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Two months after the events of Dead Space 2, our survivors Isaac Clark and Ellie Langford have fallen into a bit of a tumultuous schism and have broken up. The Unitologists have taken their cultish fervor to military form, going across the galaxy to activate "Markers" and speed up the Necromorph infection to cause convergence and allow them to be reborn after their grizzly murders.

We cut to Isaac looking older, tired, and heartbroken as he replays a answering machine message from Ellie. She tells him he is going to continue the fight against the Necromorphs and Unitologists without his help. After a bit of a fit throwing some pictures on the ground, his room is invaded by two soldiers of EarthGov: Carver (the co-op player) and Cap. Robert Norton (a massive douche). After a less than friendly introduction he is basically escorted at gunpoint to go after Ellie whom these soldiers lost contact with. Begrudgingly, Isaac follows them but before they even make it out the door the Unitologists attack them.

While technically a good guy, Robert is a first class douchebag.

So with this premise, I was accepting an ready to jump in to the fun that is the Dead Space universe. As soon as I take control of the game I follow my marker and meet up with the two pricks and immediately I am swamped by unitologist soldiers firing machine guns at me. But thankfully, it tells me tapping R3 will allow me to crouch, which is pretty handy considering all the cover around like chest high walls or parked cars.

It took me less than a matter of seconds of taking control of the game to be so gut wrenchingly disappointed I almost put the game down. Dead Space is a game that was hinged on creepy monsters, dark claustrophobic settings, and scary atmosphere. If I wanted to fucking duck behind cover to pop my head up and shoot at asshole human beings with guns, I could have picked up ALMOST ANY OTHER FUCKING GAME WITH A GUN IN IT. Fuck. 

Grrrrrrrr.......

In my last review I said I wasnt so backwards thinking that games couldnt update or change, but seriously, come the fuck on. Why would you take a very interesting property and try to make feel like every other 3rd person shooter on the market. I know they sell well but were good on those, we have plenty. I want to play Dead Space.

Thankfully, this mission lasts only really long enough to serve as a tutorial and once I get away from the shitdick soldiers we get ourselves into space, and then Dead Space starts to feel like it should all over again. The controls will be pretty familiar to series regulars as they are virtually unchanged from the previous titles in this series. The only real functional changes that I was able to find is that usually R3 was the guide button to show you which way to go (a feature I love, btw) but now you have to hold it a second because as I mentioned above, it shares with crouch. On the other analog, they have also added in a dodge roll, but to be honest I never really found an enemy where it was useful.

There was another bit of a jarring shock to me is I was only able to carry two weapons this time, another throw back to the 3rd person cover based shooters they are trying to ape. This to me on one hand was kind of disappointing because I dont like it when a game tries to limit me, but on the other hand I played most of Dead Space 1 and 2 with the initial plasma cutter you start the game with. The more you would upgrade that thing, the more of a beast it would become.

The problem is, that brings us to one of Dead Space 3s newer features, fully customizable weapons. In the previous Dead Spaces  you would unlock a weapon and then have to add power nodes to increase its clip, rate of fire, power, and so on. In this version you collect various parts and depending on how you add them it creates a new weapon.

This can be incredibly intimidating because the combinations are pretty plentiful. After a few minutes its easy to get frustrated and even worse its hampered by the fact you can only hold 2 guns. there really isnt even a good way to look at all of the weapons youve created to see which are stronger back to back aside from equipping them then unequipping them. It requires going through too many menus. However, the game does have a cool little workshop feature where you can load a save, tinker with your weapons then let in some monsters to see how they play out. I kinda wish I noticed this feature first because my starting cutter really wasnt cutting it (ba dum tsss).

But if you have the ability to make tons of different weapons, then how are you going to sort out ammo for all the different variations of them? Well, this gives us the unfortunate issue of only having one type of ammo. Its dropped virtually all the time, its very cheap to create, and works for everything. So a lot of the tense fear you would get from not having enough ammo is effectively dashed. Seeing 4 necromorphs baring at you and knowing you are on your last 10 shots of your cutter just added to the fear and atmosphere. Now I can pretty much just rapid fire with little fear of ever running out of ammo. 

Something else I noticed early is that necromorphs are WAY harder to kill this time around. Thats a good thing too. The seasoned Dead Space player knows the score: knee shot, arm shot, stomp. In the previous two games this was pretty much all you needed to take down virtually everything in the game, so really you had no reason to upgrade your other weapons because the initial plasma cutter was such a necromorph wrecking beast.

