Another one bites the dust

… another game series that is dead to me due to some shortsighted game design, that is.

The culprit this time: Dead Rising 2. Smashing zombies with street signs and lawn chairs–what’s not to love, right? Well, it’s a pretty good game, I have to say. It has an annoying habit of cutting away to a non-interactive in-engine scene right before a big fight, which is very disorienting, and frankly, a waste of my time. If I want to see a movie, I’ll rent a DVD; if you want to MAKE movies, game designers, then go work in the film industry and stop foisting your bullshit on us.

The nail in the coffin, though, is the *BIG SPOILER* mission where you find a crazy CURE protester in a bathroom. He wigs out and attacks you immediately. Unlike everyone else you’ve fought in the game thus far, when you whack him with your spiky bat, he betrays NO REACTION WHATSOEVER, so all the strategies you’ve learned to get you through the game this far (i.e. bash stuff away before it can get close enough to attack you) are useless. Worse, he’s RIGHT IN FRONT OF A SAVE POINT, so you can’t even save, then keep trying things until you figure it out. You have to fight your way all the way across the map only to insta-die. Repeatedly.

On top of which, I kept doing this mission right after the one with the two people in the arena dressing room trapped by a fire, and when they got there, all they did was stay close enough to me to get whacked by my bat. Just let the guy kill my ass, and were no help whatsoever.

I was just beginning to like that game, but life’s too damn short to put up with stupid design. This one was almost as disappointing as Prototype. At least I got this one from GameFly and didn’t BUY it.