Zombies really are the best videogame enemies, aren’t they? They can be bashed, sliced, shot and blown up — all without the slightest twinge of guilt. No one knows this better than Capcom, who presented the sequel to their ultraviolent zombie game, Dead Rising 2.
Much in the spirit of the original, Dead Rising 2 puts you in the shoes of a character stuck in a confined space for 72 hours with hordes of zombies all around. To survive, you’ll need to take advantage of every resource you can find to fight them off and keep yourself healthy. Is that a sporting goods store? Baseball bats make excellent weapons. Low on health? Food court is over there, if you can fight your way through about a dozen ravenous zombies.
Players take on the role of Chuck Greene, a motocross rider who is framed for the latest zombie outbreak in Fortune City (an obvious surrogate of Las Vegas). Chuck has 72 hours to clear his name, and off you go. While playing at E3, I didn’t really have time to investigate the story missions, so instead I chose to focus on all the new, exciting ways in which you can kill zombies.
You’ll still be scavenging whatever weapons you can find on the ground, but new to Dead Rising 2 is the ability to combine weapons to make them even deadlier. Combine nails and a baseball bat to make a spiked bat, for example. The coolest weapon I was able to make, though, combined a vacuum cleaner and circular saws to create a motor-powered engine of bloody death. Pure awesome.
I also collected money while out and about, perhaps suggesting some kind of shopping feature, but I didn’t find anything in the short time I was able to play.
Along the way you’ll also be able to rescue survivors within the environment, though from what I could tell, this would be as frustrating as in the original. Survivors are moody, cantankerous and have the annoying ability to run straight for a crowd of zombies instead of the exit. Hopefully there will be more of a reward than in the last game for rescuing them.
Dead Rising 2 has made several great improvements over the zombie-killing mayhem of its predecessor, and I can’t wait to check out the game in greater detail. The game drops Aug. 31.
I am a Los Angeles-based writer and gamer who is always looking to combine my two main passions. I believe video games have the potential to become the best storytelling medium of the 21st century, and it is the writer's responsibility to encourage this process. Oh yeah, I'm also a nerd.
