TGS ’10: Capcom Announces “Case West” DR2 Epilogue
Capcom yesterday announced that after the launch of Dead Rising 2, the company would release another one of its downloadable episodes, this time with two player co-op.
Dead Rising: Case West is its title and the opening trailer sees the main character from the first game, Frank “I’ve covered wars you know” West joining up to clear Chuck’s name of causing the outbreak in Fortune City (although that is a pretty indication of how Dead Rising 2 ends. No spoiler alert, Capcom?) Much like Case Zero, this will probably be around 400 MS Points and is annoyingly only coming out on the Xbox.
I have to say I was sceptical of these mini episodes when they were first released. Paying 400 MS Points for what could have just been a demo seemed very dodgy and I was concerned that they were simply just cutting stuff from the main game and making us pay a fiver for it. In reality though, these episodes act as a cheap way to play some Dead Rising. I wrote about my love/hate relationship with the first game recently, so I’ve always been worried about getting the second one in case I’m paying £40 to subject myself to further torture. However, these episodes let me play Dead Rising and kill a bunch of zombies without having to shell out a load or endure the archetypal “hard man” characters through eight or nine hours of story. It seems more sensible to just get Case Zero and then Case West for now and then when it’s cheaper in a few months pick up the full game if I still want to play it.
Yes it’s a little cheeky and I could understand if you don’t like the idea of paying for a long demo, but if you just want to mess around in a crazy fun game with little care for the story then these episodes seem like a good idea. It would be interesting to see if other developers start pushing these, too. It might not work for every game (more story focused ones for example), but in the face of game companies complaining about pre-owned sales and piracy, having prologues and epilogues you can get for under a tenner seems like a fair deal.
Although Chuck still walks like he’s crapped himself.
Trailer for the Case West below:
Everyone should be aware that during a point in his life Frank West was extensively involved in photographing armed conflicts.
I can’t help but wonder how this is going to effect DR2 sales on the 360.
Does anyone know if DR2 is going to have a time limit?
The only thing that made me want to wrap my fingers around DR1′s throat more than the AI was the fucking time limit!
And as far as the episode thing goes, I think it’ll depend on the episode.
I finished Alan Wake fairly quickly after the game came out, but I had to wait over a month to get the ‘free’ DLC episode that continues the story. And when it was finally released, I played it one sitting and found it to be extremely underwhelming and definitely not worth the wait. I traded the game almost immediately after finishing the DLC, not caring about the next DLC episode AW has in store.
Had this DLC episode been released before the actual game, I might not have bought the full game.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to discover that the DR2 prologue is better than the full game because of the freedom of not being burdened by story or character development?
@Jack Frost: Yeah, time limits are still there. You’ll have to give your daughter zombrex every eight hours, plus the story cases will still have certain start times and such.
I wouldn’t call story and character development a “burden”, though. Hell, that’s all Alan Wake had in the first place.
@Naughton: To be clear, I love good story and character development, and I don’t find either to be a burden for games in general. In fact, one of the major reasons I like Red Dead Redemption so much is because of the story and character development.
What I’m getting at is that DR2 might end up being better without these constraints, as illustrated in the DLC.
And I don’t mind time limits on completing certain missions and such, it was the hardlined 72 hours no matter what in DR1 that was seriously annoying.
Capcom are shit at story and character. Frank and this guy are about as deep as a paddling pool I don’t attach to them at all. You play a game like this for the fun of it. The gameplay is great but I just couldn’t care less for the story.
@Jack Frost: There’s always the new Yakuza game if you really hate the structure of Dead Rising that much.
@Sam Jordan: Yeah, CAPCOM pretty much fell off my radar after releasing the utter shite that was Resident Evil 5…
@Naughton: If they’ve improved the AI and don’t have a strict 3-day time limit, I’m all for Dead Rising 2.
Although, I saw clips yesterday of the main character killing zombies by throwing playing cards at them – am I alone in thinking that that’s kind of retarded?