Zombies. Zombies EVERYWHERE!

After I finished collecting all 200 achievement points in Dead Rising 2: CASE ZERO a few weeks ago (you can read that review below), I was so excited to be able to slaughter hundreds, and even thousands, more zombies in a much bigger playground in Dead Rising 2. To be honest, part of me thought that living up to my exceedingly fan boy-ish expectations would be too much to ask for anyone, especially for Canadian developer Blue Castle, who are new to the series. Now that I have finished my time with Dead Rising 2, the only phrase that comes to mind that perfectly sums up the entire experience is "F***ing Awesome!"

Dead Rising 2 is a bold direction for any game, to be sure. It does not play by traditional rules and conventions most of the time and actively tries to make every moment more and more difficult to those that aren't prepared. Dead Rising 2 is every bit as excellent as CASE ZERO, but surpasses the downloadable prequel in one very key area: location, location, location.

The city of choice in Dead Rising 2 is Fortune City. Fortune City consists of the re-built and re-purposed leftovers from Las Vegas, which was destroyed during an earlier zombie epidemic. Huge casinos, resorts, restaurants, shopping malls, and even underground service systems are your new playground for undead murder and mayhem during your days-long stay in the casino-town. When visiting the sights, you will see a maze of slot-machines surrounded by an ocean of flesh-ripping, brain-eating zombies.

Early on, the zombie numbers don't seem that bad. Sure, you are outnumbered, but the zombies are spaced far enough apart so you can always find a safe route to your objective. As the days wear on, the murderous mass gets larger and larger until there are literally THOUSANDS of zombies on-screen at any given time and you will eventually have to (literally) cut your own path to victory through the mindless monsters. And cutting that path is oh so satisfying with buckets, pools, and gallons of blood and gore being spilled all over an idyllic shopping mall in the heart of a fresh zombie outbreak. The sheer number of ways to torture, mutilate, and otherwise destroy the zombie menace is remarkably impressive with goofy and gory animations to accompany the chosen weaponry.

And someone got paid to think of what it must sound like to run a zombie over with a lawnmower. All of the splats, squishes, gloops, and drips are present and fan-tastic. The attention to detail in the sound design should be given some sort of zombie-related reward because Dead Rising 2 simply knocks it out of the park (or off the zombie's shoulders!)

The atmosphere is great too. Most of the voice acting and music are similar in quality to the offerings in CASE ZERO, so that is a good indicator jumping into Dead Rising 2. The various characters and psychopaths are appropriately hammy with their dialogue and the heavy-metal and hard rock soundtrack fits the bleak surroundings perfectly. Even the pause screen has an oddly-fitting jazzy, elevator music sound to complete the mall motif. The overall surroundings lend themselves quite well to the more serious moments of the story, but also have the room to be silly and goofy, when needed, to lighten the tension.

When we last saw Chuck Greene in CASE ZERO, he was riding off with his infected daughter, Katey, looking to escape the military quarantine and ultimately hoping to find more Zombrex, the zombie suppressant drug. Chuck and Katey have made their way to relative safety in Fortune City. It's here where Chuck takes up his old profession of motocross superstar and works a gig in a competitive reality show called Terror is Reality (TIR). TIR is the inevitable conclusion that humans will exploit the zombie disposal process in the name of entertainment. It's like American Gladiators with zombies.

After a grueling round of "Slicecycles," where motorcross bikes are outfitted with chainsaws opposite the handlebars, Fortune City is suddenly the victim of a massive zombie outbreak. Chaos and panic ensue as Chuck searches for his daughter in the dressing rooms and desperately searches for safety amid the confusing zombie slaughter. After finding a remarkably similar safe house to the one found in the original Dead Rising, Chuck and company bunker down and must wait out a three-day time frame before the military shows up to rescue any survivors.

While at this point, Chuck's only two goals consist of surviving for three days and finding more Zombrex for Katey (which now lasts twice as long as previous doses found in CASE ZERO), his efforts are compounded by the news flash that Chuck is being framed for the outbreak in Fortune City. So on top of maintaining a safe house, Chuck has to brave the zombie horde and search for clues or "The Truth" in order to clear his name when the military arrives.

The first, and most important, thing about Dead Rising 2 is the strict time limit. Chuck has three days to save Katey and clear his name before he is framed for the Fortune City outbreak. That is 72 hours of in-game time (which is about one-third of real-time) for Chuck to save civilians, kill zombies, shop around, kill more zombies, kill psychopath survivors, kill more zombies, combine weapons, and kill more zombies (notice a pattern yet?) This time limit will be the best and worst case scenario for many people. Often, the time limit is a savior because you can see how long a psychopath is patrolling a certain area and that allows you to avoid the area so you can level up your abilities with more Prestige Points, or PP. (PP is earned by killing zombies in creative ways or completing story objectives, which unlocks new combat moves or stat upgrades like speed, health, or inventory slots.) For some people, the time limit will be the absolute bane of their existence, because it veritably ensures they cannot complete all the objectives they want, most often forcing a difficult "one or the other" scenario.

