How many zombies have we killed in our gaming career? At least... ten million by our ill-calculated estimate. But how many games let you just annoy zombies rather than mercilessly end their non-lives? Not many. Not enough. But Dead Rising 2 does, and that’s what we're celebrating here – the cruelest, most cold-hearted, funniest ways to mess with Fortune City’s rotting denizens. By the time we’d finished Dead Rising 2 our ‘zombies killed’ counter read 6503, but our (sadly non-existent) ‘zombies irritated’ counter must have been double that.
If you haven't already, give these a try and really nark off Dead Rising 2's vacant-headed deados.
The zombies in Dead Rising don’t have much natural balance, what with their brains being slowly devoured by mutated wasps and all. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun making them fall over. Find a bag of marbles in a toy store and you’ll be able to scatter them on the floor. Do it in a heaving throng of zombies and as they lose their footing and keel over, it’ll create a chain reaction of comedy toppling. You can also do this with condiments like mustard and ketchup.
2. Soak them
Another visit to a toy store will yield this colourful water gun. Strapping flammable liquid to it at a workbench will create a makeshift flamethrower, but we don’t want to toast the poor zombies – we just want to torture them, then maybe toast them later. Squirting the knock-off Super Soaker in their face will send them reeling backwards. Useful if you’re being hounded in a tight corner by the shuddering gits, but also hilarious as they moan with confusion.
3. Bully them
There are hundreds of non-lethal weapons in Dead Rising 2 that won’t kill a zombie no matter how furiously you swing them. The foam finger is a good bet, especially if you’ve just come back from a hard day at work and are seething with tension. You’ll be able to aggressively pummel a zombie until your frustration has subsided and they’ll simply stagger around, confused. You can also do this with coffee mugs, beach balls, rolled-up newspapers and basically anything that isn’t pointy, hard or full of bullets.
4. Freeze them
If you can’t stop the zombie horde by killing them, freeze them in place. Fire extinguishers can be used as melee weapons by hitting the regular attack button, but by aiming and squeezing fire you can direct the jet of nitrogen at the reanimated corpses and they’ll turn blue and freeze solid. Someone sicker than us might then run up to the icy corpse and fly-kick it until it shatters into a thousand pieces, but we’re not that kind of website. You can create freeze bombs too by combining an extinguisher with dynamite.
5. Paint them
Why not take advantage of the Fortune City outbreak to express yourself artistically? Spray paint can be found all over the city, and is used primarily to customise Chuck’s motocross bike. But spray it at a zombie and they’ll be covered in whichever colour you had equipped. Bring a whole variety of colours and soon you’ll be faced with a living artwork – dozens of differently-coloured zombies. Certainly brings a bit of cheer to an otherwise depressing epidemic of rotting flesh.
6. Humiliate them
Plonking masks on zombies was a favourite activity in the first game, and in response Capcom have littered Dead Rising 2 with more of them. From a Blanka from Street Fighter mask to the iconic Mega Man Servbot head, sticking one on a zombie and watch them blunder into scenery is sickly entertaining. There’s even a special combo ‘weapon’ dedicated to mask japery, the Fountain Lizard. Just attach some fireworks to a dinosaur mask for an explosive alternative to a regular mask.
7. Take them for a ride
Let’s face it, it’s not much fun being a zombie. Wake up, hobble around, eat corpse, hobble around some more. So why not bring some light back into their miserable not-quite-lives by taking them for a spin in a wheelchair? Fortune City is full of them, possibly to wheel drunk people between slot machines. Grab one with the action button (make sure you’re behind it, otherwise it becomes a clumsy melee weapon) and you can run into a zombie and drive them around as they flail in terror.
8. Play with them
Another way to keep the zombies entertained, as well as yourself, is to engage in a little sport. There are sports shops in both of Fortune City’s malls, and they’re stuffed with appropriate attire and equipment. Why not play some touch football? They’re not great catchers, though. Or how about baseball? Same again; they’ll just ‘catch’ the ball with their face and fall over. But it’s still fun. Then there’s basketball and even ten-pin bowling. Well, ten-zombie bowling.
Got your own preferred methods of non-fatal Dead Rising 2 zombie cruelty? Tell us about them in the comments you sadistic little bastards.
October 1, 2010
