Dead Rising is possibly the most...well...accurate idea of what an zombie invasion might look like. Very intense.
STORYLINE:
The main character's name is Frank, a freelance journalist and photographer. The story starts with him heading for a small town in a helicopter, because a tip told him that something big was happening there. Instantly Frank reliezes that the tip, **** as it was, was a good one because the military had already blocked the roads. The helicopter made it past the quarrenten, however, and both Frank and the helicopter piolet where greeted with a horrifing bird's eye view of a choatic violence down bellow. Frank continued to take pictures, until the helicopter happen to fly over a new mega mall that happened to have a helipad on the roof. Frank ignored the piolet's reluctence and asked to set down on the roof. Just before landing the military choppers showed up and Frank was uncerimoniously dumped onto the roof with nothing but his camera while the helicoper tryed to evade the military. Just before he left the piolet promised to try and come back in three days at 12:00 am. From there he meets a strange spain guy chillin' on the roof who evaded his questions and told him to look in the mall for himself to find out what's going on. Frank makes his way to the main entrance to find a handfull of distressed people trying to create a stable barricade against, not a violent mob, but...(gasp!) zombies! Frank, very confused, but left with no real choice trys to help, but a crazy old lady ruins everything by trying to get out in an attempt to save her poodle. She makes a hole in the barricade and the zombies pour in, killing everybody...except Frank who is lead to safety under the shouted orders of by, Brad, a DHS agent. Frank makes it up to a security room alone and with no other survivers in sight, Brad has a surviving janitor, Otis, weld the door shut. The only exites now lead back to the roof and through a vent back to the mall. Frank trys to get answers from both Brad and his partner, Jessie, but they evade his questions and leave him and Otis to there own devices.
From here the player can do anything and go anywhere they want. I liked the story sequences. Considering the fact that everything is timed throughout the whole game, you can play it over and still get alternate storylines that create alternate endings. There is, of course, a main story that you could follow, in order to grasp what's going on, but it's up to you whether or not you want to do it. You get leads for missions from Otis and Jessie usually, but as time changes things and you stumble throught the mall chaos has a funny way of making you stumble into situations that you had no idea where coming unless you played through the game a couple of times (or have one of those game guides, which I don't really recommend for this game as it sort of spoils most of the surprise factor needed to make this game as good as it is) and even then you might stumble into something different each times (unless of course you spoil in with a Walkthrough or game guide).
GAMEPLAY: Inventive and intense, the gameplay pushes the survival genre to a whole knew level. There are no real rules, just you and 72 hours of time to kill. There is a mall filled with stuff to use as weaponary, food to eat, cloths to try on, horrors to take pictures of, people to find and rescue, phycopaths to fight off, zombies to fight off, car to drive, secrets to uncover...ect. Unless you cheated an planned everything to a T, it's almost to much to finish in the time given. The imense freedom of the environment along with the time constrant of 72 hour adds both to the adreniline rush and replay value in a very possitive way.
GRAPHICS:
The graphics are...well...graphic. Much of the cutscenes and action sequences feature what is to be expected in a zombie game: blood and gore among other things. However, what make is game different from the rest is that the setting, tools and other featured in the evironment, are unbelievably accurate. The mall isn't twisted to make it seem evil, like in other horror games, it's potrayed for what it is: A mall, a beautifly designed mall, but a mall none the less. The shops, the decorations, the objects Frank can use....they all look as if they could all really exist somewhere. The graphics to a big part in the more survivalist nature of this game...rather than just make it horror filled. Ether way the graphics looked great.
SOUND: The sound was expertly done. Everything sounds incredibly accurate as well. The mall plays overhead tunesand advertisments you expect to hear in a mall, the action and suspense music really gets you involved, and the voice actors where very good at delivering their lines.
COMPLAINTS:
In my opinion, there was not much to complain about. Some people had issues with the fact that this game had save points, but I personally didn't get too frustrated with that myself. What did get me annoyed was that the on screen text whenever anyone spoke was so darn SMALL. We have a big screen TV that takes up a good portion of our wall and I still could barely make out what the text said.