Dead Rising

Game Description: Set several years after the events of the first game in the series, Dead Rising 2 contains all the fun and over-the top carnage which gamers associate with a zombie apocalypse. As with all releases in the Dead Rising series, it is a survival horror game. Players take on the role of an all-new character, with equally new motivations to survive and resources to do so. These resources include new weapons, expanded weapon combination/creation possibilities, and even two-player coop functionality. The game also features a 4-player online multiplayer mode, an optional prologue to the game available as downloadable content and a dramatic increase in the number of zombies that can be faced at once.

Welcome to Still Creek, Population: You

HIGH Killing zombies with the broadsword is a gory good time.

LOW Trying to guide an injured survivor back to the bowling alley only to have her defect at the alley's entrance.

WTF Watching a female zombie take a giant chomp out of Chuck's crotch.

Capcom's Dead Rising 2 snubbed E3 earlier this year (citing swine flu concerns or something to that effect), but it's making up for that missed opportunity by showing off a veritable truckload of footage at the Tokyo Game Show. I've lost count of how many videos have been released over the past day or so, but trust me when I say it's a lot. If we were in sort of in the dark about what to expect from this zombie-slaying sequel, I think things are now illuminated.

I'm not going to post all of the videos here (because I'm lazy), but I will say you can find pretty much all of them by heading over to G4's website. They've got the original trailer, multiplayer footage (which had me wondering if I was really watching a trailer for Dead Rising 2 at first…) and all sorts of other goodies.

I am going to share one video, though—because it highlights one of the numerous new weapons players can use to kill the undead in the game. It's a combination pitchfork/shotgun, and if the idea of taking out zombies by impaling them on the tines, lifting them in the air, and delivering a buckshot coup de grace to their rotting faces doesn't make you giddy, then I'm not sure we can be friends anymore. I'm sorry, there are just certain things I expect from the people I spend time with—and appreciating the joys of shooting zombies in the face is very high on that list.

Swine Flu guaranteed that Dead Rising 2 won't be shown at this year's E3, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything new to see when it comes to the highly-anticipated, zombie-killing simulator.

Check out the new trailer below for a look at the game. There's no gameplay footage here, but that's a whole lot of zombies.

I have my problems with the first Dead Rising, but I'm still looking forward to this sequel. Hopefully, Capcom has learned from their mistakes in the first game—and would it be too much to ask that it actually be playable on a standard definition television this time around? I'd love to have a nicer TV, but I choose to spend my paltry income on games—not television sets.

Given enough time (and interest?) there is a developer out there that might be able to do something impressive with the Dead Rising franchise on the Wii. Apparently that developer wasn't contracted by Capcom to develop this "port".

Game Description: Dead Rising follows the harrowing tale of Frank West, a freelance photojournalist after the scoop of a lifetime. In a small suburban town that's overrun by zombies, he escapes to the local shopping mall, thinking it will be safe. Now it's a standoff, with zombies unable to get Frank, but him unable to get out and escape. Fortunately, he's got an entire mall at his disposal. Utilize everything you can find to fight off the flesh-hungry mob and search for the truth behind the horrendous epidemic.

So what are the zombies like? Well, first of all they're slow. But what they lack in speed they make up for in number. It is truly a next-gen quality of Dead Rising to render such a large amount of creatures on-screen and an essential part of its gameplay mechanic. Due to the vastness of the mall, such slow enemies would not pose a threat if there weren't literally hundreds of hungry, rotten undead waiting for the player to make the big mistake of maneuvering himself into a too-crowded place.