Dead Rising 2 - Xbox 360

What’s the status?

Dead Rising 2 is being helmed by Blue Castle Games, with support from the original game’s Japanese development team. Set in a fictional version of Las Vegas, Dead Rising 2 is all about mowing down the zombie hoard in the context of a reality-based television show. We saw our first glimpse of multiplayer back at the 2009 Tokyo Game Show, now we get to see single-player action.

What we saw:

Played, actually! This X10 demo was constructed to showcase the new weapon combination system. I was given 10 minutes to accrue 20,000 PP (points given for killing zombies and other related endeavors) by any means possible. Starting out in a hallway “terrorized” by two or three shambling corpses, I was first presented with a sturdy-looking sledgehammer.

“Oh cool, clobberin’ time!”

And bashing brain-dead skulls was fun for a few minutes, but then the helpful Capcom rep showed me what happens when you drop the sledgehammer and attach a pair of chainsaws to each end of a paddle. You get a Paddlesaw. Soon I was kayaking through the thick of the horde, creating my personal river of churning zombie blood.

Weapon combinations works as follows: our hero and protagonist Chuck Green will, at certain points in the game, find “inspiration” in his surroundings and come up with a new idea for a weapon combo. (In this part of the demo, he noticed a movie poster.) This earns you a card for that combo, and then if you find the necessary ingredients, you can combine them on a workshop bench. Killing with combo weapons gives you a boost in the PP you can earn. The favorites that I noticed in my short playtime:

• Fireworks Bazooka (Fireworks + rocket launcher)
• IED (propane tank + nails)
• Knife Gloves (boxing gloves + bowie knife)
• Electric Rake (garden rake + some sort of generator)
• Dynameat (stick of dynamite + a severed zombie hand)

The most grotesque? The “Portamower,” which is a regular push lawnmower with its long handle replaced by crude 2x4 handholds. You can push the mower blades forward into zombies, and that’s cool and everything, but what might be better is mulching your victim from the top down like a reverse paper shredder. Only instead of sensitive documents and expired credit cards, you’re spraying out enormous amounts of chunky blood. Good times.

No word yet on if Blue Castle is bringing back the save system from the first Dead Rising, which many -- including myself -- found confusing and frustrating. But if I were to extrapolate a guess based on the reality show motif, I think we’re going to see time-based missions mixed in with free-roaming zombie slaughter. Bring it on.