I'm not entirely sure what possessed me to believe that it was a good idea to go straight back in for another serving of Dead Rising 2, having played the original game right through to it's bitter end.
I think I may have had my arm twisted by a friend at some point, who would have convinced me to give the Co-op element a go. Naively believing that it probably wouldn't be that bad to put myself through a second helping, here we go again.
In fairness, Dead Rising 2 : Off the Record isn't actually that bad, but it is aided by a handful of gameplay changes that make this experience much more bearable in comparison to Dead Rising 2.
I didn't exactly dislike Dead Rising 2, but it was hard work, and the route through to the Platinum trophy was a big grindy chore I vowed I'd never get myself into ever again, but somehow, here we are.
This game takes place as an alternative plot to the same story of Dead Rising 2,but this time you view the events of Fortune City from the perspective of Dead Rising 1 Protagonist, Frank West, as opposed to Chuck Greene in Dead Rising 2.
The previously well-covered zombie outbreak from Dead Rising 2 is in full-swing, and Frank West's aim is to take advantage of the unfortunate events and use them to "get back in the game", by uncovering the ulterior motive underlaying the outbreak, spill the truth behind the incident and become a relevant journalist again.
The game, for the most part, still plays in the exact same way. The combat, movement and the core gameplay elements present in Dead Rising 2 still exist here. Combine items to craft overly powerful weapons that make a mockery of the games difficulty? Check. Horrendous survivor AI that will make you want to bludgeon them yourself? Check. Spend large periods of the game waiting for time to pass because the game insists that you play by it's rules? Check.
So, there is alot of crossover worth mentioning here, and in the interest of balance, the game is clear what it's about. It doesn't masquerade as a sequel. It retains the "2" for it's title and does feel like more of the same. A 2.5, if you will. There are some crucial additions/tweaks that come up big though, especially when it comes to speaking from a trophy hunting perspective, which we'll touch up as and when relevant, and one of these changes could include the trophy list, which, despite having sprinklings of unwanted crossover, is fairly refreshed. Some of the things that made me dislike certain parts of Dead Rising 2 stemmed directly from the trophies and these have been mostly addressed here.
This is a big list that comes in at a total of 51 trophies, giving the player the option to complete them in either Single Player or Co-op experiences. A handful of these trophies do have to be obtained specifically in Co-op though, so you're going to need to rely on someone else to a lesser or greater extent.
How you tackle this list is exactly the same as you would with Dead Rising 2, going through the game and working through the case files in order to complete the main story on time to ensure that your game doesn't finish prematurely, whilst trying to fit whatever else you can in-between. The refreshed trophy list has stripped back alot of trophies that previously existed in Dead Rising 2 that would require you to dedicate entire Play-throughs to them, which has reduced the amount of time and runs required for the Platinum trophy.
I always felt that the biggest challenge behind Dead Rising 2 was the fact that it limited the player's flexibility in how they tackled the trophy list. The game has a pre-determined time limit to when it starts and ends, so you had to dedicate an entire run of the game towards getting 72,000 kills with little room for others. Then you'd have to dedicate an entire run of the game towards rescuing 50 survivors, which, again, would leave you little room for other trophies in-between. There are other examples of this, but you get the picture, and it quickly amounted to 5/6 entire runs of the game to achieve the Platinum. It was the list that wanted you to play the game to death and Dead Rising 2 : Off the Record is not that game, and I only had to actually go through this story again twice in order to achieve the Platinum.
You still earn loads of progression-based trophies, as you so commonly do with Story-driven games, but knowing I wasn't exposing myself to spoilers, I could research this list properly and understand exactly what would be required of me and waste little time in working on it as effectively as possible.
There are still trophies attributed to collecting combo cards in order to craft weapons, but you already know what most of these are and how to get them, because most of the combo weapons have been carried over from Dead Rising 2, with only a small handful of truly new additions.
The re-introduction of Frank West also opens up opportunity on the list for trophies related to taking photos using Frank's camera, which was heavily focused in the achievement list for Dead Rising 1. I counted 12 trophies here that make use of Frank's camera, which is over a fifth of the whole list, so the photography gameplay element is a big part of the refresh on this list too.
