Spot on review. I am a HUGE fan of the original game, and Dead Rising 2, even though it is somewhat scaled down in difficulty and I'd rather prefer playing tough games, still is a great title and an enormous amount of fun. Heck, even the game itself realizes this and goes over the top with the plot, weapons, combo weapons, survivor wants and what not.
And that's how I like me some Capcom. I don't need "serious" plots about stuff like Umbrella, Complete Global Saturation, Akrid, "Shoot the Giant Glowing Orange Globes or are you Dumm?", etc. I need stuff like "Master of Unlocking", "Been a long time, Comrade", "I've covered wars you know", a royal knight reduced to his undies once hit. The kind of stuff Capcom still has in spades, but they'll have to allow themselves to let themselves go. No serious sgit, Inafune, no "needs to be more western" bull, just go with your creative flow and entertain us.
Last but not least, I like how Yahtzee mentioned how he ran out of time for a boss fight. That happened to me, too, on more than one occasion, simply because I thought Dead Rising 2 would follow the same timing rules as the original. In the latter game, you would never run out of time for a story event - as long as you entered the story event area right before the timer expired, you could still live through the entire event. In Dead Rising 2 however, what you have left on your timer is all you'll get and once it runs out, the story is lost. In other words: complete story events as quickly as possible, or you might have to restart the entire game (or better yet, use two save slots for single game).
The above is something I really like about this new game. Capcom & Blue Castle Games didn't shy away from changing the original's game mechanics, meaning that veteran gamers just can't barge in and complete the game with the things they learned in the past. No, they made some subtle changes here and there which can catch veteran gamers completely off-guard. New gamers won't be affected by this, meaning everyone gets to start from a clean slate, more or less. Very well done.
Top game, this. If you're into Zombie games, do NOT pass this by.