A perfect example of how to take a great game and almost completely destroy it with REALLY ill conceived ideas
There will always be design decisions that gamers don't agree with , and i'm sure there are people that play this game and really enjoy the concept behind the save system. And there will be people that love the time based structure of the game In fact i'm a big fan of both.
However i really can't understand some of the schoolboy errors that went into how the developers have combined the two .
Thebiggest flaw that the save system has is the lack of multiple save points. After you get used to the fact that you need to continually restart and/or replay large sections of the game you see the way the developers are trying to add replay value and old school values to the game. And it works , you want to go back in and try things differently the next time, you want to see if you can rescure more people.
However the fact that without knowing it you can waste 5 hours of playtime by saving at the wrong point and effectively ending the game for you as you've not left enough time to backtrack to a story point is just ill conceived.
The real problem here is that everything else about the game has been done really well , the Mall is massive and the game really manages to capture the feel of overwhelming Zombie numbers, you can simply have fun mowing down Zombies as you see fit ... and best of all do stupid things with the zombies like put masks over their faces or buckets over their heads. After you've been playing for about 5 hours the game really comes into it's own and really shows that it has plenty of replay value and hours of entertainment. Once you've leveld up enough the single save and the time limits are no longer an issue as you learn where you need to be and what you need to do. I've so far completed this game 6 times and spend a long time in the Mall just having fun ... I've certainly got my monies worth out of this game which is more than can be said for lots of games this generation
Ultimately i don't think the game has a clear vision of what it actually wants to be .... the save system and the time based play would suit a hard as nails survival horror game ... and yet the actual game play is tongue in cheak. action romp which quite frankly has been done nearly perfectly in Bully. Finally a special mention goes to both the plot and ( with the odd exception ) the voice acting ... this in itself makes that game a better Zombie film than anything made in the last 10 years... for all the cheese of the gameplay the script is sharp, well developed and isn't derivative .. even of Dawn of the dead.
But the problem still remains that due to the design choices many people won't play this game for long enough to see it develop onto the rich and enjoyable game it truely is. Were it not for the save system i would say this is the best game i've played on next gen ... beating titles like Gears of war , Halo 3 even Call of Duty 4 as it stands it's crippled by a poor choice at the design stage Dead rising is a missed opportunity that is crying out for a sequel.