Bad news from the zombie video game department. Dead Rising 2 has been delayed until the fall. There was no specific reason given, but I’m guessing it probably could use a little polish. God knows … sandbox games need a whole lot of loving from the Quality Assurance team as they must test every inconceivable action being performed by the player. I’m guessing if the development team had its way, they’d probably push it back another year, but money being money probably dictated the short one month delay.

That said, I hope the sequel addresses some of the game mechanics of the first one. I thought the first game was really cool and I put quite a bit of time into it, but the game left a bad taste in my mouth. I hated the never-ending phone calls from Otis. Sure, it made for a good way to get missions, but it was so irritating to have to answer the phone every five minutes while being assaulted by hundreds of zombies.

It also bothered me that the game would announce in big bold letters that a person died. Every time it was announced that someone was killed by the horde, I felt like I failed my duties as “the hero”. Of course, you can’t save everyone. That was the point, but man, talk about shoving your face in your failure. I would have been fine if they game didn’t say a thing. I wouldn’t have cared.

The convicts also sucked ass. Killing them was a huge victory for me so when they respawned, I wanted to hurl the game across the room. It was hard enough to make it across that park without being run down every five seconds.

Then there was the save system. I feel like consoles have taken a major step backward. With a computer game, I press a button and it saves. Most console games require you to find a checkpoint which sucks ass if you have to end your game in a rush. Dead Rising took it to a whole new irritating level, forcing you to walk all the way back to the safe house which sometimes could five minutes. Five agonizing minutes. Shut off the game and you’ll lose all the progress you made as if you didn’t play at all. It was terrible design choice.

And then there was the text. It was almost impossible to read on an High def tv. If you owned a standard tv, you were screwed. It was obvious that the developers had produced the game with their high resolution desktop monitors in mind because if they sat on a couch, they would have been squinting the entire time. And honestly … why didn’t they just have their actors read the dialogue?

Oh … let’s not forget the gazillion boss fights. I know I’m in the minority here … but I hate boss fights. Most boss fights become tedious controller slamming affairs that usually amount to … dodge the attacks, wait for the “boss” to be stunned somehow, attack the weak spot. Rinse, wash, repeat. Dead Rising was full of them.

Yet, somehow, I did manage to enjoy parts of the game. I couldn’t finish it. I reached the point of the game where I was disarming bombs in the tunnel while a bad guy was running me over with a pickup. I could barely navigate the tunnel from hundreds zombies inside of it while the maniac ran me down over and over again. When I realized the game was no longer fun, I put it down. A couple years later, I tried playing it again, but I didn’t have the patience. It was a cool concept that just too flawed for me.

Hopefully, the followup will fix those issues because killing zombies should be fun. Not work. In any case, if I hear anything else about the game, I’ll make sure to spread it on over.

Dead Rising 2 delayed until September (gamespot.com <- new window)