deadrising 2 is often considered to be "the other good deadrising" after the first the game made before the series went bad, i disagree with this since i don't think the series ever went bad, but 2 is still a fantastic game on its own right, though one that's still not able to reach the hights the original did, the gameplay here is some of the best in the series but the game has some serious issues with tone and going too far with its very edgy, unfunny brand of writing that really hurt the game for me, it's not the worst in the series in that department, off the record and 3 double down on this games worst aspects, but it can still make the game a difficult recommendation for anyone unable to handle this specific brand of edgelord story.

getting the games best points out of the way first, it plays amazingly, this game is so fun to play, you have a brand new map with fortune city and it's just as well designed as Willamette, full of secrets and the levels are super vertical and scalable and there's a ton of variety here, arguably even more than the original game, you have a few malls, food courts full of themed resteraunts, a few varients of casino like the ranch themed one, the Aztec one, the americana one and the atlantas one, plus an unfinished area, an arena, a hotel and a huge strip in the middle with some greenery and tons more stores, there's even more variety in the kinds of stores here, though no hardware or supermarkets now, which is a shame, the game also looks very good in general with the colours and the models, some fun character designs and you get even more zombies on screen than you did in the original, which already had a very impressive count, the strip is especially impressive with it. the game also has a colour filter on it that looks very ps3, it dulls it i guess to make it look more realistic but it ends up dating it in a really charming way and it has a very ps3 frame rate :) . the mall is very well designed though, you have transport in some areas and a huge underground too if you want to explore it and tons of hidden stuff like weapons and maintenance rooms and even hidden zombrex's so you can get them without doing missions or buying them from the stores that opened up, something that was featured first in the wii port of the original, but is nice to see return. the currency system is very slow to earn though and can be a real grind, at least solo, there was an online component where you could play the in game TV show terror is reality to earn points in minigames which transferred to your ingame wallet, but naturally this is long since dead so you'll need to suffer a bad grind if you want things like the unlockable cars, though i did once unlock the hummer this way so it is totally doable.

TIR was a fun mode while active though, you had a few fun minigames like one with the games combo vehicle, the chainsaw bike (though you can make a few variations of it, it feels kind of wasted) and you have to mow down balloon zombies in an arena. another where you shoot bowling balls at zombies, one with snipers that has you taking out bonus zombies, one with the drill bucket weapon where you have to chain kills together, one with lances, one with the moose head weapon where you have to knock them off the platform, a bumpercars mode with hamster balls (you can unlock this in the campaign im pretty sure if you win the hamster ball in the strip), another vehicle one and a comedy item one, there's some good variety and a few can even be played during the games opening offline, but the rest are online only.

the gameplay's biggest change here is the combo weapons, something the series would go big on from here on out. in the maintenance rooms you can make weapons by combining 2 items together to make something better, you can do it with the bike if you unlock it to but its super limited to only i think 3 total, but the main maintenance rooms have a good 50 weapons all of which you can make without any pre-requisite unlocking, there are cards you can unlock but these are more to give you hints and double xp per kill. some are super useful like the BFG (a screen clearing energy weapon) or the nail bat or the blambow (dynamite bow and arrow, killer for bosses), some are useless like the lawn dart and dynamite, or well, any of the explosive ones really, they're one use and rarely worth making, some are good for transport like the electric wheelchair or the lawnmower wheelchair combo and there's even one thats just a better healing item (the beer hat), there's a ton of varity, other personal favourites of mine were the defiler (sledgehammer and axe, super good for bosses), the knife gloves, the turret's with the freedom bear (a bear with a machinegun, its so cute) and a portable queen that follows you, the rocket launcher (uses fireworks), the makeshift naginata with the broom and machete, the paddlesaw which is a weapon cool enough to be on the games box art, you can make a beam katana from no more heroes with some gems and a flashlight, or a flaming sword which are both very cool, the electric rake is very good for crowd control and the combo with the vaccume and buzzsaws looks cool enough for me to make it any time i can, same with the boomstick (a rake and shotgun), you can even combine a combo weapon into a different one if you combine the electric chair with some guns to make the blitzkrieg, a wheelchair tank and thats nowhere near all of them, there's so many and it's a lot of fun to find them all, quick tip though, every maintenance room will have the items for at least 2 nearby, so experiment when you find a new one.

