While it certainly isn't perfect, Dead Rising makes for a fun game that anyone with a Xbox360 would be proud to own.
Believe it or not, there is a story to this insane premise. You play as Frank West, a war time photojournalist who is always looking for the next big story. When he gets a tip that something is happening in a seemingly innocent small town, he rents a helicopter to fly him into the city to see what is happening. Upon arrival, he sees that the army has blocked off all entrance into the town and notices people attacking other people in disturbing and gory ways. He tells the helicopter pilot to drop him off on the roof of a shopping mall, giving him strict instructions to pick him up in 72 hours. And so, the carnage begins.
The gameplay is what makes or break a game’s design and Dead Rising delivers in spades. There is nothing quite like taking a bench or chainsaw to a zombies mid-section or running them down with a lawnmower. This may sound extremely grotesque to some, and it is, but since the game never takes itself too seriously, it’s also hilarious. You can even put masks on zombies to blind them and make then wander around aimlessly. There are an extremely large amount of weapons to choose from. If you can think of things that would be in a mall, odds are pretty good Capcom put it in this game.
With all the zombie killing going on, you may forget that Frank is only in the mall in the first place to get a story. To advance the story you must do missions known as cases which happen at specific times during the game. If you miss a story event, that’s it for the story. You can’t continue it. There are also side missions (known as scoops) that can be done while waiting for the next case file to happen. Most of these are escort missions. The janitor Otis will contact you from the security room and tell you he sees someone on the monitor. It’s your job to go and rescue these people from swarms of undead or the game’s lovely psychopaths. Psychopaths are the games’ boss battles and have you fighting regular humans who have gone insane during the zombie outbreak. These guys are really creepy and you’ll face everything from a chainsaw juggling clown to a machete wielding brute who believes he’s in Vietnam.
When the game starts out, Frank is a pretty weak fellow. He can’t really defend himself and it can be hard to survive though large groups of zombies. Thankfully, the game has a RPG style system, which allows Frank to level up and gain new abilities. You can gain Prestige Points by simply killing a lot of zombies, completing side missions, or taking pictures. They allow Frank to level up and as he does, he will become stronger. Sometimes his health, running speed, or inventory space will increase, while sometimes he will get new moves to avoid or vanquish the living dead.
Since Frank is a photojournalist, he is able to use his trusty camera and take pictures of the events occurring around him. The pictures taken are rated of how well centered they are, what is happening in the photo, and how many people on in the shot. They are sorted into 5 different categories; horror, drama, brutality, outtake, and erotica. Depending on what you take a picture of, the category will be different. Just a take a picture of a crowd of zombies, you get a horror rating. Take a picture on a zombie with a mask on, you get an outtake rating. Pictures are really just a fun addition to the game and can be completely ignored. You can go through the entire game without taking any pictures at all if you want, but it’s always fun to experiment and see what kind of pictures you can obtain, pus the extra Prestige Points are always welcome.
The only real problem with the gameplay is the save system. You get one save per memory device on your Xbox360. To most, this means you get one save slot. That’s it. Many will get so caught up with the zombie killing they will forget to save. If you die after completing a large portion of the game without saving, you start all over again. And you can’t save at anytime either. You must find designated save points (such as a bathroom or security room) to save your game and these are few and far between. It can be really annoying playing the same part of the game over and over again. Should you save yourself in a spot where you can’t make it to the next story mission, the story is over. However, you can opt to save Frank’s level progression and start over. This feels like a really cheap way to make the game longer and feels really unnecessary.
Another issue one might have with the game is the AI of the NPC’s. The zombies are fine. They behave as you would expect. But the humans you are asked to rescue can be extremely dumb, and run right into swarms of zombies or simply run away from you and fight ones that pose no threat to you. They can be extremely brain dead making missions where you have to escort more than one person a serious chore. You’ll be better off saving one and leaving the others to die. May sound cruel, but you’ll be doing the exact same thing when you play the game. Trust me.
For a next-generation game on the Xbox360, Dead Rising looks really good. The environments are large and have and huge selection of objects which are all well detailed. Sometimes the textures are of lower quality in some areas, but this can be forgiven with the amount of stuff around the mall. During cutscenes, the character models are highly detailed and almost look real. During gameplay, the characters are less detailed, which is still understandable with the sheer number of people on screen. There can be hundreds upon hundreds of zombies on screen at once. The animations look great and are fluent. With all this stuff you’d expect quite a drop in frame rate eh? Well you’d be wrong. The game runs almost entirely smooth. There were a few spots where the frame rate dipped alittle, but these only lasted for a second and only seemed to happen when a large blunt weapon took out a group on the undead.
The sound is the star of the show here. It all seems to work so well. Each weapon has its own sound when making contact with the floor or a zombies head and it all sounds great. You could swear that’s what it would sound like to take a sledge hammer to someone’s face. I don’t know how they got these sounds and when I think of how they might have, I’m disgusted. Oh and the voice acting is pretty good too.
If you like zombies or mayhem or just plain action, I definitely would have to recommend Dead Rising. It one of the most entertaining a unique games to come out in a long while and will satisfy the need many have to obliterate the undead. It can be difficult at times and the save system is a pain, but the game is always fun from start to finish. You never want to put it down. So, until zombies actually rise from their graves and start to take over the world, Dead Rising will suit you just fine for your $60.