So the overall meta of the Deadpool games story is that Deadpool is basically holding High Moon studios hostage after they rejected his initial video game pitch. After giving a much more "explosive" proposal, High Moon Studios sends over their script for the Deadpool game.  Deadpool is clearly not happy going off a script and starts cutting through it with a crayon without reading to make his changes. After arguing with his voices a bit and dicking around his apartment, we jump into the script...

Deadpool receives a contract to kill Chance White, a corrupt media mogul. Deadpool has no idea why hes accepted this contract because he didnt read the script. But none the less Deadpool cuts and shoots his way through Whites armed guard in his headquarters to make his kill. In the wake of his destruction (and blowing the games budget in the process), White escapes with the help of Mister Sinister.

This irks Deadpool because he wont get paid if he doesnt actually kill White. Sinister makes his escape to the island of Genosha. While in pursuit of Sinister, Deadpool teams up with his old collegues with the X-Force in Wolverine, Rouge, Domino, and Psylocke and after a bit of an argument about who gets to fly the Blackbird, the group of them give pursuit to get revenge for robbing Pool of his pay (oh, and stop Sinisters scheme.)

So alright, the premise for the story is both completely fitting for the Deadpool character and at the same time feels slightly lacking. The biggest problem in the area of story is the lack of a really strong set of supporting characters. For the weeks approaching release they would tease and release images showing that Wolvie, Domino, Cable, and Rouge were all in the game. At the onset, I was pretty happy about that since these are characters I generally like and am familiar with.

But really, the only ones who gets any real extended screen time in the game are Cable and Death. They mainly serve to kinda push Deadpool along in the story, but he clearly has little interest in doing so. Its funny because those were pretty much the exact feelings I had as well. I found myself a couple of times wondering if this was meant to be something they did on purpose, or if the writing was particularly weak in that area. This really is a theme you might find yourself in for a number of the games aspects.

The main antagonists, Mr. Sinister and his gaggle of D-list villains (Blockbuster, Vertigo, and Arclight) all feel kinda thrown in. Which again, seems like something that could be intentional or slapdash. Youd feel that that this is a Marvel licensed game theyd have the right to throw in characters from the entire universe. Then again because of the very nature of the Deadpool character, this allows him to completely trash how awful this cast is. It makes sense in that regard. 

But what sticks in my craw about it is if you are going to advertise that these more popular Marvel characters are going to be in the game, one would hope that its going to be more than just a lame token appearance which many of these characters seem to be. You get one small section where you "sort of" play as Rouge. I dont think Psylocke even gets a line of dialog. Wolverines contribution to the story is marginal at best. Its really kind of a letdown considering the history between characters like Deadpool and Wolvie/Domino.

Full disclosure: I thought Arclight, Vertigo, and Blockbuster were made up for this game.

I know that Deadpool for the most part of his series deals with some pretty off the wall main antagonists for the majority of his main stories, but hes clashed with almost every hero and villain in the Marvel universe a one point or another. There could have been an actual fight with Wolverine or Domino, any of the previous Weapon X products, no mention of Spider-man after one small reference at the start, none of the Avengers make and appearance. There isnt even people who are more commonly known to his own franchise in there (probably because a lot of them are dead, but still.)

Really, I think a lot of Deadpools best story arcs are where hes a support character to a major player. Thor, Hulk, Spidey, and so on. I feel the game might have been better served as a series of disconnected missions with the other characters universes. Sadly thats not how it played out.

"Deadpool, we need to go off screen and be ineffectual to the plot for the next few levels, bub."

So the Deadpool games combat system I guess can be considered pretty cookie cutter for those action adventure spectacle fighter kinda games weve seen. You got your light attack, heavy attack, jump, dodge, counter functions, you can use your shoulder buttons to go into the over the shoulder 3rd person shooter kind of control scheme with pistols, shotguns, and machine guns. If you have been playing video games at all for the past 10 to 15 years nothing about the games control scheme is gonna throw you a wild curve ball. Its about as cut and dry as it gets.