the other gameplay changes are pretty minimal, new weapons around the mall of varying degrees of useful, the zombrex stuff with katey where you need to find one per day for her or else your run ends there, some minigames like poker and slots and some qte ones to earn money, you will need to get good at poker if you want that 100% and believe me it is not easy doing those poker missions, more surivors this time i think are unannounced and hard to track down so getting everyone in general is difficult. the survivor AI is a lot better here and running a pain train of armed survivors is a lot of fun, they shred bosses, the bosses are mostly as they were in the first one, maybe a little more fun to fight and mostly less cheap, though the bike guy who acts like this games convict is a massive pain and the snipers too are a lot more annoying to take out, but they have really funny dialogue, but others like the mailman and slappy are real standouts with some great boss themes, but others like the activist and *randy* are so tone deaf they make me advise just skipping them when you can . photography is gone this time, but you do get more XP for kills which i think is a fair tradeoff, i'm just glad the rpg stuff came back because it is still good here, same with the game being in real time, it feels slower time-wise though, despite being the same amount of time. that's about it though, it is very much just the first game but expanded, most of the mechanics are the same, but i do think the combo weapons and the new setting and the multiplayer stuff do enough to make it feel fresh even after playing the first one, it helps that its just a lot of fun to play, the combo weapons were an amazing change and this map is really damn good, it's so colourful and fun to explore, you can even find hidden combo cards with posters, if you look hard enough.

the story is one of the games biggest low points which is a huge shame, it had a lot of potential with the setup, they released a whole prequel game and comic as setup for it but they don't do a ton with it, while the katey and chuck stuff is really good and the standout for sure because it feels very sweet and sincere and you do really care about them, and i like some of the twists with TK and why it all happened, it's all mired and lessened by the fratboy humour and downright cruel tone, the game is really horny in a way that feels super sleazy and it treats its female cast super poorly outside of maybe Stacey, who is still wasted despite how good the setup for her character is, and i like rebecca despite how weird the game can be with her, the game either leers at or mocks its women at every turn and there's tons of survivors who are also super sexualised, multiple that are either basically naked or actually naked and there's one specific psycho that takes the horny in a disgusting direction with implied sexual assault that almost had me dropping it this playthrough, all this combined with things like the huge sex shop in the city and the weirdo incest twins and the playboy posters dotted everywhere just give the game a sleazy boys club vibe, i could have accepted some sleaze because its vegas and to some degree i get it being there, but it just goes too far and it makes the game just exhausting to play sometimes, something the first game never suffered from even in its most ick moments (like jo and the chef), though as off the record shows with how it takes all of this games worst moments and goes ham with them, getting rid of what few sincerely nice bits the game had and throwing in a very sideeyeing twist about the human rights activist, it could be so much worse, but even as is its just too mean spirited and crass to really be a story worth experiencing, at least some of the one liners are funny.

the music is really good, the boss themes which i think are licenced are all good but the actual standout to me was the mall music, which is not just on par with the original games, but may even be better than it, it's really that good, almost every song here is amazing and super listenable, though my favourites would be the likes of mall music 1, 4 and 5, VIP lounge, fortunes embers, fortunes delight, velveeta, wonderland, the grand, really the only bad song is the americana theme. i think people call the games OST mallcore? i don't know, but i love this OST and it's one of the standouts of the generation, it even has good pause screen music! Oleksa Lozowchuk killed it here, they also worked on the later deadrisings with off the record, 3 and 4 plus horizon forbidden west.

it's a long enough game, you have about 6 or so hours for the basegame, another hour for the overtime mode which is simpler here than the original, but you don't have infinity mode, sadly, so i don't think it'll quite have that same longetivity, the multiplayer would help here but it's long since dead, but there is a co op mode that you can play if you want a new way to go through the game, there's also things like the leveling to max to get new combo cards, the secret unannounced survivors and new endings to go for, plus new unlockables in the shop with cash or for achieving things, stuff like the arthur costume from ghosts and goblins or otis's Willamette jacket, though there's no unlockable weapons here, which is a shame. for ports you have a few options, the original 360 and ps3 versions are very readily available and cheap physically, they don't run great but i don't mind that at all, there's some dlc though with the costumes and you would need to get those separate unless you instead opt for the ps4 or xbox one versions, these ports have all the dlc included even on the physical copies but they are seemingly pretty divisive with tons of bugs and they're a lot more expensive especially if you go physical, i'd recommend going the cheaper route unless you really want that frame boost. the game would go on to have an expanded version released with off the record, which changed the protag to frank west, had a far worse, actually awful story, added a new zone and some new weapons and outfits, gameplay-wise its the best version of the game but the story and tone are so, so, so much worse that it becomes hard to recommend without the caviat of "skip every cutscene" but it is still a good game to play if you do that, there were also sequels with 3 and 4 and an epilogue XBLA game with case west that works as a short side game with chuck and frank in a lab for a few hours similar to the prequel game DR2:case zero, i haven't played it, but i will one day. sadly the developer wouldn't have a long life, with them shutting down after the deadrising sequels and puzzle fighter, which is a real shame, this would also be the last game in the series worked on by inafune, the game was directed by robyn wallice, someone who would work off the record as well as deadrising 3 and had worked on the bigs and several SSX games and Yoshinori Kawano also served as executive director, he worked on things like breath of fire 1 and 3, the original deadrising, megaman legends 1 and 2 plus tron bonne as well as the megaman zero games. it's a game with its issues but it's still a very good one if you can handle the games more edgy content, but do know what you're getting into here.