Unless you completed that game with an S rating, Case West picks up the story immediately after. Chuck (spoiler for DR2 alert! Look away now!) still hasn’t cleared his name, but he’s out of Emerald City and in cahoots with the original game's star, Frank West. Together, they’ve come to a Phenotrans research facility out in the desert, where they’re both after answers. Now all those debates about which character is cooler can be cleared up.

The dour faced Chuck just doesn’t wear it as well as Frank, no two bones about it. Frank oozes cool next to the sulky Chuck; he’s the one we’d all rather be, no matter that Frank’s a journo (loathsome beasts) and Chuck’s a biker dude. But if you think you can play as Frank through this game’s solo format, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Frank can only be played as a co-op character, and only if you’re the one to go looking for a co-op game.

Chuck's still a misery guts. Cheer up Frank – shoot that freak!

It matters not one jot whether you have one or both of the main titles, nothing you’ve done in either of them will be carried over into Case West. You start out at level 40 and max out at level 50, regardless of your saved Frank and Chuck statuses. Case West is a standalone game. Great if you’ve not experienced the thrills of Dead Rising, giving you, as it does, just enough of a taste to pique your interest without all the hefty baggage that comes with DR2. The heaviest of which, saving survivors, has been tweaked dramatically, no doubt to fit within the confines of the swift pace. In Case West, instead of having to first find survivors and then escort them back to your shelter, once you’ve found them, the job is practically done. It makes a big difference, let me tell you, to your attitude. No more dragging their sorry asses along with you, moaning at them to keep up, just find them and it’s all over.

The research facility is a compact place, confined to three floors, but it’s packed with a variety of undead and armed guards, all of which respawn whenever you re-enter a space. This combination of shuffling punch bags and fast moving gun men means that loitering in one spot for any length of time will see you put under continued attack, but the addition of Frank as side-kick, a man who can’t die and will take any weapon, including combo weapons from you and use them mercilessly, helps deal with the zombie problem while you square up to the guards and zombie herders.

The humour that was peppered throughout previous Dead Risings is still there, and there are plenty of laugh out loud moments to relish, both during cut scenes and in game (driving uni-bikes flat out down the stairs and into the waiting throng had me giggling like a drunk hyena). However, if you blast though this game with blinkers on you’ll miss much of it. Like Dead Rising 2 before it, half the fun of the game is seeking out the hidden gems.

The trouble is, that you can’t play this like Dead Rising 2 – if you fail to solve a case it’s game over straight away. So before you can truly cover every inch of the game you’ll need to finish it fully and learn the quickest way to solve every chapter.

He's behind you! This guy will never play Widow Twanky

Once that’s done you can settle in, explore while the timer runs down, whiz across the map to complete a case and then get back to nosing around again. Since the game space is considerably smaller than in Dead Rising 2, the list of combo weapons and costumes is much smaller and personally I didn’t find any weapons that gave better zombie killing satisfaction. Apart from extending the plot that little bit further and suggesting that Frank will be back in Dead Rising 3 (you know there’s going to be one, right?), Case West doesn’t have too much to offer to the solo gamer who’s invested a lot of time in DR2. The camera makes a return from DR1, no doubt to mix things up a bit, but I doubt that most gamers will be all that interested in finding the tiny stickers dotted around the place that award you PP points for capturing them on film.

But here’s the thing – Case West is a more enjoyable game if you play it in co-op. The fact is that the Phenotrans research facility, smaller than the sprawling Emerald City complex, doesn’t contain enough thrills within its walls to walk away from Dead Rising 2 for. Case West feels like little more than a new, undiscovered area in Emerald City with an extension to the main plot.

Dead Rising 2’s co-op was okay. Great if you had a friend to play along with who you could meet up with every night to continue the story, but not so great if you’re just jumping in to a complete stranger’s game, where the only real rewards were PP points that you could earn without running the clock down on your own game. Here, the main plot is easy to complete in one three hour session. Meaning that you can get together with just about anyone and run rampage through the facility from start to finish in one blood-soaked orgy of zombie carnage.

You chop, they drop.

If I’m totally honest, I had more fun playing this in co-op mode than I did playing that other zombie favourite, Left 4 Dead 2. With the small amount of free time wedged between cases, a two man team can pillage and pulverize, find all manner of hidden weaponry and jokes, rescue survivors and then regroup just in the nick of time to solve the next one.

Playing this short and sweet game makes you wonder whether they couldn’t construct the next title in such a way so that co-op can play a larger part, because if Dead Rising 2’s co-op was anywhere near as much fun as Case West’s, I doubt I’d want to play it solo more than once.

Top Game Moment: Can’t tell you, it’s a spoiler…