(EuroGamer) – Capcom R&D kingpin Keiji Inafune has confirmed that Dead Rising 2 features multiplayer after all, despite confusion at GDC earlier this year.

“We’re at a point in game history that you need to have some form of multiplayer component in a game,” Inafune told journalists at Captivate 09 in Monaco last week.

“Single-player alone is not going to cut it. So rest assured we are going to put multiplayer in the game, but I can’t go into specifics about what type of multiplayer as that directly relates to some of the game systems that we don’t want to talk about at this event. It will be online multiplayer, so keep that in mind.”

Inafune held court over an hour-long demonstration of the survival horror sequel, revealing that development partner Blue Castle Games manages to do 7,000 zombies on-screen at once – and showing us that in action.

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My spidey senses tell me yes, FINALLY. After a few grueling years of waiting, and taking in rumors, I was almost sure that we would NEVER see a sequel to one of my all time favorite titles, Capcom’s “Dead Rising”. An acquaintance at my local Gamestop informed me of a lawsuit initiated by George A. Romero against Capcom, claiming that the game’s setting and theme were copied from his famous horror film “Dawn of the Dead”. Now, I’m a huge fan of his films but lately, the new titles have sort of lost their charm such as Diary of the Dead. It’s okay to watch maybe once, but that’s all. This suit kind of sounded to me like he was running out of funds. I could in a rather large way see the similarity between the game and the film. However, in doing some research on 1up.com, I was pleased to see that U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Seeborg “has not identified any similarity between Dead Rising and any protected element of Dawn of the Dead”. He goes on to explain that the few similarities the company has alleged are driven by the wholly unprotectable concept of humans battling zombies in a mall.

Months before performing the research, my source did inform me that there was a possibility of the game continuing under a different developer. I recently checked around to see how the game was coming, or if it was at all, and saw that IGN.com reported that Chris Kramer, director of public relations of Capcom Entertainment states, “There has been no official announcement of a sequel to Dead Rising, any rumors of an official announcement are erroneous”. When questioned if there would be a sequel at all, he continued to state that they have made no announcements of one…sounds fishy to me! I did some more snooping around and BADABING! DeadRising2.net!

There was a post in February stating that Capcom did in fact officially confirm that DR2 will arrive for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. There are screenshots and trailers leaked, and in taking a look at the shots, not much is different. Which I’m relieved to see as the game IS in fact being released under a different developer by the name of Blue Castle Games, the same company to bring us “The Bigs” and “MLB 2008″. Deadrising.net states that much like the first game, “Players will once again slaughter their way through thousands upon thousands of the living dead, using a plethora of weapons to butcher them. This time, however, instead of battling zombies in a shopping mall like the original Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2 takes place in a Las Vegas-inspired city loaded with casinos and flesh eating blackjack dealers and zombified showgirls”. Showgirls! Hooray for zombie smut once again! Capcom states that DR2 will take the franchise to a “new level of zombie-killing fun with tens of thousands of zombies, and a chance to kill them in fun ways in the gaming paradise of Fortune City”.
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