Dead Rising 2: Off The Record - On Difficulty and Experience
by Keith Sadler, posted on 14 April 2011 / 1,045 Views
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is looking to upgrade its difficulty settings. Dead Rising games have always been known to be difficult, but gamers today are looking for an experience, said Jason Leigh, executive producer of Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 2: Off The Record.
“The game definitely is a demanding game,” Leigh told Stephen Totilo in an interview. The game ‘features a tougher Frank West and a Tougher Fortune City.’
“People expect an experience, whereas in the past they expected challenge.”
To that end, says Leigh, they’ve given players multiple save slots, something unavailable in the franchise until Dead Rising 2, and they’ve created checkpoints right after you enter a new area and right before you fight a boss. Also, says Leigh, if you really want to, just run like hell.
“One of the great things about the sandbox with the zombies,” he said, “is you can choose to barrel through [the zombies] or you can choose to skirt them. You still have to fight them eventually. There’s no one path where you can’t fight them, but it almost a choose-your-own-difficulty kind of game, depending on how you play it.”
My personal experience watching a friend play through Dead Rising 2 was that the difficulty penalties were too high. You didn’t feel challenged, you felt bitten on the nut sack and then you quit playing. We, both of us, really wanted to like Dead Rising. It had great visuals, great sound, and great innovation. Maybe with Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, we can.
“I think one of the reasons a lot of modern games do well is that they deliver an incredibly well-executed experience and put you in [a] setting. Because of that, perhaps, players are more forgiving about difficulty and, even if they sail through, they’ll go, ‘Well, it wasn’t that hard, but did I ever enjoy the ride along the way!’
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record will be available to play on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC next Fall.