The "Purewal Memorial Cup" trophy, awarded for not consuming any meat, dairy or alcohol until the military arrives was where I started in terms of marrying up trophies with beating the story. It may seem like this selection of food groups severely limits your options, and in reality, it does, but as long as you're always conscious to being stocked up on orange juice, then you're rolling. Not only is it not any of the above, it also gives you great return on your health. You just have to make sure you always have surplus, because you don't want to be in situations where you fight certain bosses and desperately need health, but the items within your environment would infringe the requirements of the trophy, so always double check your inventory.
With Dead Rising 2, I'd have to jump straight back into a New Game and work out which trophies to get next, but I could now do that without starting over, and this was courtesy of the games biggest addition. Sandbox Mode.
Sandbox Mode just throws you into the Fortune City map and lets you do as you please without having to work against the games deadlines or time constraints, which are hugely distracting when it comes to focusing on other trophies you're trying to achieve.
The "Six Digits?!?" trophy, awarded for Killing 100,00 zombies is a great testament to this. In Dead Rising 2, it was 72,000, which you had to do within one Play-through of the game. No margin for error and no way to really catch-up if you were running behind, or off the pace for whatever reason. Of course, it'll take you longer to kill 100,000 zombies, but in Sandbox Mode, where I can just stop for a bit when I'm feeling bored or mix it up with other trophies to break up the monotony of the task, it's a much better fit for when they still insist on grindy, massacre-based trophies.
In regards to the trophy itself, 100,000 is still a heck of a lot, and will take you around 10-12 hours to reach this milestone. The methodology is still the same. Grab the Sports Car on the Silver Strip and race repeatedly up and down mowing zombies over on mass until the car wears out and you can jump into another area, before jumping back in and respawning everything. It is still just as tedious as it was first time round (or should that be around a third more tedious than last time?), but Sandbox Mode alleviates the pressure of having to get it done within harsh time constraints and it's important to not underestimate that. I actually still consider this to be the toughest trophy in the game. Despite Sandbox mode taking the pressure off, 10-12 hours is a long time to be doing such a boring and monotonous task, and they increased the requirement by 28,000 kills compared to Dead Rising 2.
The "Even More Help From My Friends" trophy, awarded for getting a gold medal on all Co-op challenges, is another addition to Sandbox Mode. Challenges are also a new element to the game and a refreshed aspect of this list that did not exist in Dead Rising 2, requiring you to complete 30 Co-op specific challenges to a Gold medal. Co-op challenges aren't integrated into the main Story mode, and have to be played in Sandbox mode exclusively.
The challenges range anywhere between easy to medium in difficulty, but the latter goes by the assumption you've got a good partner with whom you can communicate effectively. My initial attempts bought me to jumping into random Sandbox sessions with other players who either were more interested in ploughing through zombies with a lawnmower motor strapped to their head or just didn't understand the most effective ways to beat these challenges.
For example, in the challenge where you have to drink as much alcohol as you can in 3 minutes, the amount of units required for Gold is 30. You'll start being sick after 2 drinks, which massively slows you down to the point where you probably won't make it. So the twist to these challenges is to find ways to beat them using very specific methods. In this case, you'd both need to grab a sports fan outfit that makes you immune to being sick from alcoholic items. They're not all this intricate, but random players who aren't specifically in this for the Gold medals won't know this, so finding a like minded partner is essential. The Co-op challenges are an exact copy and paste of the Single Player challenges, but they just double the medal requirements to account for 2 people tackling them as opposed to just the 1. The Single Player challenges are a good way to cut your teeth so you know exactly what to expect as you move into the Co-op equivalents.
The "Alpha v Omega" trophy, awarded for having Denyce attack and damage Sgt Boykin, seemed to be one of the toughest challenges in this list. I'd probably already awarded this one the "hardest trophy" accolade in my head. In reality, it wasn't actually that bad. Denyce is the very first survivor you encounter in the game, and she has to remain in your party without being transported to the safehouse right up to case 7-2, where you fight Sergeant Boykin. This is really just a matter of keeping Denyce safe from harm, and saving often to make sure you don't have to go too far back if disaster strikes.
