I was starting to wonder if Capcom would make their December timeline, but have no fear, your followup to Dead Rising 2 will bring Chuck and Frank together on the 360 December 27th, and run you a bit more than Case Zero at 800 Microsoft Points.
Carry on.
Last week Sony delivered unto us Dead Nation, the latest entry in the increasingly swamped “Kill a crapload of zombies” market. When we talk about the popularity of zombie games (and movies, TV shows, and probably Halloween prosthetics), there’s a joke in there somewhere about a spreading infection, but I’ll save you a groan and not make it.
Dead Nation takes the form of a top-down shoot-‘em-up, as appears to be the pattern for a number of recent small digital releases. You’ll choose a male or female character to fight through the zombie ravaged city in an effort to retrieve the apparently important body of Patient Zero and hopefully formulate a cure. There’s a story to be had here, though the product may have been better off without it. Rarely would I champion the cause for less narrative, but this story is a strange half-measure that seems to exist only to showcase some (admittedly sharp) artwork. Told through brief interludes between missions, it describes the journey of your character through the zombie wasteland in such thin detail that it may as well not bother at all. Your character has lines, but they exist only to tell you what your objective is, not because you’re actually a person with thoughts—and since the objective is always the same (get from point A to point B), this is entirely superfluous.
Capcom dispatched North American updates on their two 3DS Resident Evil projects, perhaps to spare some of us translation woes over the info coming from Japan this week, or perhaps to make extra sure we all hear that – “hey kids, you can run and shoot and chew gum at the same time in a Resident Evil game!”
It’s probably worth mentioning a few times that this startling ability only appears attached to talk about the Mercenaries 3DS project, which brings back stages from Resident Evil 4 and 5 along with currently listed characters Chris Redfield, Hunk, Krauser and Claire Redfield for some run and gun fun – visit the Japanese site here.
The other and more tradition title, Revelations, has something I don’t see very often associated with a Resident Evil game – concept art, which of course gives a glimpse into another of Chris and Jill’s mutation filled vacations.
Catch it after the break.
If being a single-parent today is a difficult task, Chuck Greene has a doubly hard time ahead trying to survive the pitfalls of Zombieland with his young daughter Katey in-tow. Complicating matters further is a ticking clock requiring her to receive a dose of a wonder drug called Zombrex every twelve hours – else she would join the ranks of infected clogging the road to Las Vegas. Between her and that medication is that never ending sea of zombies as well as the military, and several more colorful characters stepping out of the horror film genre to make an appearance in Capcom’s alternative take on the zombie gaming genre.
It’s an admittedly crowded genre, which Capcom already holds a large share of but still finds niche space for the Dead Rising series with the slower pace of the Romero zombie, a creature eager for the work since largely falling out of cinema favor with a post 28 Days Later audience. And it’s a bit surprising just how well those relics can flourish in a post Left4Dead gaming space, where opportunities to crowd and overwhelm but also still sneak up on players offers new life.
As with the original, Case Zero is a bit of playing out the survivor fantasy first implanted as a thought by Dawn of the Dead, with a mix of horror brevity and cheese to round out the ride. Case Zero offers a prequel glimpse into the sequel, an introduction to Chuck’s ride toward an infected Vegas with a brief stop over that offers players a taste of items, characters, challenges, and of course the horde. What Case Zero really offers is a breath of relief with evidence that Dead Rising 2’s co-development between Capcom and Blue Castle Games is on track to succeed where other externally developed ventures have failed Capcom recently – so far so good.
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