Zombies are stuffed into games, such as “Call of Duty: World at War” and “Red Dead Redemption,” where they seemingly don’t belong. So when a game comes along that’s actually about zombies through and through, it’s something people get pretty excited about.

“Dead Rising 2” (PS3, X360) M for Mature

Sandbox

Four-player minigames, two-player co-op

4 out of 5 star

“Dead Rising 2” is a zombie game that definitely deserves the excitement, besting its predecessor in every way.

The game puts you in the leather jacket of Chuck Greene, a former motocross rider who competes in a zombie-killing game show to afford anti-zombification medicine for his daughter Katey. She needs a shot every 24 in-game hours or she’ll turn into a zombie.

After his latest performance, Chuck is framed for setting loose the show’s stock of zombies in Fortune City, causing a real outbreak.

He must then clear his name before the military arrives in three days.

The game’s premise makes every action meaningful. If you miss a mission or giving Katey her medicine, it’s not a game over; you just can’t get the best ending. This provides the tension the story sometimes doesn’t.

“Dead Rising 2” spins a more enjoyable story than the original, with a better plot and better voice acting throughout. But things wrap up very quickly and all your hard work to get the best ending can go to waste before you know it.

As the hordes get larger, Chuck must level up to stay alive. He does that through building combo weapons, sort of like MacGyver. Some combinations make sense, like putting nails in a baseball bat.

But others, like taping a water gun to a fire extinguisher to instantly freeze zombies, only make sense if you don’t think about it too hard.

But the system works well, as there are a surprising amount of hilarious combinations. It fits this type of game better than taking photographs did in the original “Dead Rising”.

Outside of that, the gameplay remains pretty similar. The rigid save structure has been eased up, allowing multiple save slots and more save locations.

Multiplayer has been added this time, with online minigames and drop-in, drop-out cooperative play. The minigames are pretty boring, but the money earned can be transferred back to the single player.

The co-op works well, but it can slow things down and it’s a bit weird to see two Chucks running around.

The true enemies in the game aren’t the zombies, but the surviving human foes. These psychopaths have been driven to lunacy by the outbreak and feature a colorful array for bosses for Chuck to defeat. The zombies feel more like an obstacle to avoid when getting around.

The game’s framerate can dip very low when a lot of action is rendered on-screen, but it is rather rare. The graphics engine also gets very ugly when fire is on-screen, but it handles the intense action and massive hordes very well at most times.

“Dead Rising 2” is a game meant to be played multiple times, each time experimenting with different combinations of weapons and choices to get different endings.

There are a few minor annoyances, but “Dead Rising 2” should entertain to the zombie apocalypse and beyond.