The original Dead Rising was an early entrant in the pop culture obsession with zombies, borrowing the locale of Romero’s original zombie movie by setting the apocalypse in a mall (my copy even has a sticker on the box pointing out the game has no affiliation with Dawn of the Dead). Players had almost every household item imaginable available to crush zombies from lawn chairs to shotguns and everything in between. Dead Rising 2 offers more, more zombies, more weird weapons, more shops, more survivors, more psychos. But does a general increase in everything equal success?

I loved Dead Rising and played it through a good four times to see all the different endings and round up some of the complicated achievements. I was all set to love Dead Rising 2 but there are more than a few things that irked me in the sequel. The funny thing is, I love it for playing things almost identically to the original and I lament it for the same reasons.

The zombie apocalypse, terrifying, surreal, and oddly alluring to passive aggressive nerds

One thing I’m definitely unhappy about is the absence of Frank West, war photographer and intrepid shutterbug hero of the last game. Dead Rising 2 stars Chuck Greene in essentially the same role, the only one in a safe security room willing to venture out into the zombie free range surroundings to investigate the outbreak and rescue survivors. Rather than Frank’s photography, Chuck’s special ability is gaffa taping items together to make wild new weaponry, a feature that’s equally fun and functional and the best element of the sequel. It’s not that Chuck’s a bad character, he’s just not as interesting to play as compared to the old photojournalist. Not to bum you out but the item combining talent isn’t quite as creative as you might imagine. You need to visit a maintenance room that are dotted around the game and only certain items can be joined together, as a hint these items are usually available in the maintenance rooms or just outside them. The combinations are pretty crazy, a car battery and a wheelchair creates a mobile electric chair, a gas bottle and a super soaker makes a flame thrower, and the combo weapons are better than any single piece of equipment.

The undead have become part of life in the world of Dead Rising 2. Game shows are centered around their immolation and bite victims can stay unshambling with the help of an expensive wonder drug called Zombrex. Chuck lost his wife to the zombie infestation of Las Vegas and agrees to take part in the dastardly game show Terror Is Reality to afford Zombrex for his little daughter. The show is filmed at the new casino capital of Nevada, Fortune City. Shortly after Chuck’s appearance on the show there’s an explosion and the zombie members of the cast escape and start eating people. Chuck flees with his daughter to the nearby zombie bunker. The army are at least three days away from arriving and Chuck’s daughter needs Zombrex on a daily basis so the security guard lets Chuck head out into the surrounding casinos and shops to hunt for Zombrex. Things are further complicated by Chuck being framed for the zombies escape and having to investigate the outbreak to clear his name. Naturally there’s a big complicated conspiracy afoot.

Just when repetitive zombie killing gets boring some creative weapon combos spice it up

If you haven’t played Dead Rising before you should be pre-warned that the game has a strange experience mechanic. As you kill zombies, rescue survivors and solve cases you earn PP, as you level up you gain new moves, speed and strength, extra health and the desperately important extra inventory slots. Desperately important because weapons break after repeated use and food only restores one or two health blocks. It’s extremely likely you won’t complete Dead Rising on your first play through. When you die you’re given the option of restarting from your last save point or restarting the whole game with your current experience. You should really take the latter option at least once, or even twice if you want to stand a chance against the games optional boss characters, quaintly called Psychos. It’s a weird mechanic, being forced to replay almost half the game to be able to beat it, but Dead Rising 2 doesn’t deviate from the originals formula in that regard.

Likewise the ticking clock, you have three game days before the army arrives and no matter what you do the clock is always ticking. There’s a lot of ground to explore and a lot of cool surprises to discover, especially when experimenting with weapon combinations, but there isn’t any time in which to do this. You also need to resign yourself to the fact it’s almost impossible to complete all the side quests and main story cases in a single playthrough. Even if you’re strong enough to take on the psychos the fights can be time consuming and other survivors may be killed while your indisposed. Some survivors appear at certain times of the day and you aren’t notified about them by radio so you have to stumble across them to know they’re even in the game. Again it’s a strange but important part of the dynamic of Dead Rising, love it or hate it, the game forces a degree of replay on you.

