Dead Rising 2 Preview

The game is set in Fortune City, clearly inspired by Las Vegas.

So, DR2 will undoubtedly feel more Western, but how that manifests itself in actual gameplay is the key question that needs to be answered. From the gameplay demo a number of marked differences can be determined, chief of these is weapon firing. Chuck grabs a machine gun and strafe fires from a third-person, over the shoulder perspective. “Obviously that was strafing with the gun, something Dead Rising 1 didn't have at all,” Dan says as his targeting reticule brings a gory end to zombie after zombie after zombie. “I know a lot of people who played Dead Rising 1, they enjoyed the katana, but what they really wanted was a gun that wasn't going to be annoying. These are the kind of changes we're doing this year. We're not trying to reinvent the game. But it's something we're doing to make it an even more fun sandbox.”

Purists concerned that Blue Castle might be infecting the core Dead Rising experience with an evil Western design philosophy need not worry – if nothing else the gameplay demo shows that Blue Castle's creating something that will be instantly familiar. As well as retaining the third-person hack-em-up gameplay (with prettier graphics, of course), the developer clearly gets the dark Dead Rising humour from the first game. At one point in the demo Chuck walks into a nearby casino, grabs a guitar and proceeds to knock lumps out of nearby zombies – with every smack a heavy guitar riff plays. Then a baseball bat, a chair, a roulette wheel, a till register... each one sees Chuck move and swing differently; each one has its own comical impact sound.

Later, Chuck grabs a moose head, complete with antlers (Blue Castle is a Canadian developer after all), puts it on, then charges bull-like down the strip, swinging his head to the left and right and knocking zombies off their feet. “In Dead Rising 1 you could wear a dress,” Dan says, “but that wasn't that much fun. Now we have the idea of clothing being weapons.” He grabs a propane tank covered in spikes, sticks it on a zombie's head, moves a safe distance then lets off some machine gun rounds – boom.

Killing zombies with bikes is always fun

Then he grabs the Drill Bucket, something that's guaranteed to go down in video game weapon history as one of the most outrageous ever created. In wonderful 'does exactly what it says on the tin' fashion, Chuck slams it on a zombie's head then watches as a drill sound pierces the air and the bucket carves into flesh and skull, eventually decapitating its victim. It gets better. The Paddle Saw – a chainsaw strapped to both ends of a paddle – sees Chuck swing and move forward as if rowing through a river of zombies, their blood splattering like rapids against rock.

While the sheer number of zombies on screen will grab the headlines, perhaps even more impressive is the new procedural cutting technology. Dan shows this off best with a sword: Chuck carves zombies like slicing meat. Where he slices, flesh actually tears. Limps fly off, torsos detach horizontally. Best of all though, is a downward slice, which results in a zombie peeling apart from the head down to, well, his nether regions, the blood spilling as if being sprayed from a fire hose. It's a juvenile thing to be impressed by, but then, Dead Rising has always been about those over-the-top, too silly to be taken seriously thrills.

The thing about the procedural cutting is it's not limited to swords, or indeed occasions when Chuck is up against only a few zombies. It applies to every weapon, including the Chainsaw Bike, and every situation. So, as he was driving up and down the strip, carving thousands of zombies into little pieces, the procedural cutting was still working – where the chainsaw cuts, the zombies split apart, even when it's happening to ten of them a second.