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Dead Rising 2 at E3 2010

Hands-On with Capcom's Zombie Sequel

July 3, 2010 by

After the huge success of Capcom’s Dead Rising on the Xbox 360 back in 2006, Capcom has been hard at work at creating a sequel to their unique zombie killing game for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. For anybody who never had a chance to play the original, Dead Rising is a game based on the idea of everyone’s favorite theory — whether or not they could survive a zombie apocalypse. But the Dead Rising series offers a unique twist on the survival horror genre, unlike other more serious zombie games, Dead Rising allows players to have fun by trying to kill as many zombies as possible with as many unique items they can find within the mall they’re trapped in.

Set 5 years after the events of the first game, the first thing players will notice is that the main character, photojournalist Frank West along with the photography mechanic are both no longer present in the sequel. In an effort to make the main character have more of a personality and bring more excitement to the sequel, Capcom has replaced West with a new action sports protagonist who goes by the name Chuck Greene. Players will now also have the ability to play co-op with a friend online. Although we didn’t get a look at this feature, we’re told that the way it works is by allowing one player to continue playing their story with the help of a friend. While friends don’t share a story, the host continues throughout his story and the friend that is invited to the host’s game keeps all the experience points their character earns which transfer over to their own story.

Even with noticeable changes to the game, Capcom isn’t straying too far from what made their first game such a hit — killing zombies in as many unique ways as possible. The original game allowed for players who were stranded in a shopping mall to enter stores and collect everyday items such as baseball bats, helmets, cash registers and trash cans, then use said items as the perfect zombie killing weapons. Now in the sequel, not only are there hundreds of new items in addition to all the old favorites, but Capcom has also added a new feature that allows players to combine items they into even more deadly and fun to use weapons.

To help players figure out how to combine items, Dead Rising 2 uses a new combo card system where cards can be found throughout the game with each combo card explaining how to combine items via the new workbench combination system. In our hands-on demo we started off by making obvious items like the spike bat after combining a baseball bat and box of nails. Then we moved on to making more complex items like an electric wheel chair after combining a wheel chair and a car battery, and a teddy bear turret gun after combing a giant stuffed teddy bear and a machine gun. The combo system is a great new feature and we can’t wait to play the full game so we can spend countless hours searching for unique items to combine into rare zombie killing devices.