Dead Rising 2/YMMV

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Dead Rising 2: Case Zero

• Complete Monster: Jed Wright, who murders zombies, but goes after survivors who are infected anyway. He seems ecstatic to get a child in his collection.

Dead Rising 2

• Acceptable Lifestyle Targets: Randy from 'Here Comes the Groom' is all but stated to be a furry. He's morbidly obese, is wearing a hood with dog ears and pants with a tail, a too-small latex shirt, and the notebook description calls him an insecure virgin who's addicted to internet sex. He tries to forcibly marry a woman by holding her and his father, a minister, hostage with a giant pink chainsaw that he revs and thrusts a lot.
  • The outfit and mannerisms suggest more of a depraved fetishist than him being a furry, really.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Ted Smith.
• Awesome but Impractical:
  • YMMV, but the popular combo weapon, the Paddlesaw, is one, considering you have to find a chainsaw and paddle, which aren't all that easy to find. But boy, is the damage collateral.
    • On the other hand, there is at least one construction area with both a respawning paddle and chainsaw just outside.
  • The Knight Armor set is another example. Sure, it may be a reference to Arthur from Ghosts N Goblins, but it also shatters really easily, just like in the game it's referencing to, although it prevents you from taking damage until it does. Also, until it's patched, it also causes a bug that blanks out the first floor map when you use the whole set.
• Breather Boss: Compared to, say, Antoine, Randy, and The Twins, a few midpoint psychopaths (such as Carl Schiff or Seymour Redding) seem rather easy.
  • While not one of the easier bosses, Boykin can feel quite easy due to coming after the Twins and before Sullivan.
  • The two scientists fought in Case 7-2 are a much better example.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Tons of different ways to dispatch zombies, each one crazier and the next... but if you ask around, most players will just craft either the knifegloves, the chainsaw paddles and/or the Defiler (fire axe + sledgehammer) and be done with it.
  • Also, there are many different ways to take on the psychopaths, but most people just bring the Sniper Rifle and the Knife Gloves to every fight.
• Complete Monster: Tyrone King, full stop. Even ignoring that he runs TIR (which is okay, because you're murdering zombies), TK allows his zombies to be let loose in the city, tries to kill Chuck on multiple occasions and tries to feed Katey and Stacey to the zombies after Chuck just saved his life. While the rest of the psychopaths have insanity as an excuse, his only motivations were greed and spite.
  • Well, not the Looters, Twins, or Sullivan. But they all have this to varying degrees.
  • Leon Bell stands out as a particular example. He insults Chuck about his wife's death, berates him for not "having it anymore" and then mows down an unfortunate survivor for "practice".
• Crazy Awesome: Chuck is this.
  • One of the main missions features Chuck chasing a train through the zombie-filled tunnels while on a motorbike. He must then ramp onto the back of said train, hack his way through about a dozen assault-rifle wielding mercenaries, then confront TK.

"Hey, which one of you bastards was throwing the junk at me?"

• • Not to mention the sheer unbridled, reality-warping insanity of the Custom Weapons Chuck devises. In the main plot he might appear stoic and reserved, seldom raising his voice and making sensible decisions, but give him some duct tape and a few sharp objects and he starts channeling Gork and Mork.

After mounting a Lawnmower mechanism on a Wheelchair for use as a zombie-threshing ram: "Just like Mom used to make...."

