What a Scoop!

The other day a new Dead Rising game came out, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. This is the 3rd game in the series and it combines both the elements of Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2 into the game.

In the first Dead Rising, the player is Frank West, a photojournalist who sneaks into the fictional town of Willamette, Colorado, which has been quarantined by the military. The main objective of the game is to investigate the Willamette Parkview Mall and complete "Case Files", missions that advance the storyline and reveal the cause of the zombie outbreak. The player has three days to do this, at which point a helicopter will arrive to retrieve him. If a player fails a mission, it does not end the game, but different actions result in different endings at the end of the 72-hour period. In addition to the Case Files, the player is offered the opportunity to rescue other survivors of the zombie outbreak, either from the zombies themselves, or from "psychopaths", boss characters who have either been driven insane by the zombie attacks, or are using the outbreak as cover for their own purposes. Alternately, the player can ignore all missions and play as a sandbox game; wandering though the mall (modeled on stereotypical American shopping malls, trying outfits and food, and killing zombies with a variety of objects. Dead Rising is notable for the hundreds of weapons that the player can find in the mall and use against the zombies. There are over 250 items that can be used as weapons, ranging from powerful to near-useless. Weapons will break down or run out of ammunition with use, and will break or be discarded (some of which break into usable pieces). Others can be changed by the environment, such as frying pans, which can be heated on a stove to both increase damage and gain access to a special move.

Dead Rising 2 takes place five years after the events of Dead Rising. Former motocross champion Chuck Greene is in the fictional casino town of Fortune City, Nevada, to take part in Terror Is Reality, a sports entertainment game show where contestants kill zombies. Chuck needs the prize money to buy Zombrex (a daily medication that suppresses the zombification process) for his daughter Katey, who was bitten by her zombified mother during a previous outbreak in Las Vegas. While backstage after the show, the show's supply of zombies is released; Chuck rescues Katey and makes his way to an emergency shelter, which is sealed after their arrival. Ray Sullivan (the only security guard to reach the shelter alive) is initially reluctant to let the infected Katey in, but Chuck promises to keep her supplied with Zombrex until the military arrives in three days. The game includes several new objects that can be used to attack the zombies. Up to 7,000 zombies can be seen onscreen at the same time.
Dead Rising 2 allows players to manufacture their own custom weapons at various points in the game by collecting items and combining them together in maintenance rooms scattered across the game map. The player also has the ability to unlock "combo cards" that reveal weapons that can be combined together. Such combinations include the "Hail Mary," a hand grenade duct taped to a football, "Dynameat," a stick of dynamite duct taped to a piece of meat, the "Paddlesaw," two chainsaws duct taped to a kayak paddle, and "Spiked Bat" which is a baseball bat with nails hammered through the item.

Now take all that, and put it into one massive game. It's going to be a bloodbath.