However on the same token, sometimes it can feel a bit loose too. If you go into the menu for your unlocks and upgrades you will see that certain levels of weapons unlock different and more extended combos to use. But my mashing of the combos never seemed give me the inclination I was doing my combos properly. This is really an area where Deadpool can take a page from the God of War playbook. When I hit my specific button presses in that game, the combos on the screen look clearly different enough for me understand that those specific presses triggered that specific move.

Occasionally you will get the QTE button press to counter an enemy, but the window of it is small or sensitive to directional button presses, so I never seemed to be able to really rely on the ability to counter certain enemies, sans a few fights with Blockbuster where his counter is very highly telegraphed. Which makes that boss fight almost insultingly easy. Luckily for the most part if your counter doesnt work you will still teleport dodge away so you remain safe. A friend of mine thinks this was done intentionally, to make a mockery of bad gameplay, but I think thats a bit too subtle for the Deadpool universe. I think it just doesnt work well.

During the course of the game Deadpool will continue to break the fourth wall in cutscenes and a number of those deal a good amount of laughs. There was a concern that, much like recent Spider-Man games, Deadpool would overuse some of the pool of quips he has ad nauseum to the point of irritation. Depending on how long you play the game, this might be an issue or not. I for the most part didnt have much of a problem with this, but there was one line that I seemed to get much more than others: "Two extra slices for just 9.99."

It came up just enough times for me to find it irritating but not so much that it ruined the gameplay for me. What they really should have done here is give Nolan North the script, let him run through his lines, and then let him ad lib for like and hour and cram every bit of those you could fit onto the disc. This would made certain things come up a lot less frequently, or if anything allow them to play at random but no repeat until it cycles through the whole list. 

The game has a tendency to keep you bottled up in some pretty lame environments through the whole game. Buildings, Sewers, factories, or dilapidated buildings. I know there is only so much you can do with environments in a game like this but a couple splashes of color would have been nice. Genosha is an island in the middle of nowhere, a few stages could have taken place in the jungle or something with some wild animals to fight. 

Ultimately the game is pretty samey though and through. Youll find yourself running around hack and slashing your wear through faceless baddies until they start to shoot at you, which will be your cue to pull out your guns and fire back in kind. There is an occasional stealth element where you can sneak up on a guy and hack them to ribbons without being seen, but its so rare and so likely to go wrong you might as well keep powering through with your swords anyways.

Lastly the game also features a series of challenge maps that are kind of like horde modes. The more you beat the more you unlock further difficulties and if you manage to get a gold medal, you can get an alternate costume for Deadpool. The thing is, you can only use said costume on said challenge map, and only for its unlimited mode. So basically you only get the new costume for a section of the game you cant win or unlock more things for. Seems like a massive oversight, let me use them on the other challenges or in the story mode.

So did I like Deadpool? I have to say that I did for the most part. Its not a game thats going to break any molds or show you anything new, but for the most part its pretty functional and fun to play. The difficulty curve is a little ridiculous from time to time where in some stages youll find yourself slashing things to bits like a red and black katana cloud of death, yet 5 minutes later youll find yourself getting gunned down in the same section over and over again. It can be frustrating but not so much thatd you would stop playing.  Id say the games biggest flaw is what I perceive to be a lack of replay value. 

The Deadpool game is made for those people who are clearly fans of Deadpool. I wouldnt say its a great introduction to the character for those who arent exactly familiar with him, but he does make the transition from comic to game pretty well with his character intact (for those of you who saw the X-men Origins: Wolverine, that is not how Deadpool should be).

Ultimately though, it shows why it came out at a lower price. I think the game could probably get a sequel, but I suggest that they focus on really beefing up the story aspect of the game bring in more of the more notable Marvel universe. Its not the best game to ever come out, but not bad either. Its safe. Youll get your yucks, and its fun enough to see to the end, just dont expect to keep playing it to perfection. Heres hoping for a more polished sequel, because it has potential.

Even D-Pool appreciates "Yo Dawg". Love it.