• Demonic Spiders: Without getting into too many spoilers, let's just say that things take a turn for the worse at the eleventh hour. Those weapons that were game-breakers before? Yeah, you'll need them just to survive!
• Diabolus Ex Machina: Remember the catharsis of using the Humvee to plow through endless hordes of zombies in the maintenance tunnels back in Dead Rising 1? Well if you've shelled out two million bucks for a key prior to the military's arrival, you can then take a red one underground - only to find the gate to the tunnels proper is two god-damned inches too low to let it in. [ There is no way this is an accident. Well, at least there's no similar cockblocking for the Slicecycle... Except you have to carry a chainsaw from the stage to the trailer past dozens of "Gas Zombies" to make it.
  • • There's a zorb and several security buggies lying around, but they're nowhere near as fun as a slicecycle.
  • Given that Capcom's perfectly fine with Ascended Memes and a selling point of the game is combining items to make new weapons, it's surprising that you can't stick blades in a shopping cart. Then you too could run around screaming, THIS IS MY STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!!!!!!!
• Fan Disservice: Bibi Love.
• Game Breaker: Terror Is Reality. Incredibly fun in and of itself, but the misbalance occurs when it comes to prize money. Every competitor receives at least a small reward, and when it is taken into a single player playthrough it allows the player to buy Zombrex quite easily.
  • Once you have killed Seymour and obtained his Six-Shooter (which respawns in the South Plaza every time you run out of ammo), you have officially beaten every boss in the game. It holds a whopping sixty rounds, does great damage, has a decent firing rate, and is very accurate. Even The Twins, Dwight Boykin, and Sullivan can be killed easily with just the revolver.
  • The Knife Gloves. They can be obtained very early in the game, do insane damage, attack fast, and can't be disarmed from you. While it won't make any psychopath a cakewalk like the Six-Shooter, it still makes several fights (particularly Sullivan) much easier.
  • There is a book up in the giant octopus/jellyfish light fixture thing of Atlantica Casino that will allow Chuck to drink as much booze as he wants without having to drop his weapon and puke his guts out every few seconds. Combine that with the book that makes food heal more health and you now have an easily accessible supply of health wherever you go. This is also a bonus in the Sports Pack Pre-order bonus, which also gives Chuck an instant speed bonus.
    • The no-puking effect also carries over to spoiled food, although Chuck will still puke upon eating it.
  • A lot of people are familiar with the Twins. Save yourself the trouble by going into the nearby vault room, pick up the shotgun and LMG, and blow one of them away.
  • The Leadership Magazine pretty much cuts the difficulty of escorting survivors in half, if not more. Aside from making all survivors following you twice as tough, it turns the game's resident joke character into the most powerful survivor in the game.
  • Dynameat w/ combo card hits for 1000PP a kill, even 500PP w/o one. Either way, throwing it in a crowd of zombies can gain you about as much as saving ONE survivor, and you can make one as soon as the game starts (Random zombies usually carry a hunk of meat but they tend to spawn in the corridor with the maintenance room and gem store, dynamite can be found on top the palm tree by the Royal Flush exit) and can be applied immediately for some nice level jumping (there's ALWAYS a crowd of zombies by the exit, either Royal Flush or Americana). If that's not Game Breaker material, I haven't a clue what is.
    • To put it bluntly: The above is the garage trick of Dead Rising 2.
• Good Bad Bugs: It is possible to carry items into Co-Op by joining a game session directly from a single-player session. Doing so allows you to duplicate items, the most beneficial of which are bargaining magazines which give a % decrease to the cost of items in the pawn shop. Duplicating enough of them drives the price into the negative numbers which means the looters will pay you to take things off their hands.
  • Another similar one involving a crappy connection and durability magazines. Randomly disconnecting while you have a durability magazine in your hand, saving, and then coming back can cause the durability effect to stack. Do this enough times and any combo weapon you build covered under the durability magazine will be infinite.
  • There's one particularly funny bug where after Sullivan reveals himself as a phenotrans agent, if you search around the safehouse, you can find him crying in a corner, like many other day 3 survivors.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: You know that commercial where Michael Bay pronounces everything "awesome"? He starts off by calling a tiger an "awesome pussycat". Not only can Chuck give Snowflake the tiger to Katey as a gift, she says, "That was an AWESOME gift!"
• Memetic Mutation: "ATTABOY 8-BALL! KEEP THAT FLANK COVERED!"
• Most Annoying Sound: The "voices" of female survivors Cinda and Tammy, as well as a couple of other young female survivors which share the same sound bank. It becomes especially evident when you're fighting Antoine, as Cinda does nothing but constantly whine and complain throughout the entire fight.
• Nightmare Fuel: "Don't worry, kids! Slappy will live forever!"
• One-Scene Wonder: Many of the psychopaths, but particularly Brandon and Slappy.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Katey's need for Zombrex forces players to drop whatever they're doing and search frantically for Zombrex (or smash slot machines to buy some from a looter) and run to the safehouse, praying the time doesn't run down, to administer it themselves. Getting there too early will force Chuck to wait, despite the fact he could easily hand it off to Stacey or the pharmacist - the very first one he rescues, and a paramedic - to inject it themselves while he's gone. Rather justified, having seen some of the lunacy the relatively sane survivors are capable of, it's not very likely that Chuck is willing to trust anyone else to actually give his daughter her dosage, or at least do it properly.
• Tear Jerker: Ted calling out to Snowflake the tiger in his dying breaths, offering up his own body to feed his only friend.

