The other huge improvement is a change to the combo weapon system. I honestly don’t understand why more progression-based games don’t include modes like this one, because it’s great. It’s easy to jump into, has a huge amount of content, and allows players to level Frank up while aimlessly screwing around. It’s full of zombies to kill and challenges to complete - things like ‘kill X amount of zombies with weapon Z before the timer runs out’ and so on. Operating under the assumption that anyone coming to Off The Record would have already played DR2, the devs allow players access to the whole map as a playground separate from the campaign. How? In Off The Record‘s biggest (and best) innovation - the sandbox mode. To be fair, Frank improves quickly and has a lot of new moves that make fighting zombie hordes more bearable, so long as the player takes the time to level him up before they get into the main game. The only real difference? Frank moves and fights more awkwardly than DR2‘s original hero Chuck, making the bosses even more frustrating than they already were.
This wasn’t noticeable the first time I played Off The Record since it was released a good while after DR2‘s original release, but playing these PS4 reissues just a week apart means the lack of original content is impossible to miss. Not only does it have a virtually identical plot and just one new location, a surprisingly large amount of the character dialogue is repeated nearly verbatim. It’s impossible to overlook the extent to which this is the exact same game as DR2. The emotional resonance that formed the core of Dead Rising 2 is completely absent, leaving only quirky zombie killing and annoying boss fights.
Sure, Off The Record is mostly just a collection of reused assets, but it’s got one of those sandbox modes that are so popular with the kids these days, and at a budget price what’s not to like? Well, there’s something missing - a heart. Dead Rising‘s Frank West was a popular character, and the combo weapon system in Dead Rising 2 was good, but not everything it could have been - why not make a few tweaks and combine the two? I understand the logic behind this game’s existence. LOW How are the boss fights even worse this time? HIGH The wide array of sandbox zombie slaughter challenges.
0 kommentar(er)
