Eurogamerilta tech demo preview. Pääasiassa palstatilaa kuluu edellisen pelin tapaan zombien mielikuvituksellisien pätkimistapojen kuvailemiseen. Poimin joitakin mielenkiintoisempia asioita artikkelista.
You worry though, listening to Capcom R&D chief Keiji Inafune talk about the game, that the publisher is in danger of missing a vital point. "I was actually shocked to hear that a lot of the Western press, as well as Western gamers, were saying that it looks like a Western game on the outside, but on the inside it still feels very Japanese," Inafune says of the first Dead Rising, speaking through translator Ben Judd. "With Dead Rising 2, one of the internal goals that we had for ourselves was to truly make a Western game, to make it down to the core what a Western game is."
This is all well and good, but it's worth considering the context of Inafune's original 'shock': when Western gamers - ourselves included - first took to Dead Rising, Capcom's Japanese-developed Xbox 360 action-adventure, it wasn't just the single-location dynamic, 72-hour time window and non-linear mission structure, nor the brilliant comic violence of the kill counter, and hacking up hundreds of on-screen zombies with props looted from shops in the Willamette Mall, that gave it traction. It was something quintessentially Japanese in the mechanics - the photography hook, the secret bonuses, the caricatured badguys and their indulgent cut sequences. Surely going west risks the loss of so much of what gave the game its unusual flavour?
Fortunately, if he wasn't conscious of it at the time, Inafune insists that his original meetings with Blue Castle boss Dan Brady corrected that. "Dan was talking to us and brought about a very good point: one of the best things about Dead Rising 1 wasn't the fact that it's Western, it's the fact that it seems Western but also has that certain Japanese spice," he says. "We realised this was the kind of company that would be able to make the compromises and work with us to make the perfect blend between East and West that would be necessary for Dead Rising 2."
Blue Castle Gamesin osallisuudella projektiin on jo nyt todistetusti ollut positiivinen vaikutus. Capcom olisi saattanut sisäisellä tiimillä ahtaa peliä väkisin länkkäripelin muottiin ja hukata niitä tärkeitä perijapanilaisia pelimekaniikan elementtejä. Dead Risingin hiekkalaatikossa oli nimittäin juuri sellaista viehätystä, keräiltävää ja siistiä tekemistä, jota ei länsimaalaisissa hiekkalaatikkopeleissä paljoa näe. Toki lähes kaikissa GTA–peleissä on voinut kerätä hidden packageja ja ties mitä, mutta niihin ei ole onnistuttu luomaan sellaista koukkua kuten Dead Risingissa vaikka piilotettujen valokuvauskohteiden etsimisessä on.
We can infer a certain amount, at least. The on-screen HUD looks similar, which speaks to similar progression - with a chunkified and presumably extendable health-bar, the same Prestige Points meter feeding into a levelling system, a money total and of course the zombie kill-counter in the bottom right. Inafune won't comment directly on the return of photography or mission structure, but says he and Blue Castle want to "keep 100 per cent of what made the first game good, and lose 100 per cent of what got in the way". They are considering using the 72-hour period of the first game again, and the divisive save system is being thoroughly contemplated behind the scenes.
Aikaraja todennäköisesti pysyy pelissä edelleen (mainiota), mutta tallennussysteemiä aiotaan tarkastaa. Valokuvaus saattaa jäädä tai olla jäämättä, mutta ainakin prestige pointsit ovat edelleen tallella.
Uuden hahmon nimi on Chuck Greene.
EDIT: Uusi traileri