"Ted feed you! Ted take care of you..."

• • Ending F. This is what happens when you don't give Katey her Zombrex (and also when you're in the Security Room). Rescue arrives, and three zombies make their way into the Security Room. What does Chuck do? He stands there in a Heroic BSOD, and just surrenders to them. He's lost his daughter, his only real reason to stay alive. Without her, he's nothing, and that ending shows it. It's definitely a Take That towards players who just run around and kill things all playthrough without thinking of poor Chuck's little girl.
• That One Attack: Every boss has at least one.
  • Sullivan has an incredibly overpowered uppercut that instantly reduces Chuck's health to the absolute lowest level (i.e. if anything else touches you, you die) making it by far the most damaging attack in the entire game. Sniper rifles, chainaws, grenades, machine guns, swords, even aerial bombardment cannot compare to this attack.
  • Snowflake has that incredibly annoying grapple attack.
  • Dwight Boykin can pull off a melee combo where he'll whack you with the butt of his machine gun, throw you down to the ground, shoot you a bunch, then throw you. This whole combo takes off four blocks of health.
  • And of course, the redneck snipers, well, sniping you. Each shot takes off two blocks of health and knocks you back, and they almost never miss. This can be gotten around through effective use of the Roll, however.
• That One Boss: Just about any boss that won't go to pieces from a Laser Sword beaming can be swiss-cheesed with Sniper Rifle fire. Even TK will go down to repeated applications of a convenient cordless drill. Sullivan, however, will make you tear your hair out. You have to wade through a sea of zombies to get to him, wasting life and healing items. You fight him on a small platform atop a sea of zombies, and if you use any melee weapon on him, he'll grab it in mid-swing and use it to toss you into them, and all the time a passing plane is firing explosives at you. Which blow holes in the floor that you can fall into, forcing you to wade through even more zombies. If you choose to start shooting at him, he'll give just as good as he gets, and chances are his health will outlast your ammo - forcing you to resort to Good Old Fisticuffs - and given that most people bought the game explicitly to play around with the combo weapons, the Unexpected Gameplay Change to Fighting Game will slaughter you. Over and over again.
  • If you've been spamming the unarmed combat skills for some unknowable reason, he becomes the easiest boss in the game. Drop Kicks, Forward Kicks and Haymakers do impressive damage and stun him to boot. If you're feeling really cheap, you can use that time to Drop The Sledgehammer on the back of his head. Rinse and repeat.
  • By now you should be taking Knife Gloves into every fight if the goal is to simply win; the path you're guided along to reach him even takes you by the ingredients twice. Further, he can't disarm the gloves so you can pummel him pretty well indiscriminately without much concern to what he's doing.
    • Plus if you take out the zombies on the floor below before the cutscene with Sullivan they stay dead.
  • People very much seem to hate Antoine, due to him being able to block machine gun bullets, severe Hitbox Dissonance, able to use projectiles, and heal himself (though that's a weak point), as well as a really annoying hostage whining.
• Wake Up Call Boss: The Twins, which attack you at the same time, move around extremely fast, cheat pretty blatantly in regards to hit detection when you melee battle them, and are the first story critical bosses in the game. Needless to say, they're That One Boss to many people... unless you just grab the shotgun and light machine gun in the Yucatan and blow one of them away (the other one will commit suicide).
• The Woobie: Chuck.

