Playable only on the 360, Dead Rising has you piloting Frank West, a photojournalist (he’s covered wars you know) who jumps from a helicopter onto a zombie infested shopping mall to take some happy snaps of the denizens within.
Seriously.
The helicopter pilot is coming back for Frank in three days. During this time Frank can spend his time taking pictures, getting eaten by zombies, telling people he is a photojournalist and ferrying people back and fourth from relative safety. Generally all this occurs at the same time and because of the save system and terrible survivor AI this can make even a short trip out of home base a frustrating, television screaming, controller throwing, and nail biting experience.
Fun though.
The Meat
Killing Stuff
As it turns out, the entire zombiefied population of the fictional town of Willamette have decided to go shopping with Frank. To offset ceaseless masses of zombies milling around between objectives, Frank can hit the turned former-citizens with damn near everything that is not nailed down to the floor. Unfortunately, most of these things are completely useless (See: Nerf Weapons, Water Pistols, Pizza Boxes, etc.) and those weapons which are more effective (See: Samurai swords, Axes, Chainsaws, Lawnmowers, etc.) have a duration of half-a-dozen hits.
It’s a sad moment when the chainsaw you had to fight a god-damn sadomasochistic clown for falls apart in mid swing, leaving you stranded in the middle of an angry zombie horde with nothing but your fists and a prayer.
The ability to smack zombies with signs, bits of the roof and other zombies is incredibly fun to begin with, but quickly gets old. As Zombies spawn constantly from anywhere outside your field of view you are left with a feeling of futility which results in you just pushing past the zombies at later levels when the killing thrill subsides.
Of Sandboxes and Persistence
Dead Rising is a so-called “sandbox” game. Your avatar, Frank, can decide what to do with the hours he spends waiting for this elusive helicopter lift. If you want to run around and hit zombies with televisions until your ride arrives - you can! Or, you’re supposed to be able to.
You see, Dead Rising is built upon the premise that there is so much to do, you need to play through the game a bunch of times in order to see it all, get all the endings, reach all the achievements and unlock all the goodies. This is not a new game mechanic, however, in order to encourage this your character (who levels up during the game allowing you to be eaten more and sometimes pile-drive zombies into the ground) levels, items and clothing rolls over to the next time you play.
Yes, your clothing rolls over from game to game. Dead Rising lets you customize your Avatar, Frank, with a variety of fancy looking Headgear, Torsogear and Footgear. Different shops in the mall contain different clothing and these clothing items persist even in mission cut-scenes. I think this is a really cool feature and although Avatar customization is by no means a new feature in games nowadays, wading though hordes of zombies while you search the mall for the “perfect’ pair of sunglasses for your character has a certain charm I enjoyed
Unfortunately Dead Rising’s system of level rollover also means that Core missions (Missions which reveal portions of the story behind the infection) are almost impossible at a low level. Some enemies Frank needs to beat can kill you instantly at low level - meaning that you have the option to either wander around the mall, hitting zombies for experience, or constantly restarting the game, rolling over your character, until you can pass the missions. Needless to say, I found this incredibly irritating and only started to really enjoy the game when I was about level 25 (50 is the max level Frank can be).
The Why
You reveal portion of the games back story by completing core missions in the alloted time. Sometimes, if you do not complete a mission fast enough, you will not have enough time to get to your next objective and will loose all your progress up to that point. If you have saved poorly, this may mean that you need to start the game again.
Regardless the story is enjoyable, I found myself driven to find out more about this outbreak throughout the game, especially in the second half “Overtime”.
The game also provides a series of endings, depending on how well you play, a nice touch and a testimony to just how many different way you can be eaten by zombies.
Story Modes
Once you complete the normal game with the “good” ending you unlock Infinity Mode. This simply means you constantly loose health and you have to kill other survivors in the mall for food. The aim is to survive in the mall for as long as you can. If you survive for 7 days you get a laser sword! woo!
Wait… Thats 14 hours of continuous play….
With no save..
The Bones
Saving
I could go on about the saving for this game, but i’m not going to. I’m sure by now you have picked up the gut wrenching hate I have for the so-called saving procedure, I’ll just sum it up.
The saving feature is evidence that this game hates you.
The Janitor
Otis the Janitor is, quite frankly, the most irritating game dynamic I have ever encountered. He reminds me of Clippy from Microsoft Word, before right-minded people made him illegal.
Otis will call you on your Walkie-Talkie/Mobile-Phone device and offer you helpful-hints about where you are in the mall, what you can do there and the location of survivors he can see on the security monitors.
If you pick up his call (which is announced with a piercing ring) you are unable to fight anymore until Otis finishes rambling on about whatever useless bit of information he thinks YOU need to know. If you get attacked, or hang up on Otis out of frustration, he will call back, continuously, forever, until you listen to his entire spiel.
He will even tell you that “you were rude for hanging up on him”.
The one redeeming feature of this game, regarding Otis the janitor, is that he is the very first survivor you get to kill in Infinity Mode. I must have started that mode half-a-dozen times, cackling like mad as I beat Otis senseless with a handy Gas canister.
AI
The Artificial Intelligence for the Survivors for this game is bad, real bad, coupled with your indirect control of their actions may stop you from playing this game. You can tell all survivors to go to a place specified by you, or tell them to follow you, thats it.
If you do tell them to run to a distant wall, you need to be prepared to run around them and clear any: Flower pots, Zombies, Anything, Invisible walls, Other survivors, visible walls, on their way.
It really feels like the game is somehow punishing you for trying to save other people.
The Taste
Dead Rising has its problems and they are big ones. So big it makes me wonder if the people who made the game actually played the game. It also makes me wonder if, Capcom, developed this game to give me a rage induced heart attack.
Because no matter how much I yelled at the screen, I would always pick that controller back up to play again.
I don’t believe that you should purchase a XBox 360 just for this zombie extravaganza, but if you already have one, you could do a lot worse.
And hey, you can kill zombies with a lawn mower.
Tofu the Vegan Zombie is the un-dead embodiment of that classic zombie joke: