just vanish into thin air was irritating.

Well, whatever. We expect a serious increase in the zombie population for the sequel, and that naturally has us wanting the weapons to last longer - or for some minor ones to be \"fallback\" weapons that are, like The Tick, nigh-invulnerable. What is nigh? Exactly.

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#3: Standard Def TV Love
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I would like to read the text on my television, this time, okay Capcom? Apart from this problem being all over Capcom\'s forums and on thousands of message boards (I didn\'t count, I just assume thousands) it didn\'t really, dramatically, impact the \"gameplay,\" but it sure as hell hurt the overall experience, and made quite a few Xbox 360 fans unhappy.

I would be surprised if Capcom drops the ball again on this one. Both Dead Rising and Lost Planet suffered from too tiny print on standard TVs. Not everyone has a high-def television, Capcom. My 32\' Durabrand rules. I sure would like a high-def flat-screen in my living room. But I\'m poor. 4:3 FTW.

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#2: Adjustable Otis
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God-forbid he return in the sequel, Otis would have to be silenced. If not forever, then temporarily according to your needs. If you just want to play the main objectives, it would seem logical to be able to turn off Otis\' nagging side-quest information. And the inverse should be true as well. Say you just want to focus on specific quests, then it should be alright to just \"mute\" him for the other ones. Especially if he\'s just going to keep calling back and saying \"Hey, hanging up on a guy is rude!\" Christ Otis, grow up.

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#1: Co-op Multiplayer via Splitscreen
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One of the things that nary all gamers felt was that Dead Rising lacked some kind of multiplayer feature. And for good reason. Dead Rising\'s gameplay seemed perfect for that sort of co-op multiplayer, open-ended environments and mission-based gameplay and zombies, fer crissakes! Dead Rising 2 could be a pioneer in co-op multiplayer, much the same way Halo was. Imagine jumping into an online game with several player controlled survivors? Imagine going split-screen with a buddy completing co-op clotheslines and combo moves? Killing zombies together could easily reinvigorate playing split screen with a friend. And it will make the sequel stand out among the hordes of mindless action games.

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