You can change cloths and hair dos at a few specially stores if you feel your in danger of taking the half baked plot seriously

Saving your game, one of the nightmare elements of the first game, has had something of an improvement. You still need to save your game by visiting the toilet (yes with 'fly undoing' animation) but there are a lot more toilets and characters actually direct you to them during some of the case file missions. You’re also given the opportunity to save after certain events in the game.

Another element from the last game that could have used a major tune up is the AI of the survivors you recruit to follow you. The AI has not been improved from the last game and your gaggle of survivor followers, sometimes as many as six to eight, are terminally stupid, failing to take account of you or any of the other survivors as they blast shot gun rounds and swing golf clubs in all directions. It's not uncommon to get stun locked and lose tons of health at the hands of the people you're trying to save. Your best tactic is to use the waypoint ability to send the group ahead of you to a defendable corner, wade into the zombies and clear a path, then head them to another spot ahead of you. A lot could have been done with the survivor element of the game, not least of all a minor AI tweak so they didn't shoot you accidentally, but sadly there's been no change.

The psychos remain one of the Dead Rising series most unsettling and amusing elements. As with the last game the Fortune City outbreak has unhinged the mental states of several locals and you’d better have full health and a high level of experience when you encounter them. This time around you need to battle roller skating toy store mascots, homicidal mailmen, cannibalistic Italian chefs, crazy magicians and blood thirsty hippies to name a few. Defeating psychos is extremely challenging and Dead Rising 2 offers a few easy solutions to help you defeat them, but you’ll have to discover them for yourself (okay here’s one tip, mix two beers in a bar blender to make the ultimate health boost drink).

Graphically the game isn’t a big step up from the next one, not that Dead Rising was an ugly game, there just hasn’t been a graphical leap between titles. But quantity makes up for quality with an incredible number of unique zombies shambling around the screen. The larger environments and increased zombie count tax the game engine as far as it can go and result in a little bit of pop in. But you’ll have so many brain hungry undead closing in on you to keep your attention from any graphical shortcomings.

Coop play, perfect for father son catch ups

While the voice acting is good, and the sound effects suitably gross as you squash the hordes, the dialogue itself gets pretty damn corny at times and the plot isn’t nearly as good as the unraveling mystery of the first game. Dead Rising 2 is even worse for the random elements of extremely creepy sexuality, even creepier than the originals occasionally moments of pervy weirdness (Jo the cop anyone?). The worst offender being the busty news report who makes comically lewd passes at Chuck every few moments when they’re together.

Dead Rising 2 has two online modes and one is far more enjoyable than the other. Coop play is the clear winner, you and a friend have Fortune City and it’s extensive zombie population to tear through like lunatics, attacking each other or finding creative tag team ways of dealing with zombies. The mildly repetitive activity of constantly shopping up the undead gets a new lease on life when you’ve got a friend to help you. Online multiplayer mode Terror Is Reality isn’t quite as much fun. You’re given four game modes to play in an arena against three other opponents that include running over zombies, shooting zombies and putting hats on zombies. The first time you play through a round of versus it’s fun, the second time it’s still kinda fun, the third time it starts getting tired and any time you play after that you’re just earning money to help you in the single player game.

Goddamn christmas rush, next year I'm ordering everything online

The reason the competitive multi player gets tired so quickly is that the jerky controls of the game don’t translate well to online. Whether your playing as Chuck or a TIR contestant just walking around and aiming is awkward. The controls aren’t just bad, not accidentally at any rate, they’re just difficult to get used to. Think of a halfway between the controls of Resident Evil 3 and 4, you’re not quite turning on the spot to get round corners, but you’re not getting around as easily as you’d like.

Dead Rising 2 is a sequel in every sense of the word to Dead Rising, but for its slavish devotion to the originals structure it lacks the uniqueness of that made the original such a hit. Again the lack of improvement to the survivor system or any change in the basic gameplay hurts the experience. But the addition of the combo weapon system and online play definitely keeps the game above the bar, maybe by only a few inches, but above none the less. It takes some time to get sucked into Dead Rising 2, it's a slow burn but extremely rewarding experience once you've levelled up and got a feel for the odder mechanics of the game. And if you’re just playing itching for zombie genocide and haven’t quite gotten tired of the over saturation of the undead then Dead Rising 2 has you covered.