The waiting game: Dead Rising 2

I remember purchasing my Xbox 360 early in 2007. I caved in for Gears of War and it's sweet sounding commercial, great graphics and fantastic dialogue (this was a few years ago, details may be hazy). It was a fine game but I wondered when I was going to find something that felt "next gen". A game that moved things forward in ways previous consoles could not.

Dead Rising was, for me, that game. Since I wasn't groomed to play on the PS2 or Xbox, I had the patience necessary to live with the games many flaws and have a lot of fun with it. Having played Breath of Fire IV helped a bit (it shared the same basic "start over with your stats" mechanic) but I think a lot of gamers couldn't see past the games controls, time limits and weird mix of an American genre in Japanese eyes. 

Flash forward a few years and it's almost impossible to think that Capcom didn't pump out a sequel right away. Companies have this kind of motto where they like making money and somehow a Dead Rising 2 has taken a long time to come out. In a way, this has only helped the games chances. There are a lot of new gamers that didn't play the original as well as all the PS3 owners who didn't get a chance to play it. They get a chance to play a game that fixes a lot of the problems with Dead Rising, if Case Zero is any indication of the overall quality of it's bigger brother. Develovers Blue Castle had a lot of time to study what made the previous game good and what it could do better. Instead of just adding some bullet points and pumping out a second game, Camcom took their time with this one. 

Hopefully the game not only does well, but serves as a lesson for developers. Gamers love games and they would love to play more of their favorite ones. But given enough time between releases and not only will anticipation grow but the game stands a good chance of being an overall product. It's been a long time, but in my opinion, Dead Rising 2 is arriving just on schedule.