So far, this is old news for fans. Dead Rising 2 is designed very close to the original to keep it familiar, but added fresh enjoyment with two very important additions: combo weapons and multiplayer. I touched on it briefly in my review of CASE ZERO, but combo weapons are made from the items Chuck finds around him, and lots of duct tape. There are dozens and dozens of weapon combinations to make and finding or earning "Combo Cards" gives Chuck the ability to use a stronger attack or earn more PP from that created weapon. Among the most useful weapons will be a baseball bat with nails or a pair of boxing gloves with knives. These two will undoubtedly be the most versatile and life-saving creations found early on. If you are inclined to be more creative, wheelchairs can be outfitted with machine guns and pitchforks can be taped to shotguns to create truly nasty carnage.

As fun as it may be to slaughter thousands and thousands of zombies in new and satisfying ways, it wouldn't be much fun to do it alone after a while. With the addition of drop-in, drop-out Co-Op, Dead Rising 2 really doubles the amount of fun that can be had killing the undead. Two players can control their own Chuck Greene, complete with skill sets and outfits and work their way through the story. Although only the host player gains story progress, I still highly recommend playing with a friend just to have fun in the murderous adult playground because both players gain PP, levels, and cash that can be transferred back into their own respective game.

If you are the lone wolf survivor type and you prefer your online to be more competitive, Dead Rising 2 has you covered too. The competitive online multiplayer is included and modeled after the Terror is Reality game show. Each match is essentially its own Pay-per-View episode with players competing to see who can kill more zombies and earn a higher score. There are nine different game types, which includes a game called "Zomboni" where players drive their own zamboni and collect zombie juice to earn high scores. Each episode consists of four different games with "Slicecycles" always being the last game played. Not only are all nine of the games fun and creative, simply playing the multiplayer portion earns you cash whether you win or lose. That cash can then be transferred back into your main storyline game as many times as you want, which makes the online an essential component if you want to simply buy better equipment in the single player.

No one ever said the zombie apocalypse would be easy. While Dead Rising 2 manages to keep a consistent difficulty curve, the dangers of risking survival in an zombified world can sneak up on you if you aren't careful. There are many people that would argue the biggest problem, in terms of difficulty, for Dead Rising 2 is the save system. With a strict time limit and NO checkpoints, it is easy to see how many people would be aggravated after losing hours of progress after being blindsided by ridiculously difficult boss encounters. The lesson to learn quickly is to save often. Save points are exclusively located in restrooms throughout Fortune City and unlike the first Dead Rising only offering a single save file, Dead Rising 2 offers THREE. It may not seem like much, but the freedom to stagger save slots so you can explore different areas of the city without much penalty is actually very useful when scouting locations for future boss fights or escape routes.

Though, most likely, you will die a lot because of the psychopath boss encounters. To put it simply, these fights are brutal. On the bright side, besides the story encounters, all of the psychopath fights are optional. Even if you stumble upon a boss encounter and take a few hits, you can leave the area and return later to finish them off (and for some fights, this tactic is the only way to beat them.) As a personal pro-tip, I would suggest saving the psychopaths for the second playthrough. While these fights contain some of the best storylines and back stories (like deranged mailmen or nutty protesters), it is far more beneficial to wait until you are more familiar with the layout of the mall and are better skilled to tackle the fights again with confidence.

While the original Dead Rising is held in high regard for its treatment of the subject matter and fan service, it was certainly not without its faults. Shoddy hit detection and aiming along with long load times and a sometimes frustrating camera meant you fought the game more than you fought the zombies. Dead Rising 2 fixes all of those issues, except for the load times. Improved aiming makes guns far more useful than before. Camera controls are better, giving you free reign over your surroundings, and maneuvering through the infected city isn't as "loose" as it has been in the previous game. Unfortunately, the only real penalty I have to assign Dead Rising 2 are the long, and frequent, load times.

Every time you trigger a cutscene or enter a new area of the map, the game has to load. No where is this more egregious than the beginning areas. Sometimes cutscenes last for two or three parts, with loading screens interspersed, only to give the player control of Chuck so he can walk down a short corridor, only to load an all new area of the map. You eventually become accustomed to it, but in the early goings, the frequent breaks in momentum are enough to take notice and take your attention away from the gameplay.

Although load times are not the only problem that Dead Rising 2 suffers from (item management, notification systems, and whack survivor A.I. come to mind) all other problems are generally swept away by the sheer amount of stuff to do in the playground Dead Rising 2 offers. If you are willing to abandon quite a few conventions that modern games have set and accept Dead Rising 2 by its own rules and not the rules of other games, then there is a lot of fun to be had. In fact, Dead Rising 2 is THE best zombie game I have ever played. While the mileage may vary, I guarantee the overwhelming joy of mindlessly killing zombie after zombie will be the most fun anyone has had all year.