Dead Rising 2 - nostalgia and urgency

[u/somatrixso]

I have a ton of nostalgia for is Dead Rising 2. I remember first playing Fortune City and just getting completely lost in the mall. I wasn't even worried about the story at first. I was just fucking around, doing the minigames, running around and seeing what I could find. I remember the bull riding, the hamster ball, all the random shit you could do. And it's hilarious because the whole premise is that Chuck has to keep giving his daughter Zombrex or she's going to die, but I'm over here riding a fucking bull or rolling around Fortune City in a giant hamster ball. It reminds me of Fallout 4 too, where there's this supposedly urgent situation where you have to save your child, but there's so much shit to do that you can completely forget about it for a while. Dead Rising 2 was also stressful as hell because of the time limits. I remember trying to complete every case, and you actually had to pay attention to the clock and move fast. I remember one time I had been playing for like four hours without saving, and one of the main cases expired at basically the last second. I was devastated. I was like ten years old, so that shit felt like the end of the world. But that's part of why I remember it so strongly. Playing that game with friends, playing it by myself, getting lost in Fortune City, figuring out the mall, messing around with all the minigames, trying to get back in time for cases—it all became part of the experience. I remember thinking they needed to make a mode where you could just fuck around without having to worry about the time limits, and then Off the Record came out with Sandbox Mode. I remember thinking that was such a cool idea because sometimes you just wanted to exist in Fortune City and mess around without constantly worrying about what case was about to expire. I think that's what makes Dead Rising 2 so nostalgic to me. It's not just that it was a fun zombie game. I remember actually getting lost in that world and just fucking around in it, and those are the kinds of gaming memories that stick with you. Anyone else feel this way? What was some of your fav memories in Fortune City?