Capcom has launched upon new waters with their release of Dead Rising: Case Zero for the Xbox 360. How so, you might ask? Well, if you haven’t heard, Case Zero is a prequel to the upcoming game Dead Rising 2, is a taste of the zombie slaying madness to come. However, instead of the standard 5-10 minute demo, Capcom released Case Zero, which plays like a full chapter of Dead Rising 2, but has the cost of 400 Microsoft points, or $5.
Storyline:
The world is now coping with a zombie apocalypse style outbreak, and you play the protagonist, famous motorbike racer Chuck Greene. Chuck is now racing to break out of the quarantine with his infected daughter, Katie, who he must inject with the antidote, Zombrex, every 12 hours, or she turns into a full zombie. The game offers you little else in the way of backstory, but without spoiling anything, Chuck gets stranded in the backwater town of Still Creek, holed up in a town the size of a postage stamp, trying desperately to get more Zombrex before the 12 hour time limit runs out, while searching for a way to escape Still Creek.
Gameplay:
Good zombie mashing fun overall, the controls feel sluggish and unresponsive…until you realize that Chuck has a persistent leveling system where he becomes faster and more powerful over time. The entire demo (I hesitate to even call it a demo; I’ve played full retail games that have brought less), I was screaming at the screen with my brain “RUN FASTER, QUIT PLODDING ALONG”, because his daughter’s life being in danger, there is no dodge or sprint button. Chuck jogs along at an infuriating pace through the swarms of relatively unaware zombies.
The leveling system is clever, but it doesn’t seem to allow you choose your abilities. Each level you gain through good ol’ zombie slayin’ seems to randomly add “Prestige Points” or PP into your character. Obviously, if I’d have had my choice, the SPEED attribute would have been maxed out first and foremost.
If you’ve played the first title, Frank West’s camera work for leveling experience is gone, in lieu of Chuck Greene’s apparently ability to take seemingly random items from the world and transform them into lethal weapons. Box of nails and a propane tank? You bet. Power drill and a bucket? Uh…sure. With these special weapons he cobbles together with random junk, he gains experience cleaving through the zombie hoard with them. Some of the weapons seem a little forced, some comical, and some have you saying, “Oh, hell yeah”.
The zombies are relatively sluggish, but MAN they are plentiful. Fortunately, Chuck can run down main street Still Creek weaving a way through the shambling human maze without having to mow down everything in your path. Time is of the essence, so you don’t have time to “kill”, so to speak. Ooof, bad pun.
Also back for the second game comes unique human survivors needing your help, as well as human psychopaths who are reveling in the mayhem and seem to want nothing more than to kill you and everything around them. Case Zero plays more like a puzzle game at points, having to figure out where certain items are or how to rescue certain survivors.
For those of you familiar with the series and did not like the original Dead Rising save system of having no checkpoints and only being able to save in bathrooms, guess what? They apparently heard all your bitching and…did absolutely nothing about it. Saves are still done in men’s stalls. Ha ha.
One of my survivor rescues had pathing issues for some reason; no matter how many zombies I killed around them and how many times I pointed my cursor to “move that way”, she just bumbled around in some round about way, refusing to go the way I showed her. Not fun, but that being said, I also found out there’s a trick to saving that hostage anyway (I’m not telling).
Graphics:
Pretty decent. Obviously, the focus is on fitting as many zombies on the screen at once, so you can’t be surprised with graphical hitches. Chuck definitely likes clipping through enemies as he’s swinging his improvised weapons around, and zombies often clip through each other, but I’m not complaining. There was no lag, and it seemed like the frame rate was locked up tight as a drum.
Bottom Line:
From download to getting the best ending possible (saving all the survivors, saving Katie and escaping Still Creek), took four hours. You can, of course, ignore everything for the main objective of getting out of Still Creek, but the first time I beat it, I was shocked to find that there are five endings (see why I had trouble calling it a demo?); achievement whores will be happy to hear that $5 nets you a fairly painless 200 achievement points.
The idea is simple here; I’ve played retail games that have had less polish and less well planned gameplay, and this took my desire to play Dead Rising 2 from “meh” to “damn, I can’t wait”. That sounds like exactly what a demo is supposed to be, and then some.
I would say that’s mission accomplished for Capcom. Case Zero absolutely is worth your five dollars and your four hours of time, and Capcom has successfully set the bar ridiculously high for their competitors should a challenger want to put out this same “paid demo” concept again.
Good job, Capcom.
Final Score: 9.0 out of 10
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