Chainsaw juggling clowns and drooling maniacs with weaponized shopping carts surrounded by concert-floor-thick crowds of groaning psychos and anything-you-see's-a-weapon made Capcom's Dead Rising the zombie game to beat. Better — deep breaths now — even than Resident Evil 4.

And now Capcom's made my month by announcing Dead Rising 2, a sequel set in a casino packing not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands of zombies. Eureka!

The official trailer:

The sequel trades Dead Rising's mall-based milieu for a casino, and plans to pack in "a host of new in-game objects that can all be used as deadly weapons to stave off the zombie assault."

Oh goody, let's see: Slot machines? Roulette wheels? Craps tables? Shuffleboards? Billiards balls? Table brushes? Money paddles? Counter covers? Buffet carts? Pink flamingos?

Life-sized cardboard cutouts of Wayne Netwon?

The story angle, from Capcom's official press release:

Dead Rising 2 is set several years after the infamous zombie invasion of Willamette. Unfortunately, the zombie virus was not contained at the conclusion of Dead Rising, spreading unchecked throughout the United States and Dead Rising 2 depicts a country where zombie outbreaks continue to strike.

The game's actually not being developed by the original team, but rather an "up and coming Canadian developer" named Blue Castle Games. Not much to say about these guys, save for a couple of sports games, e.g. The BIGS and Major League Baseball 2K8. Capcom does note that some members from the original team will work alongside BCG through the development process, including Keiji Inafune, the producer on the original.

Instead of being Xbox 360 exclusive (not counting forthcoming Wii port "Chop 'Til You Drop") Dead Rising 2 is in development for the Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows PCs.

Like I said when I reviewed the original back in September 2006:

Say what you will about America's violent culture streak, it's hard to beat running a lawnmower over necrotic flesh and watching arms, legs and heads fly like bloody wood chips.

QFT.

Matt Peckham hopes they'll include more than a single save slot this time. You can follow him at twitter.com/game_on.