Dead Rising 2 Walkthrough

*NOTE: I know this game was made by Blue Castle Games, in Canada, but it’s  still basically the same game as DR1. Same people worked on it too, and  Capcom made the first game.*

I believe this game demonstrates the theory that Eastern game developers have already lost to the West.

What is this new East vs West mentality? Think back in the cartridge days to games like Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Nintendo, Sony, etc. All of this stuff came from Japan and it was all we had to play. While over in the West he had ET and Custer’s Revenge.

Then a game called GTA3 came out. Western games are mostly based on – take it as you will – shooting. Sure, before GTA3 we had all sorts of shooting games like Doom and whatever, but GTA3 changed everything. You were free to have fun in the game, and that was the key, freedom and fun.

Fast forward to today. Portal v Mario, World of Warcraft v Final Fantasy 11 or 14, GTA4/Fallout v Dead Rising 2. It’s pretty clear that the East has lost this race, and badly. The problem with Eastern games is they want to restrict you, make you play by the devs rules.

In this game you are forced to obey the ticking and ever-present (though hard to see) clock. And most of the other frustrations with this game involve tiny mechanics and a lack of fluidity in the player movement – not to mention I’ve yet to play a Capcom game with anything besides a garbage story full of stereotypes (like really? it’s 2010!). I mean the inventory is the stuff that makes tumors in your brain – we all thought Capcom kinda reformed after the RE4 inventory, but they’ve taken a noise-dive since with RE5 and this game as far as the inventory in concerned.

My entire time was spent racing from spot to spot, having about 10 minutes or so of real time to just mess around, and during those 10 minutes I probably missed several unmarked survivors… And guns that don’t stack ammo?! WTF?! I won’t even mention the cutscenes where all sorts of awkward stuff goes down because that’s par for the course with Capcom.

The Final Fantasy games, Mario, Zelda, Resident Evil 5, this game, all the Japanese games today seem to be about fan-service. I played Final Fantasy 11, it’s garbage, but there are tons of FF fans who played it and the new FF14 mmo – I don’t have to play FF14 to know it’s crap too, I wouldn’t even want to waste my time finding out if I’m wrong because I know I’m right. And FF13 being a playable movie? I loved FFX, didn’t finish FF12, and have no intentions of watching FF13, I’m sorry. Right there from FFX to FF12 you can  see the example of the East conceding defeat by abandoning turn-based RPG’s for a faster, more real-time combat system. I’ll run into FF13 in a bargain bin and be all like “oh yeah, I never played that.”

I guess Resident Evil 4 and Super Mario 64 are all the East has to show for a long time now as far as raising the bar. The East needs to get together and  crack the code of compelling stories, smooth and fluid controls and player movements, and getting it all back to fun. If the East can do something new, that would be great too, but for now at least catch up to Western game  developers.

And RE4 is my favorite game of all time, to this day, so I’m not an East- hater or hating on Japan. I love Japan! I love Godzilla! We just don’t need  Dead Rising 3 or Resident Evil 6 to be clones.

TheGum.

PS – http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/10/keiji-inafune-quits/ (basically  one of the last big names of Capcom left recently after stating   the East has lost; sounds like Capcom wants status quo)

PPS – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei0GxMOBztA (in case link doesn’t work,  search BFF Report ep 14 Final Fantasy XIV, or on metacritic…)

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