Dead Rising 2 will have multiplayer and 6000 onscreen zombies

When Capcom announced Dead Rising 2 last month, actual gameplay details were scare. We were told that the virus which infected the Willamette shopping mall in the first Dead Rising game has spread elsewhere in the United States, and that the sequel will now be set in the Las Vegas-style location of Fortune City.

Now at a panel discussing the making of Dead Rising 2 which took place at the Game Developers Conference this week, more details have been let slip about what we can expect from this sequel..

Dead Rising 2 will use new visual technology called Mental Mill, which is capable of rendering large groups of characters without sacrificing graphical quality. Mental Mill product manager Laura Scholl claimed the new software will allow players to experience as many as 6000 characters onscreen during multiplayer sessions.

The technology can also track at least 800 seperate clothing textures which would provide the sense of every zombie being unique onscreen. Izmeth Siddeek, the game’s character art lead, claimed “Dead Rising 2 deals with the rendering of the greatest number of characters ever seen in a video game”.

Anyone who has played Left 4 Dead knows that a zombie apocolypse is always better with friends, and it’s a Dead Rising fan’s wet dream to be able to play around in the varied sandbox environments of the gameworld co-operatively.

Add to this the awe-inspiring sight of 6,000 zombies to kill and maim with whatever wacky weapons you can find, and we don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Dead Rising 2 could potentially be THE GREATEST GAME EVER!