Will we ever get sick of killing zombies? Maybe someday...if an actual apocalypse rolls around. But for now, the undead can feel good about their crusty, creepy selves. They thrilled us in Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil 5, and Dead Rising 2 looks ready to keep the corpses firmly in the spotlight.
Unless we bash ’em with it, that is. Like its predecessor, DR2 will present a world where “anything and everything is a weapon,” according to Dan Brady, CEO of Blue Castle Games. Capcom and Dead Rising producer Keiji Inafune tapped the Canadian studio to work on this much-anticipated sequel (in close collaboration with Capcom Japan), and clearly, they’re putting their experience making sports games like The Bigs to good use. New hero Chuck Greene is more athletic than the first game’s Frank West, and in a recent tech demo, Brady showed him splatting zombies with, among other things, a baseball bat, a guitar, a cash register, a chair, and a roulette wheel.
That gambling implement is a small piece of the game’s Vegas-like setting, the fictional Fortune City. As Brady ran Chuck down the main strip and into a couple of casinos, we saw neon signs advertising nightclubs, buffets, and a pawn shop — locations you’ll no doubt enter in the finished game. Visually, it was a feast for the eyes, but Brady was particularly proud of the engine’s ability to handle up to 7,000 zombies onscreen at once (compared to 500 for the original DR), as he showed us by gradually adding to the moaning hordes shambling toward us. Obviously, your undead foes won’t always be so legion, but for our demo, they were perfect fodder for the “paddle saw,” a kayak paddle with a chainsaw affixed to each end, wielded Darth Maul–style. At one point, Chuck also donned a moosehead with giant antlers — perfect for scattering zombies or impaling their poor little brains.
Inafune and Blue Castle are still closely guarding most of the plot points and gameplay details, but they did note that Dead Rising 2 will share its forebear’s 72-hour story device. Without giving specifics, the team confirmed the inclusion of online multiplayer, and more importantly, they say they’re tweaking the save system in a way that’ll please fans and critics of the first game’s. It bugged us, so let’s hope it’s better this time: we don’t want any obstacles as we hack, smash, and bludgeon our way through the mindless mobs threatening Sin City.
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