There’s a bit of a counter-intellectualism movement winding through console gaming lately. It spreads from less significant examples such as Resi 5’s sideways shuffle towards the action genre to titles that stand as full-on antitheses of some stoic benchmark.

That’s a poncey way to reference spraying faeces up the side of someone’s house, Saints Row 2 fans! It seems that from Red Faction: Guerrilla to 50 Cent, Afro Samurai to Wanted, 360 gaming is falling over itself to dangle something shiny in front of gamers while we gurgle something appreciative and make exaggerated clapping motions.

Dead Rising 2 looks set to follow in such elongated clown footprints, this time with the direct intention of creating “a truly global product”, or so says producer Keiji Inafune.

What does all of this mean in practice? Well, for starters, conventional weapon play will see significant tightening, not only in terms of physical punch but a familiar over-the-shoulder viewpoint from which bullet-based carnage will be viewed. Our bleach-blond hero will also – shock horror – be able to strafe while piling ammunition through his lumbering enemies, which will number, at times, 7,000 - that's more than ten times the original title’s maximum.

What’s more, the West’s penchant for more extreme examples of no-holds-barred physical violence should be satisfied by fresh dismemberment technology and some pretty brutal item-based moves.

Take a common or garden bucket, for example. In the real world, it might be used to water the garden, or perhaps entertain a walrus. Here it’ll be jammed onto the bonce of an unsuspecting undead before drill bits become bored into its skull through a series of strategically placed holes. Nasty.

Costumes will also be integrated into combat this time around. Wearing a Moose head allows you to initiate ramming attacks, and flip zombies with your horns.

We also got to see two chainsaws attached to either end of a canoe paddle, and wielded Darth Maul-style, to predictably grusome effect.

Combine this kind of horror with the fact that whenever players cop hold of a sword they’ll be able to slice and dice pretty much whatever they feel, however they feel. New "procedural slicing" technology, allows you to slice bits of hand, leg, skull, and pretty much anything else off of your zombies foes. Yep, Dead Rising 2 is a game Australians will probably never be able to buy.

It seems that Capcom is trying to strike something of a delicate balance, which Inafune-san himself expresses perfectly enough without us blabbering on: “When [Dead Rising] was released in the West I was shocked to hear the Western press say, ‘Yeah, it looks like a Western game, but on the inside it still feels like a Japanese game.’ I was shocked because my goal was to trick Western gamers into thinking they were playing a Western game.”

Apart from a thesaurus, the experienced director clearly wants to switch his series’ focus and form. Rather than remain a distinctly Japanese title looking westwards, he wishes to incorporate gameplay elements familiar to consumers here while holding onto a degree of Eastern charm. Sounds relatively easy to us.

To complete a preview that aims to flip certain conventions, your leather-clad hero goes by the name of Chuck Green. Capcom clings onto his story like the undead to slurred vocabulary, so we’ll have to assume the reason he’s ploughing into thousands of zombies is the same as us: fun.

… continued