Dead Rising 2: Case West

• And the Fandom Rejoiced/ I Knew It: Zombrex's first patient is helping Chuck clear his name. Three guesses as to who's Frank's source. Here's a hint: They're from the first game, and it ain't Otis.
• Crazy Awesome: You can go about raiding the facility dressed up as Dr. Wily, killing zombies with your lightning gun while your partner in crime is taking a swing at the zombies wearing a baseball uniform with a lightsaber.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: The entire game. A guy who can make a weapon out of anything and a guy who's covered wars slice, shoot and pummel their way through waves of the undead to search for the truth.
  • And the ending, too.

Chuck: Take it. The world needs Frank West.

• Crowning Moment of Funny: One cutscene features Chuck and Frank sitting in the Shipping Office, with Chuck repeatedly clicking a pen to Frank's chagrin. Eventually Frank has enough and throws the pen into a wall. Chuck then delivers one of the best lines in Case West.

Chuck: Y'know, you're a little high-strung for a guy who's covered wars.

• • Hey! I just found a mask of Dr. Wily! Anyone??
• Game Breaker: The Impact Blaster and the Reaper are the only combo weapons worth using in the final battle or against hazard units. Ironically, in singleplayer mode, the weapons you give Frank last as long as if you were using them, due to it being meant for co-op play.

Dead Rising 2: Off the Record

• And the Fandom Rejoiced: Not only is the game Fan Service, but available for PC and Play Station 3 as well as Xbox 360.
  • It took three games, but Capcom finally added a Sandbox mode that lets players run around killing zombies with no need to worry about the time limit.
• Ascended Extra: A mild example, but Brandon goes from being optional to a mandatory fight and plays a bigger role in the story. He is directed by T.K. to release the zombies and start the outbreak.
• Broken Base: Over which protagonist's version of the story fans prefer, Chuck's, or Frank's?
• Crazy Awesome: In Off the Record, Frank pro wrestles with Masked Luchador zombies. 'Nuff said.
  • Frank vs Giant Robot. Guess who wins.
• Game Breaker: All the stuff that broke the game in the original version is back for this one, along with:
  • Sandbox mode. All a player has to do is make a save, play this mode for a couple of hours to get money and PP, and they shouldn't have any worry in the world.
  • Frank's Camera is also one this time around, since it doesn't have to constantly get new batteries anymore. Meaning one can get tons of easy PP by taking pictures.
• Goddamned Bats: The sleeper zombies lying on the floor or staring at walls, who teleport into a grapple accompanied by a Scare Chord. The floor ones are easy to avoid, jump over, or preemptively attack, but the wall ones spawn behind blind corners and closed doors and inside safe areas like Maintenance Rooms and bathrooms. They're infrequent enough to lull the player into complacency and a Jump Scare.
  • On the bright side, if you shake them off fast enough, they do little to no damage at all.
• Jerkass: Frank comes off with two dick remarks in this games particularly if the player liked Chuck Greene, one upon his defeat "That guy was a few screws short of a workbench" and one DURING the fight "[Taunting/mockingly] Trust me NO ONE is going to hurt your daughter now!"
• Player Punch: Arguably the fact that Katey dies in Off The Record. Made worse by the fact that her daddy's gone Psycho and is now a boss fight.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Mainly averted, as Off the Record removes many of the annoying issues that players had with Dead Rising 2. Frank can inject Zombrex anywhere, and doesn't need to return to the Safe House each time (since there's no Katey waiting there for it). Stacey's messages are now fully voiced and broadcast over a wireless earpiece, so you can listen to them without interrupting combat. Finally, and probably most significantly, they actually added a checkpoint system that saves every time you change locations, so you don't end up losing an hour or so of gameplay if you get killed.
• Internet Backdraft: A partial victim of one - Thanks to the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3, a lot of people are pissed that Capcom's policy seems to be to rerelease games instead of making new ones, even though this is common with numerous other video game companies. - It's not helped that both this and Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 were both announced within months of the original games release. To make matters worse, UMvC3 is coming out in the same calendar year as it's original release, whilst Off the Record avoids this by two weeks.
• That One Boss:The bosses all got a power up for this one, but god DAMN the Redneck Snipers take the cake.