Dead Rising

By Devestator03388

How do I kill zombies?

Let me count the ways…

You know something is right when one game can make jaded gamers, world over, squeal with delight like little girls on Christmas morning. Capcom, famous for their zombie killing history through the Resident Evil games, have truly outdone themselves with their latest foray into the field: Dead Rising.

To zombie horror fans the story line sounds suspiciously familiar to start with; a small town, a zombie infestation, a shopping centre full of survivors. Rest assured however that the story-line takes its own unique twist on the premise, with enough surprises to keep you guessing what you’ll have to do next.

That’s if you decide to follow the storyline. Dead Rising is an incredibly free form game, with 72 game hours and an entire American mall to explore there is absolutely no need to even start the main quest line. As photojournalist, Frank West, you can spend the entire time rescuing survivors, hiding in a corner, playing dress-ups with the many different outfits available throughout the mall or just finding new ways to kill zombies.

And Boy! Are there a lot of ways to kill zombies; from punches to park benches, from paintings to sledge hammers, fire axes, CDs, bowling balls and more martial-arts moves than a Jackie Chan movie, or almost anything you care to name. Dead Rising offers an astounding array of make-shift, and not so make-shift weapons. Naturally the staple diet of pistols, shotguns, machine guns and sniper rifles are distributed around the mall, but often it’s far more useful, not to mention entertaining, just to pick up a chainsaw and prune the zombies of a few extra limbs.

Not that zombies are the only enemies you’ll be facing. In some cases the stress of a zombie infestation has gotten to some of the survivors, and they have gone insane. Over a dozen so called “Psychopaths” inhabit the mall with you, ranging from clowns to convicts, each has their own story; some disturbing, some tragic, some even amusing, but every one of them is a challenging and difficult foe. This is amplified by the fact that you are alerted to their presence in the exact same way as regular survivors, leaving the player wondering just which alert is safe to investigate.

This brings up the two main issues with Dead Rising; the alerts and the save system. In order for the player to know where to go to find the survivors, they must first receive a call from the friendly janitor Otis. Unfortunately, Otis has the worst sense of timing in the world, and has a nasty habit of calling you when you least need to be distracted; such as the middle of a battle with a psychopath, or while you are trying to avoid having your head bitten off by a zombie. Ordinarily this wouldn’t seem to be a problem; but you cannot use a weapon and answer the call at the same time. Not answering the call is an issue in itself, resulting in you missing out on a survivor and having to put up with the rather annoying ring of the walkie-talkie.

The other real issue with Dead Rising is the save system; it’s completely unforgiving. For a game with such a freeform environment having only one save slot can make for some tricky decisions. Do you save those six survivors and risk missing out on the next part of the main quest or do you go for the plot and hope you have enough time to rescue the innocents after? Replaying the same 15 minute section five times, just to get it ‘right’ can get a touch annoying.

Luckily, the huge variety of weapons and the scope of the game more than make up for these flaws. Dead Rising is stunningly replay-able, hours can be wasted just mowing down zombies (literally!) let alone following the campaign to one of its endings.

Most good games have one or two ‘wow’ moments, where the effort and brilliance behind the game really shine through. With Dead Rising, they seem to come every few minutes; be it finding out how to flip a zombie over your shoulder, the first time you realise that new outfit you grabbed is showing up in the cut scenes or simply discovering a new way to wreck havoc on the undead. Not a game for the faint of heart, Dead Rising truly shines in all its gory glory.

9.5/10