Along with announcing a release date of August 31, Capcom brought a playable demo of Dead Rising 2 to Microsoft's X10 event in San Francisco this week. Though it doesn't show much in the way of how the final game will be structured, the timed demo provided plenty of time to try out different weapons and do plenty of bad things to zombies before they could do bad things to Chuck Greene, the game's protagonist.
This video shows much of what was on display at X10, but keep in mind that this video has been cut very carefully and doesn't show much blood, probably to satisfy the ESRB marketing guidelines.
The real game has blood splattering all over the place, and it's kind of awesome. Chuck will get absolutely covered in the stuff when you're tearing up zombies.
While you've certainly seen them already in some of this in that video up there, the big thing in Dead Rising 2--at least from what's been shown so far--is the ability to combine items together to form new combo weapons. You'll find that paddle, slap it on a workbench, then grab the chainsaw and use it on the paddle to fit them together. Other weapons include a flamethrower, made by combining a gas can and a Super Soaker-like water gun. Or a lawnmower with its handle removed and replaced by two pieces of plywood, making it easy to grab and swing around. You have a quick and a heavy attack, with heavy requiring a longer hold of the X button. The heavy attack with the lawnmower has Chuck slam a zombie on the head with the blade side of the contraption, which quickly chews the zombie up from the head down. It's great.
When you're wielding a combo weapon, you earn bonus prestige points, or PP, for attacking. As in the first game, earning PP lets you level up and enhance your abilities and stamina. The first game also allowed you to take photos of enemies for extra PP, but that sounds like it's gone this time around. Considering Frank West was a photographer and Chuck Greene is a bit of a handyman, the differences make sense.
All in all, the game controls about how you'd expect. There's a lot of momentum in Chuck's movements, so winding up for heavy attacks takes some time, but it feels like you're coming down on these zombies with everything you've got, whether you're swinging your fists or a sledgehammer. You can use the left trigger to aim, making it pretty easy to toss weapons, if that's your thing.
It was a short demo, but it had enough different objects in it to give you the sense that Dead Rising 2 is in good hands at Blue Castle Games. On top of all that... it gave us the opportunity to add another game to Giant Bomb's dildo page.
But you'll have to hang on for our interview for a closer look at that. Coming soon!