Reviews// Dead Rising 2

I'm reliably informed that kissing vampires will be replaced with kissing zombies when The Walking Dead TV show kicks off later this year - and Stephenie Meyer realises she needs a new idea. With that in mind, getting in a bout of zombie-killing before they go all sparkly seemed like a good idea when Dead Rising 2 crossed my desk. Playing it wasn't an awful idea, but I have had better.

I didn't play the first DR at length, but Svend SPOnG gave it a worthy thrash and rated it fairly highly. I figured DR2 was probably a pretty safe bet. I was pushing my luck.

The set-up goes like this – you play Chuck Greene, a faded motocross star reduced to competing in the Terror is Reality gameshow in order to fund the Zombrex medication he needs to stop his daughter, Katey, from going all undead. When there's a zombie outbreak in Fortune City (Las Vegas, basically), however, Chuck gets stitched up as the chap responsible.

The structure's not dissimilar from the first game – you're given three days to clear your name as the army works its way into town, but as well as getting to the bottom of things you've got to keep Katey dosed up with Zombrex. To do all that, you'll need to fight your way through a LOT of zombies.

At your disposal you've got a seemingly-endless array of weapons. This is where Dead Rising 2 excels, and it's what the game's really about – bursting zombies' rotting bodies open in a rich and rewarding array of ways. I'm not going to try to slap a figure on the plethora of weapons available, but it's a lot. Throw in a number of vehicles to blast satisfyingly across the assembled corpses and you're doing pretty well.

This is boosted by the introduction to the series of weapons combos. As you progress, you pick up 'combo cards', which are basically weapons recipes. They range from the fairly straightforward (Spiked Bat) to the more exotic (car battery + garden rake = electric zombie poker). Using combo weapons also earns you prestige points (PP) more quickly, which enable you to level up.

I have to say, I was a little disappointed with the system. I was initially hoping to be MacGyvering all kinds of crazy pain machines on the fly, not patiently gathering weapons recipes then visiting maintenance rooms. Given the vast array of weapons on offer, the chances that you happen to be carrying two objects that you can put together are slim without some planning, too. But then, a lot of DR2 is dependant on your planning.

As with the first game and as Patrick noted in his Dead Rising: Case Zero review, it's up to you to save your game. You do this by heading to the bathroom, but at any given moment there's a good chance your last save point's a good way behind you.

This can be spectacularly punishing if you missed an opportunity to save. In today's culture of games being... well, a piece of piss, that's going to be off-putting to a lot of people. You'll also want to take care over Chuck's condition when you do bother to save. I saved during a boss battle when I was down to one bar of health and short on weapons. It turned out to be an utter waste of time since I got annihilated every time I stepped back into the game.