Imagine Dead Rising 1, but...better.
The game takes place in the fictional 'Fortune City' which is based heavily on Las Vegas. This allows for a lot of new 'mini-games' such as slot machines, poker, golf and another such distractions from the main story. This is a huge improvement over the first one due to the fact that players would find themselves waiting for lengthy periods of time for the next part of a mission or case, now the players would having something fun to do which would kill that time.
The story entails the hero, Chuck Green, a motocross champion, trying to collect 'Zombrex', the suppressor to the zombie virus that has infected his daughter. The injection must be given to her every 24 hours as a sub quest, if this requirement isn't fulfilled, the story cannot be completed, however it isn't as simple as going to Katey every 24 hours, Chuck must first find the Zombrex, either by saving people who have some, stumbling across it in Fortune City or purchasing some from the shop, which leads on to the new 'money' system. With that as a side quest, Chuck discovers he is being blamed for the outbreak in Fortune City; the main storyline has the player trying to discover 'The Facts' of who framed him and why.
Despite Dead Rising 1 earning mainly positive reviews, one of the major critisms of the game was the Artificial Intelligence. Whilst the player must go through the story, another main part of the game is saving people who have been trapped by zombies, it's simple enough saving the people by perhaps finding them or defeating whoever has taken them captive, but actually getting them to the 'Safe Room' was another matter altogether. The AI would run away, attempt to fight zombies and allow themselves to get swarmed, making saving them in the first place pointless. The second game massively improved this aspect, making the game much more enjoyable than the first one.
As with the first one, Capcom tried to keep one particular band to do most of the music, in this case the Electronic Rock band 'Celldweller', who provide fantastic atmospheric music and incredible heavy rock scores for intense battles. The music in Dead Rising has always been a huge credit; the second one is no different.
The second instalment has some major differences to the original title; the main one noted is the addition of money. Chuck must play the mini-games to earn located about the map.
Another new addition to the game is the online aspect, players can enjoy 'drop in, drop out' on the single campaign, making it much easier than the first game. The second player simply becomes a clone to the main character and has no impact on the story, not appearing in cut scenes or having dialogue, the addition is simply there for players to enjoy themselves more in Fortune City, be it playing mini games or simply exploring. The online also spreading to matchmaking; Chucks original reason for going to Fortune City is to enter a game show called 'Terror is Reality' where contestants complete against one another in a variety of games, such as 'Slicecycles' in which the contestants ride around an area on motorcycles with chainsaws attached to either side, whoever kills the most zombies and thereby earns the most points wins. This game show is effectively the online, you become a nameless player and compete against three others players in either Ranked Mode against random players, and any money earned can be imported to the single player game, or Player Matches where the player can join games with friends and then search for opponents as a group, however the money earned on this game mode cannot be imported over.
As opposed to using the every day items found in a mall as weapons like in the first game, Chuck can now combine weapons to create unique additions to his arsenal, for example you can take a Box of Nails and a Baseball bat to one of the many maintenance rooms and place them on the workbenches to combine the two into a Bat players level. Other combinations make more imaginative weapons such as a battery and a wheelchair creating an electric chair or chainsaw and boat paddle becoming a Darth-Maul style double ended chainsaw staff.
With Dead Rising 2 throwing you in at the deep end, having to keep your infected daughter from turning into a zombie, finding out the truth of what happened in Fortune City, saving survivors and defeating psychopathic humans, the game is not only a massive improvement over the first game, but as a standalone title it would also be a fantastic game.