Goated

My personnal opinion :

I'd like to mention that i played Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 2 OTR on Xbox 360, xbox one and Steam before writing this review and with the latest purchase being the Steam one i am very disappointed. The game is very bad like on the Xbox One, it feels like a rushed Copy Paste of Dead Rising 2 with some added files left and right. There are tons of invisible walls that can be very infuriating when trying to do the gold medals challenges, the zombies are way more agressive than regular Dead Rising 2 to say the least, they detect you from 15 meters away and they hit you/grab you from so far away it is ridiculous. The AI/bots are very inconsistent (zombies grabs but also survivors). The game is already designed to be a bit harder than Dead Rising 2 by default but the bugs make it even harder. The Chuck Green boss get very easily stuck on bareers but if you are in the wrong angle and he hits you against it you can also get insta killed even if full health. Some bosses like the snipers or the Sheriff have inconsistent fighting paterns where sometimes they will spam the attacks/snipes without reloading. While this is not a "big deal" at times, it is on the other end very annoying to have an inconstistent AI that can easily break and have a different fighting pattern.

Some files are even in the game by accident, at the final boss fight you can pick up a giant pilar (pillar?), which is suppose to just be environmental object and then you can carry in your inventory an item that doesn't even have a picture, it's just a plank logo on a white background and when you equip it it is the giant pilar lol. you can't use it and cannot do anything with it. While it is funny, yes, it shows how rushed the game was on the other hand. Most of the cinematics are pure copy paste of regular Dead Rising 2 as well but they just changed the voicelines and subtitles. The cinematics are the exact same and sometime it doesn't make sense because they had to improvize last second, for example Slappy asking you to "fix his toy".

While the idea behind this game is good and the design was very good indeed ( i love the new Uranus zone, the new combo weapons, Frank being able to take his Zombrex anywhere on the map instead of going back to safe house all the time, the unique jumpscares, etc), the final product on the other end just result in a buggy mess.

All that being said, you can look past some of those points if you just play casually, though the zombie ai, hitboxes and invisible walls can be frustrating even in story mode. The game is still a fun ride at the end of the day and a good concept idea but be warned that if you want to 100/100 this game you will probably have moments of rage, especially with some challenges of the Sandbox mode.

Basically the same game as the original Dead Rising 2. Has a few extras that can be amounted to DLC. Has a bit of extra game world added (if you think about the map like Disneyland with different lands, it basically adds a new Land). The story is changed a tiny bit (bad guy characters are slightly different). Both have bad support for controllers, but this one seems to work more reliably with x360ce. If you are only playing one of them then Id probably play this one. But due to the roguelike nature of these games you can beat DR2 and then start this one right after treating it as another run.

This version is definitely easier than the original. While I had to restart a few times in the original to get my levels up, I was able to beat this one in a single run, you get way more experience and money here. However the numbers of zombies are way higher here than the original, double or maybe triple, making it much harder to simply run-by them. The survivors are also less tanky, in the original you could just keep running and they'd get away if grabbed. In this one most of the time you have to help them otherwise they'll die pretty quickly (their health ticks down at like 3 times the speed when grabbed).

Still fun in 2025.