Basically the story picks up from the events of the first Dead Rising following the original protagonist Frank West. After being the journalist who uncovered the zombie infestation in Willamette, Frank was on a rocket to super stardom. Best selling books, hot girlfriend, meetings with the president, tv appearances, etc. But as his rise to fame inflated, it eventually had to burst. His TV show gets cancelled and he begins to bottom out, spending his time alone and drowning in the bottom of the bottle. As zombies become more common place he makes the decision to get his life back in order hed make some money by going to Fortune City and fighting on a reality show apparently hosted by the Rock called Terror Is Reality, where he uses his zombie fighting skills to earn money. After an empty feeling victory, as he leaving he sees the Rock (actually called TK) make an a suspicious transaction with someone before fighting off some thugs who have cornered him. As he leaves the building there is an explosion that releases hoards of zombies and begins killing innocent people. After making his way to the saferoom with other survivors, a news story runs pinning the explosion on an zombie support activist group called C.U.R.E and their leader Stacey. So Frank and Stacey take to the zombie infested casino resort to discover the truth....

Did some of that sound familiar? Yeah, it did for me too. Almost like I have played this game already. Probably because I have, but then it was just called Dead Rising 2. Originally I thought it was intended to be an alternate timeline, like the game would follow along with the events that took place with 2s protagonist Chuck Greene. But as I found out right out the gate, its more along an alternate reality because aside from the story pretty much following the exact pattern of the first one, the first 2 that is, there is a cutscene and boss fight very early on where you actually have to fight Chuck Greene on his chainsaw motorcycle. Really, it was the most interesting scene because it painted an interesting picture and let me imagine how Chuck failed between Dead Rising: Case Zero and Dead Rising 2 and makes it a believable reality. Thats always been an interesting concept to me, to take the hero of one game and make him a villain in the next, something that I believe was tried in Tales of Symphonia 2 and the now scrapped but being reconsidered Final Fantasy VII-2.

Im getting off topic. Originally with this idea, I wasnt bothered that this is what they did. It fits well and its fun to see Franks reactions to somethings.  But what bothers me is that it feels like in some of the scenes, Frank is just repeating the same lines of dialogue that Chuck delivered in the original version. I might have to replay 2 to confirm this. Frank does add to end of some fights some terrible cheesy one liner when he wins, and yes at one point he brings back his infamous catch phrase, but he delivers it with a smug irony, like he knows the humor of it now. However, when I feel the game starts to become something its own, sometimes someone will just say "Hey youre Frank West! Original dead rising 2 dialogue line!". This to me is somewhat irritating because it feels half assed. While the setting was the same, I hoped that the way the story played out would be different. Sure some scenes change subtly, but just call this what it is: Dead Rising 2: The version people wanted and we should have released first.  

Bibi is one of my favorite Pyschos. Just an aging showgirl who just doesnt get it. both Chuck and Frank act like their being hit on by their mom. Hilarious.

So for the most part, most of what made DR2 good is still here. Most of the controls havent changed so its easy to pick up and start playing. Leveling up Frank functions the same way as the previous Dead Rising games, The best rewards are found from saving survivors who, like in DR2, are generally much smarter and braver than in the first DR game. So keep a handgun or shotgun handy for when saving people and order them ahead. They dash to the point and then huddle up and shoot anything that comes by. Much easier to save them in groups now. Bosses provide fairly decent PP as well and most of them can be found in the same places and times as the previous DR2. In addition to that, It wouldnt be Frank West if you didnt take pictures as well and taking them at the right time offers big PP opportunities, (lol, big PP.. It may be juvenile but its still funny). And yes the timed mission mechanic is still pretty annoying but at least you can just use the zombrex at the hour you need to than running back to the safe house to do it.

They have added some new weapon combinations and all of the old designs still work. The Bowie Knife + Boxing glove and the Broom + Machete combos are still the same arbiters of zombie decimation I grew to love in the previous game.  Some of them are good for a laugh but youll basically stick to one or two powerful weapons and then if you are smart, youll get the entertainment and blade magazines, when you get the Katanas you can pretty much the ride out the game with two swords that never break. Another good tip is when you find bars or coffee places, try to collect Wine or Coffee Creamer, combining 2 of each of those in a blender make a quickstep drink which covers a lot of ground quickly. So when not saving people its good to know where to make those because when saving people, they get the quickstep ability too, makes some rescues a breeze.

The soundtrack rocks my ass off. Dead Rising always has a kick ass soundtrack. The ambiance for the casinos and malls is the same plasticy "muzak" you would hear in actual malls. But when you would fight the psychopaths or other bosses, you get some kick ass hard rock, hardcore, or metal soundtrack that really amps up the fight and makes them very fun and entertaining. These soundtracks kick ass and totally make some of the fights and if you dont think so then you are brain damaged. Go to youtube and check out Celldwellers "Own Little World" or Chucks boss theme "Firewater". Capcom understands boss fights and making them feel awesome.

