Immediately following the events of Dead Rising 2, Chuck Greene runs into a familiar face who is looking for answers and willing to help. That familiar face is protagonist of Dead Rising, Frank West, as he arrives on the scene to help Chuck search for the evidence of being set up, and maybe a cure for his daughter while they’re at it. [Spoilers for Dead Rising 2 within this review.]
Dead Rising 2: Case West is unlike other DLC, and follows the path of Case Zero as a stand-alone bit of content that doesn’t require Dead Rising 2 to play. Unlike Case Zero though, you’re given a co-op buddy - and not just in the form of another Chuck Greene as the case from Dead Rising 2 is. This time you get your photographer persona playable as Frank West, complete with “Faaaantastic” quotes from our favorite war journalist.
The story for Case West goes that Chuck still doesn’t have the necessary evidence to clear his name of the Fortune City incident. You may recall he was blamed for the outbreak in Fortune City that took the majority of the casino goers to their bumbling, zombie filled graves. We discover by the end of Dead Rising 2 that the pharmaceutical company responsible for the drug to keep zombieism at bay (Zombrex) is responsible for the outbreak and framing Chuck.
Who better to uncover a corporate mystery than a journalist? Right on time, Frank West enters the game. He’s following an anonymous source to the Phenotrans facility where he hopes to uncover some dark secrets about the corporate entity. He’s also willing to help Chuck clear his name along the way. From the end of Dead Rising Frank also has a special interest in finding a cure for zombieism. You see, he was infected after such heavy exposure to the zombies at the Willimette mall.
Case West is looking to tie up a few loose ends from both stories - or does it?
Gameplay is similar to the other Dead Rising titles we’ve seen with one key difference: You don’t have to drag rescued NPC’s back to your safe room. Since this latest outbreak is happening within the Phenotrans facility, the “victims” who are stranded around the game are lab workers from the facility. Once you clear a path for them or bring them what they think they need to survive, they easily find their way out of harms way and you’re instantly rewarded a rescue Prestige Point (PP) bonus.
In co-op, both players get credit for this rescue. It’s a great way to rack up the PP working together. You’re also given plenty of opportunities to take out powerful enemies in the form of security at Phenotrans armed with anything from assault rifles to impact hammers - doubling up on these enemies is really satisfying in co-op whereas one-on-one can get a bit irritating.
Combo weapons are still present in Case West and both Frank and Chuck can tie things together to make them work - including a handful of new weapons unique to Case West. Photography makes a comeback here as well, and both players can use a camera. Though, Chuck is stuck with a cute little disposable while Frank lays out the big lenses. This basically just means that both players, whether you’re Chuck or Frank are evenly matched and no one faces a penalty in co-op.
That is to say: both players can initiate any mission prompts, rescue civilians, enter areas, or do anything that a player by themselves could do. To me, this co-op is almost better than the co-op present in Dead Rising 2 because of the two different characters, but both styles work very well. It’s also fairly amusing to hit the Y (call) button in co-op, as Frank and Chuck seem to get on each others nerves when they call out to each other.
Though the co-op is fully intact and works very well from a gameplay standpoint, it seems that there is a bit of a glitch in Case West that will effect player 2 if player 1 saves during the task completion screen. Player 2 will inevitably be booted from the game; able to save their level progress, but they lose all of their inventory. An easy fix for this is to ignore the prompt to save between tasks, and just run to the restrooms to save.
While this mini-game is incredibly fun, it’s also very short and doesn’t resolve much of the story - just opened up enough of the story to bring Frank and Chuck together for potential future ventures. Oh, and it’s in your best interest to not skip the credits.