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  • Capcom

The day after FedEx delivered my review copy of Dead Rising 2, I received a second package from Capcom. It was the same oversized envelope that carried the game the day before, so as I walked back into my townhouse I wondered aloud to my cat what it could possibly be.

"What the hell is in this one, Captain Butterscotch?" I asked my feline pal, using his most adorable nickname. The only response I received was a lazy "meowl" as the Captain rolled onto his back, baring a fluffy white stomach at me in anticipation of some rad tummy scratchin' action.

Ignoring the plaintive request, I walked upstairs, quickly tearing into the package. On pulling its contents free I was immediately greeted with an image of Dead Rising 2 protagonist Chuck Greene staring at me from the glossy cover of a magazine.

Well alright, not exactly a magazine. It was … well, hit the jump and I'll explain why Capcom's second package contained one of the coolest extras a gaming company has ever created.

And why normally you never would have seen it.

Despite appearance, this "magazine" was actually the official reviewer's guide for Dead Rising 2, dressed up as a spoof of GQ magazine.

In case the words "reviewer's guide" mean nothing to you, imagine a gaming publisher's PR wing sending out copies of their newest big game. Each copy is shipped days or weeks before the game hits shelves, so when gaming journalists are playing through these things we have to discover everything the game has to offer all by ourselves.

The PR folk stay up at night worrying about the possibility that a critic might accidentally miss their game's coolest feature, so the solution the industry created is the "reviewer's guide." Each one outlines the game's controls, storyline and general highlights as well as offering helpful hints in case the player is likely to get stuck. Think of the average reviewer's guide as either an awesome instruction manual or a horrible strategy guide.

Since PR folk are human, and realize that gaming critics likely won't spend more than 2 minutes glancing at whatever sort of guide they slap together, these guides are usually nothing more than a few Xeroxed pages stapled together β€” assuming they even included enough info to warrant multiple pages. As a result, I rarely pull them out of the box they came in.

Alright, now that I've defined "reviewer's guide," I should probably explain why I'm dedicating a whole post to an item I just told you all that I regularly trash before even glancing at. In short, Dead Rising 2 has the best reviewer's guide of any game I've ever seen.

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  • Capcom

As a spoof of GQ, the guide is brilliant. From the advertisements to the vaguely condescending, still-trapped-in-the-closet articles of its inspiration, ZQ (as it has been dubbed by Capcom) perfectly balances all the responsibilities of creating a reviewer's guide with those of crafting a good gag. Those articles I mentioned are particularly genius as they manage to ape the writing style and general layout of the magazine, but also give us critics a full rundown on the game's mechanics, as well as handy hints on all the parts of the game we simply must see (all without straying into spoiler territory).

To be totally honest with you, ZQ is only the second reviewer's guide I've read in full. I believe the first one was for a copy of Guitar Hero III, and that one I only read because it was the first review I was assigned professionally, and I had no idea what the protocol was on that sort of thing.

After I finished ZQ's 50-plus glossy pages, I had a sudden strange pang of guilt. Here was this clever extra created for a game that I obviously adore and intend to promote to as much of the general public as possible, yet none of the general public would get a chance to see it. You won't get this inside the limited release Dead Rising 2 High Stakes Edition. Nor will you get it if you pre-ordered Dead Rising 2 from Gamestop or Wal*Mart or anywhere else. You might get lucky if you call Capcom and beg for a copy and just happen to have reached someone who is super nice and has the power to make your wish come true, but the odds of that happening are 1 in Totally Not Gonna Happen.

In fact, as far as I know, the only two ways to get a copy of ZQ are to be employed as a gaming journalist who is reviewing the game, or get lucky and win one of Capcom's contests. Either way you're going to be competing against a few thousand other gaming geeks, so good luck with all of that.

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  • Capcom

With that in mind I sent off an e-mail to my PR contact at Capcom, asking if I could possibly share this with you guys. My copy of ZQ specifically forbade reproduction and retransmission without the express written consent of Major League Baseball Capcom's blessing, so I was hoping my gushing praise for the game would sway the PR gods to my cause.

Turns out my figurative puppy dog eyes worked and I can now bring you all of ZQ in its entirety. I've included a few select images from the magazine with this post, but I was also sent high, medium and low resolution PDFs of ZQ in full. The high and low res versions are linked below, so if you're a fan of Dead Rising, or are still wondering, despite my ongoing praise, if this game is worth the $60 investment, download the free reviewer's guide and take a clever guided tour of Fortune City crafted by the people behind the game itself.

Merry Christmas.

Dead Rising 2 Reviewer's Guide (High Resolution)

Dead Rising 2 Reviewer's Guide (Low Resolution)