There is also a sandbox mode, basically you get the freedom to browse the map and try to do various challenges that rank you online and reward you with money. You can carry this over to the actual story mode but It really isnt necessary as there are many was in the actual story mode to build money, its a neat little time sink though for the completionists.


The presentation in this game is what you have come to expect, graphically nothing has changed from DR2 to DR2:OTR. The survivors and zombies are pretty generic looking save the showgirls but not horrid. The major characters and bosses though, are all pretty well designed and have been polished up for the release, and with the proper HD sheen the characters could look downright lifelike, especially Rebecca Chang who admittedly I rule 34d (dont judge me). The Boss characters are generally well designed and diverse as well, some of them just downright hilarious. A few of them reference some throw backs to previous DR games as well. I dont know why I didnt notice this before but something with the voice acting didnt settle with me. While most of the male characters act reasonably normal given the situation, all the of major female speaking roles with the exception of Stacey seem to be like they are all delivering their lines like they were hired by the soft core pornography actors association. All the dialogue they give is over sexualized and drenched in innuendo, and you barely get a feel for an actual character until much later in the game.

"Your performance was a little limp tonight, Frank. At that age you need pills for that." I wish I was making that line up.

Rule 34: Its not always a bad thing... (seriously, Dont judge me)

One thing I wanted to specifically address about the presentation is Franks actual appearance. When I first started playing the game I watched the intro cinematic and even the beginning play through, I thought little of it at first. "Oh theres Frank! This is gonna be awesome." But as I played on, in one of the first cutscenes the Rock mentioned that Frank sold baldness remedies, and it reminded me about the cover. I couldnt help but notice when I looked at it that Frank was definitely balding on the cover. It just looked strange, and now that they mentioned it I couldnt help but notice it. Then I started looked at his actual appearance as I played. I noticed Frank doesnt really run as much as he has kind of a waddling shuffle. He had that in the first DR but it definitely was more noticeable in this one, he also looked a bit more heavy set as well. I thought it was just design of the suit but nope, Frank got fat. At first I was somewhat off put by it, but then something clicked. Frank is an actual everyman. Hes not a superhero, hes not some well cut trained soldier or a well traveled adventurer like say Nathan Drake. Hes a dude who let fame get to him and lived a fast paced lifestyle that crumbled around him and fell into some bad vices. That topped on the degenerative nature of being bit by a zombie in the first game, it was completely natural and believable that he would let himself go. You tend to hear a large number of female gamers complain how women portrayed in video games are just over sexualized bombshells with massive chests. Now you are starting to see women in gaming starting to have more normal and regular appearances, but you dont really notice this kind of thing about men. I am going through the list of games across from my bed here, and aside from games with create a character, most of the male leads all have the same generic hero archetype. I stumbled upon this article that describes this realization pretty well. Perhaps this is a bit liberal arts douchey of me to make note of, but I thought it was an interesting point and I think I would like to see more actual average joes as game protagonists.

Sorry about that, let me get back on track here. So if the game seems to be the exact same game as the one I played before, and not much of it seemed to just seemed to show any other variance the one before it, why would I continue to play it? Well, thats just the inherent beauty of this games design. Its just fun to run around to mash zombies into paste. And as I played through, the story does eventually start to branch off from the original path about half way through, making the game an alternate timeline as well.  I guess it still somewhat fits but the last boss is nothing short of ridiculous. But as soon as I finished, even having like 3 other games to play, I wanted to keep playing this one because I wanted to save all the survivors and keep leveling my character, keep discovering new weapons, want to rip through with my stronger character to see all the endings. I ended up playing this back to back just so I could rip through with all the levels and abilities Ive earned. My same reaction to the other Dead Rising games.

Its a cool little add on to Dead Rising 2 but really it didnt need to exist. I, like most people, was pretty disappointed when Frank wasnt the star of the sequel but it was cool that Capcom listened to the fans and eventually gave them what they wanted. 40 Bucks for this title seemed a bit steep for something they didnt add all that much to, but Im glad that I have it and its added the to play life of a game I was done playing. If you are a fan of Dead Rising, I would say it is worth a pick up but I might recommend waiting on it coming down in price a little bit.