Dead Rising: Finally a reason to hang out at the mall.

User Rating: 8.4 | Dead Rising X360
By kellymae | Review Date:
In Dead Rising you are Frank West., a freelance photojournalist that has spent his career covering assorted atrocities. After being tipped off about the events unfolding In the town of Willamette, Frank charters a helicopter and flies into town to get what he is hoping is the story of his life. What he doesn’t seem to realize it that it could very easily become the end of his life. Military vehicles block off everything leading into town. After capturing several pictures of the madness from the safety of the helicopter, Frank tells his pilot to put down on the roof of a local shopping mall, and instructs the pilot to pick him up in three days. In the Game, Frank has 72 game hours to get his story and get out. His story, it turns out is zombies, thousands upon thousands of zombies. As luck would have it, the shopping mall that Frank has chosen as his starting point for his investigation is home to every good and service under the sun. It would probably be a nice place if it wasn’t for the hordes of walking dead. The cool thing about the mall is that just about anything in it can be used as a weapon of zombie destruction. The items you can use run from the obvious guns, knives, bats and pipes to items such as frying pans, plates, pop cans, tasers, and lawn mowers. All these weapons just make for a zombie stomping good time. There are also many weird and wonderful ways to use these items. And Frank is the man. He gains moves throughout the game and some of them are just hysterical. Hand to hand combat that is part Ultimate fighter, part World Wrestling Federation. Skill and health items are scattered throughout the game. Health items are food and drink. Just to make saving your ass that much more enjoyable, the developers have decided to give extra health if you find a food item that is supposed to be warm and heat it up in the microwave. You can pick up books throughout the game which allows you to acquire skills like my personal favorite, skateboarding. While you could most likely make it through the game without the books, picking them up makes the game that much more interesting and fun. The game gives you plenty of opportunities to earn prestige points, and increase Frank's abilities. Points come in many shapes, from taking pictures (frank is a photojournalist), to saving survivors and just bashing lots of zombie brains in. Since Frank is a photojournalist, photograph stuff. I got tonnes of prestige points just taking pictures. And it is amusing to see what kind of shots you can actually get. I found myself trying for the perfect shot every time. You get massive points for scoring good pictures. I snapped pictures the whole way through the game and seriously, I wish I could frame some of them they are so hysterical. While you could probably go most of the way with very few pictures, I am pretty sure you will find yourself trying to score the perfect shot. The sound effects in the game are amazing. Everything sounds exactly as it should and as we all know, that almost never happens. The voice acting is well done although not by anyone of note. The soundtrack itself however leaves a little to be desired. It is almost not there.

While zombie killing never loses it’s charm, eventually, some of the aspects of Dead Rising do. The realtime strategy gets old fast. You constantly feel that you have to move, move, move and for that reason, just wantonly killing zombies because you can is really not feasible. The zombies are not all that aggressive except at night, which to me is a double edged sword. Mostly they just shuffle and lunge if you get to close which leaves a little to be desired, but with that many freaking zombies it is really the only chance you have of getting through the game. Aggressive zombies numbering in the hundreds would simply swarm you and that would be game over. The save system is quite frankly, brutal. There are save points scattered in a very few locations. Due to the structure of the game, it is entirely possible to save yourself into a spot you simply cannot get out of. The interesting part of the way the saves were structured is that in the event that you are killed you can save the game not at that point, but at Franks current level of ability, making it that much easier to get back to where you were. Also the story missions are all connected so that if you miss one you have to find it before you can get any of the others. It is an achievement unto itself to have this many characters on screen but of course it is at theexpense of graphics. While the graphics in the cut scenes are really nice, when there are thousands of zombies onscreen graphics suffer a little.

The OMG that was amazing: Literally hundreds of zombies on screen at the same time. More ways to kill a zombie than planters has peanuts. The sound effects in this game are amazing. Everything sounds just exactly as it should.

The good. The quality of graphics with this many characters on screen at the same time is very good. The zombies look good and they die well. Game play is amusing, and there are many side quests that you can perform. Voice acting is very good.

The meh, whatever. When the heat is on with hundreds of zombies and large weapons, frame rate issues occur. Nothing major, but notable. Zombies are for the most part pretty non aggressive. Realtime strategy will go from an interesting concept to annoying relatively quickly.

The downright annoying. The save system. I am fairly certain that Satan himself designed this save system. It is pure evil. To sum up: this is a fantastic, innovative and highly amusing game, with a few very minor flaws. Literally tonnes of replay value. 8.4

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