Dead Rising 2 Hands-on Preview

I love zombies. I love the way they stumble about, I love their confused groaning, and I love the way they fall to bits when they’re bludgeoned, shot, or attacked with some kind of homemade vacuum cleaner-circular saw device. Zombies transcend the limits of contemporary fashion: regardless of what’s “in” or “out” this season, they always look amazing in whatever they’re wearing: sportswear, Hawaiian shirts, military uniforms. Hell, they even look good in Kaftans.

As a self confessed lover (not like that) of the walking dead, it’s hardly surprising that Dead Rising is one of my favourite releases of this generation. I’ve been waiting a long time to get my hands on Blue Castle’s sequel, and thankfully a flying visit to Capcom’s E3 booth provided just that opportunity. My demo consisted of a brief jaunt through the infested casinos of Fortune City, via a section culled from the early point in the game’s narrative, allowing me to massacre hundreds of zombies in various amusing ways.

Let’s quickly recap on Dead Rising 2’s backstory. Following the events of the first game, the undead hoards are now doing their shuffling, moaning, flesh-eating thang all across America. While one zombie bite is still all it takes to pass on an infection, victims can now buy a drug called Zombex – a pharmaceutical lifeline that delays the onset of symptoms. The only downside? It costs an arm a leg – and I don’t mean the limbs that were just torn from the twitching torsos of your fellow survivors. No sir, a dose of Zombex will set you back a fat wad of greenbacks – and if you can’t pay, going cold turkey will have messy results.

Former motorcross star Chuck Greene is just one of the unfortunate people caught in this financial trap. His daughter Katey has caught the bug, and unless he feeds her Zombex regularly she’ll become yet another cannabalistic cadaver (though on the plus-side, Birthday gifts will no longer pose a major hassle: just give her brains, every goddamn year). This demand is taxing enough, but at the start of Dead Rising 2 Chuck’s situation gets a whole lot worse: a bomb goes off in Fortune City, allowing the previously-contained Zombies to spread throughout the entire gambling resort. And just to make things really interesting, a security tape shows up that seems to finger Chuck as the bomber.

Like its predecessor, Dead Rising 2 is based around the pressure of a ticking clock. You have 72 in-game hours before the army invades Fortune City, and in this time you have to clear Chuck’s good name, save as many innocents as possible, and work out just what the hell is going on. For added pressure, you also have to gather cash for Katey’s medicine and get back to her by 8am each day. As before, by tapping the D-pad you can view the watch on Chuck’s manly arm: key story events (or cases, to give them their proper name) will occur at specific times throughout the day, but between these times you’re free to explore the sandbox of Fortune City as you wish. The world is your playground, packed with shops to raid, gambling machines to use, and hundreds of items to wear, play with, or simply force into an undead head. When you’re not pursuing the main plotline, there are also side missions to undertake, requiring you to rescue other survivors and then escort them to a place of safety.

As many of you will remember, this last element was one of the biggest stumbling blocks of the original Rising. At the top of the irritation list was Otis the Janitor, King of the Unwanted Interruption and Lord Mayor of Oh-For-F*cks-Sake City. In the last game Otis would keep the player posted about survivor sightings and other events around the Willamette Mall, relaying information via a bleeping Walkie-Talkie. A useful service, you might think – but Otis simply would not shut the hell up. No matter how fraught the salutation, and regardless of how many zombies were chewing off your soft bits, Otis would insist on calling you up for a chinwag – and if you cut him off, he’d call back and have a go at you, before starting his spiel from the top. As I say, the man was a notorious ball bag.

For this second outing you’ll still receive all your updates via Walkie Talkie, but thankfully you can choose exactly how and when you answer the calls – and the incessant bleeping noise appears to be gone. Blue Castle has also tweaked the save system, another former point of player aggravation: before we only had a lone save slot for the game, but now there’s a slightly more generous three. You’ll still have to be quite careful about over-writing your slots, and from what I can tell you’ll still lose all your progress if you get devoured without saving, but hey, this is a Capcom game. Things are supposed to be challenging, and that’s perfectly fine by me. Thankfully, the save system still requires you to visit the toilet. Fortune City seems fairly well equipped in this regard, so it’s unlikely you’ll ever be caught short, so to speak.

The sample case I played was excised from the early rumblings of the plot, forcing Chuck to track down a reporter who was making TV broadcasts about the initial bomb attack. To be honest, I was more interested in mowing down hundreds of zombies, since they’re clearly the real stars of the game. You can now have up to 7000 of the blighters coming at you at once, and while I didn’t face anywhere near that many during my demo, it’s reassuring to see that this sequel retains a strong sense of panic. Individually the zombies are almost pathetically easy to kill, but if you let your crowd control slip they’ll surround you in an instant – and when this happens, death arrives swiftly.

In my playtest, this point was hammered home almost immediately. After loading up on weapons and tools – including a few of the new home-made combo items – I set out to explore the casino. Within minutes I’d ran into LaShawndra an angry young woman who’d been deserted by her ratbag husband. I figured that this might provide a good chance to test out the friendly AI, since halfwit survivor behaviour was another of the first game’s sticking points. Unfortunately I didn’t get very far with my experiments, since I got a bit distracted by the fun of fooling around with the shambling masses. If you tap X (on a 360 pad) you’ll deliver a quick swipe with whatever weapon you currently have equipped; if you hold the button down, on the other hand, you’ll usually perform a stylish heavy attack that does more damage. These show-off moves don’t just look good either; they also earn you PP – the in-game XP currency that levels up Chuck, awarding new moves and the ability to carry more stuff.

As I say, I got a bit preoccupied with these showboating manoeuvres. If you have a baseball bat covered in nails, a heavy attack will end with you lodging the spiked weapon in the nearest zombie skull, forcing Chuck to brutally tug it out. The chainsaw, meanwhile, allows you to perform a Leatherface-style whirling spin, dicing any enemy who happens to be nearby – I’m pretty sure I hit poor LaShawndra with it, too. It’s a shame the poor lady didn’t survive longer than a few minutes, because if she had I’d have been able to put her in the wheelchair I discovered later in the demo. You can use this handy device to force your way through the rotting mobs, or you can put a zombie in it and then shove them down a flight of stairs, or into some other form of creative death.

The opportunities for inventive mayhem are everywhere. Along with the walking dead, Fortune City is simply packed with stuff]: discarded hotdogs and hard hats litter the floor, roulette wheels just beg to be picked up and thrown, and maintenance rooms yield power tools and all manner of other prizes. It speaks volumens that I very nearly met my death due to playing slot machines, not just once, but several times in the space of a few minutes. Even in this early code, where the framerate still shudders a bit under the weight of everything that’s going on, there’s a gleeful, over-the-top air to Dead Rising 2. As is the case with the real-world Vegas, gluttony and excess are the order of the day.

Will the addition of a second player help us to be more sensible, to stop fooling around and needlessly risking our necks? I suspect not. If anything, it’ll probably make things worse, but I certainly can’t wait to try it out. In addition to the promise of full campaign co-op there’ll be a competitive multiplayer mode, based upon the Fortune City reality show Terror is Reality. I’ve not seen this in action yet, but it’s been described as being like Gladiators with zombies. If that doesn’t sound appealing, you’re probably dead inside. And in fact, if you’ve been bitten by a random stranger at any point in the past 24 hours, that may well be the case.

If you’re not yet convinced by all of this, or if you simply can’t wait to get back into the old Dead Rising hijinx, Capcom will also be putting out a 360-exclusive prequel game called Case Zero, coming to Xbox Live Marketplace some four to six weeks before the main release. This standalone mini outing explains what happened to Chuck prior to his arrival in Fortune City. In addition to doling out a bit of backstory, Case Zero will also let players gain PP and develop Chuck up to level 5, later allowing you to export your upgraded character into Dead Rising 2.

This all sounds fine and dandy, but personally I’m just pleased that Blue Castle hasn’t messed about too much with the established Dead Rising formula. As frustrating as it could be, the structure of the original game leant it a very distinct feel, and I’d have been disappointed if this sequel had been defanged and robbed of its difficulty. The Otis problem seems to have been dealt with, but I also hope that the developers have found a way to make the real-time mission requirements a bit more manageable. Framerates aside, the new code is already looking pretty solid. The potential for mess-about fun is certainly there, and that’s arguably the most important thing of all. Thousands of zombies in a blood-stained casino-themed sandbox… who could possibly resist?

Dead Rising 2 is due for release on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on October 1.