There are a couple of genuine threats to this trophy though. Some Psychopaths deal hefty damage to survivors, so it is possible for her to die pretty quickly if she ends up the primary focus of any Psychopath fight. This is where being a high level really helps because you can take Psychopaths out fairly quickly, though even with this, there were a couple of times she took some big hits because I couldn't interfere fast enough. This is the primary reason I would tackle this trophy near the end of the list, so you can go through it in New Game+ with your maxed out character that makes light work of Psychopaths.
Also, prior to starting case 6-1, where you fight the Helicopter that TK attempts to escape in, if you try to take Denyce into this fight with you, she'll be automatically transported to the safehouse and won't make it to act 7-2 with you. This is a nasty little scenario that will end the run, so you need to be aware of it, and leave her behind in a safe spot where you can come back for her after you exit the fight. As with all survivors that get left behind in another part of the map, her health will begin to deplete gradually for as long as you're engaged in the Helicopter boss fight, so you need to also make sure you defeat it quick enough to get back to Denyce alive.
One final thing to mention, which was touched upon briefly above, the horrendous NPC AI will do it's best to work against you here. Dencye (and this is a common issue with any survivor) will just randomly stop following you from time to time, and it will require you to physically tell her where to go with a command prompt until you reach a new area whereby the glitch will magically fix itself, only to happen again at a random point later on. Even if you give her a gun to defend herself, which is highly recommended (the gun will never run out of bullets if a survivor is using it), she'll still need you to come back and help her whenever she gets grabbed by a zombie, which is something that I'm convinced purely exists to waste your time and annoy you.
As long as you're aware of all of the above, there is a fairly painless route through to this trophy, but I would definitely recommend doing it once you've reached a certain level and your character can make light work of any enemy, especially psychopaths. The game gets incredibly easy to deal with enemies when you're of a higher level, so take advantage of that.
Just one final thing about the game in general. When going after certain trophies, especially towards the end of the list when you don't have much left to do, there is alot of dead time in this game. Just waiting for time for pass is still, unfortunately, a staple feature of this game. Whether that's to just simply progress the story, wait for opportunities to recruit survivors that only appear from certain points onwards, or get to a certain stage in the game for a trophy you can only achieve at that specific point. This was one of the things I didn't like about Dead Rising 2 and this is still prominent here. The trophies will make you reach certain points in the completion journey when all you can do is sit there and watch time pass, and that's just not a great experience.
There's no doubt that this a more palatable list than Dead Rising 2. When I challenged my own judgement about going through this game again, that was purely based on my experience with Dead Rising 2 - A game with a trophy list that felt laborious and exposed some bad gameplay mechanics that didn't lend themselves well to the trophy list they were paired up with.
On the whole, this has been addressed well in Dead Rising 2 : Off the Record and the same challenges simply don't exist here because, Sandbox mode, and the fact the game just simply doesn't shove loads of time-consuming trophies at you that require you to use up the full 7-8 hours per Playthrough just to unlock a couple of trophies at a time.
I only had to beat the game in it's entirety twice this time round, and I reckon I easily halved the completion time compared to Dead Rising 2's estimate of 80-100 hours, though it is admittedly difficult to give a true approximate of the overall completion time as the game tracks your progress absolutely nowhere. Whilst there is still a bit of overlap here and there, the addition of Co-op challenges and some new trophies with different requirements is enough to keep me fairly regret-free because I actually still kind of enjoyed it a bit. I can't even say I'd do it again with convinction anyway because Dead Rising 3 went back to being an Xbox exclusive and was never released for the Playstation.
Notable Trophies -
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| Purewal Memorial Cup - Don't consume any meat, dairy or alcohol until the military arrives. Six Digits?!? - Kill 100,000 zombies. [Host Only]. Even More Help From My Friends - Get a gold medal on all co-op challenges. Alpha Vs. Omega - Have Denyce attack and damage Sgt Boykin. |
Six Digits?!?! Kill 100,000 zombies. [Host Only].
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