[REVEIW] Dead Rising

(This was a very hasty copy/paste job from DQ. Problem with that?)

Right, another badly done review from DQ's one and only TR.

Dead Rising is a game of Skill, Gore, and taking pictures of people's re-animated corpses. You play as Photojournalist Frank West, who also happens to be weapons expert. Or at least, he can fuck a table off your head just as easily shoot you.

The game begins with Frank and his helicopter pilot, Ed flying into

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed
Willamette Colorado! Distingushing characteristics: Jack shit!
The military has quarantined the entire place, and all communications have been blocked. As the chopper swoops closer, Frank starts clicking merrily away. Until it seems, the people start eating each other.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed
What is that, some kind of riot?
A ransacked school bus, an exploding gas station, A woman screaming for help as she reaches the edge of a building. All sights from a traditional riot.

With just one small difference.

It's completely silent.

As Frank spots the town mall, and requests to be taken closer, a trio of military choppers appear.

Ed's a fancy flier, and manages to evade the military. Frank takes a jump, and lands on the Mall's helipad.

As Frank progresses through the mall, he is again struck by the strage lack of sound.

As he walks into the entrance Plaza, he sees townsfolk barricading the doors against...

Zombies. That's the only word for them. Thousands of them, all dying (re-read note: No pun intended!) for a bite of human flesh.

Someone orders Frank to go find something for the barricade. As he does so, moving back into the mall, there is a commotion at the front door.


It's been opened. The barricade is gone. They're coming for you.


It's at this moment when you first take full control over Frank. Before, you were able to run around a bit, but that was all. Now you have a fully-automatic, zombie killing machine.

Although, if it's your first time playing, you'll want to escape ASAP, level system explained later.

As you escape, you return to a saferoom you passed through earlier. You meet a couple of DHS agents and the mall's janitor, who quickly welds the door shut.

After that, you are pretty much free to do what you want. After another quick tutorial on how to rescue survivors, you are literally thrown into the mall. You can either chose to solve the mystery of the mall, fight zombies until the horde consumes you, or hide out until the heliicopter returns for you.

On the subject of the helicopter, you have 72 hours inside the Mall until the chopper returns. If you aren't on the helipad at the deadline, you're pretty much fucked.

As if you weren't already.


The above is a(read-read note: VERY!) whittled down version of the rather long opening sequence. What follows is how it plays.


For a game three years old, I still find Dead Rising up to the Xbox 360's standards. You may notice clipping from time to time, and the survivor AI is downright stupid, but you can see Capcom really put effort into their 'swarm' technology, the Psychopaths (Read: Bosses) and their weapon system.

On the subject of weapons, if you can pick it up, chances are you can use it to bash their brains in. Weapons react how you would assume they would in real life, from everything ranging from lethality to stopping power.

For example: You first walk into the mall wielding a pistol (maybe one or two other melee weapons). You instantly waste the clip within ten seconds, because you didn't know how rare guns were in the game. Then you're down to your melee weapons. Which are, not surprisingly, plentiful in a shopping Mall. Some may not be quite as good as others (Teddy bear Vs Baseball bat = BONK!), and some have hilarious side effects (Putting a frying pan on a cooker heats it up, and you can use this new weapon to burn their faces off!), but where Dead Rising really shines is the sheer FUN of killing zombies using everyday household items.

Another fun aspect of the game is the 'Photjournalist' element. You're a reporter, right? You're getting the story, now you need some photos!

By pulling the Left Trigger, you enter the camera's viewfinder. When you take a photo, the game engine looks for points of interest, how clear the subject is, is it centered, what is the quality like...all sorts of fun and gruesome shots are worth 'PP' (Prestige Points, I think). PP is what levels you up, again, this will be explained later.

What makes the camera element REALLY clever, is that taking pictures of zombies by themselves are BORING. What Capcom want you to do is...spice things up a little.

For example: There's a little brass thing in the Warehouse that you pass through when entering the wall. If you pick it up, you'll see it's a 'shower head'. Wondering what to do with it, you go up to the nearest zombie and attack.

Frank sticks it into their fucking HEAD.

Blood pours out water is supposed to. While this is a horrific image, it'll earn you a shitload of PP, so whip out that camera and get snapping people!

What could be more fun then killing zombies, and THEN taking photos of their double-dead corpses?

Now, the long awaited levelling system.

Ok. So you've bought Dead Rising. You're all excited. You can't wait to lay into zome zombies. As I said before, you walk into the Entrance Plaza, you pick up a baseball ba-

FWOOM.

Dead.

:O

"HOW THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN?"

On the death screen, you're presented with two options.

"LOAD STATUS"

"SAVE STATUS AND QUIT"

Loading, obviously enough, loads a previous save.

BUT! Saving your status and quiting is a different matter. It allows you to save Frank the way he was when you did so including his level and his abilities.

This was such a great idea, I instantly saved and restarted.

I entered the game AGAIN, as a level TWO Frank West (I'd levelled up since starting), with improved health. This time, I managed the opening sequence, and made it to the saferoom.

Not only does this make the game easier as you go along, but it also means that if you earn it, if you really STRIVE for it, you WILL be able to finish this game. I love you Capcom.


Of course, every game has it's bad points. Dead Rising is no different.

As mentioned above, Survivor AI is plain stupid. You gain massive amounts of PP for helping them return to the saferoom, but sometimes it's just not worth waiting for them to COME. ON.

They bounce off walls, they get constantly caught by zombies by running STRAIGHT INTO THEM, and (on one, excruciating occasion) ran in circles around a tree.

I welcome the chance when you have to pick up/offer shoulder/drag by the hand various wounded or stunned survivors, because then you can guide them around dangers without them blundering straight in. Even if you can't use your weapons, it speeds your job right up, and you don't have to keep running back to help them for the twenty-seventh time in a row.

Dead Rising is INCREDIBLY Non-beginner friendly. You get thrown straight into the action, and chances are you will die a lot more than you'd like in your first couple of weeks playing. I would not be surprised if people have been completely put off by this, then when they have to fight that damn Spaniard with the Sniper Rifle.

One final attribute that makes you want to SCREAM when you play. All the good stuff has been hidden, and when you do find it, it's incredibly well guarded. For example, the gun shop is hidden behind a scaffolding in the North Plaza, miles away from everywhere else. It is guarded by it's crazy owner, who is a damn good shot, and replenishes his health while he reloads. There is nothing to hide behind when fighting him, and when you try to get up close and personal, he hurls you away like a rag doll.

They're HIS guns. He might trust those flesh-eating motherhumpers as far as he can throw them, but he trusts humans even less. Come one step closer, he'll blow your fucking head off.

Charming, I know.

And not only that, at about six o'clock on the first day, a trio of inmates take a jeep with a huge mounted gun on the back and start chasing survivors around the massive green in the centre of the mall.

INMATES.

IN A JEEP.

IN A MALL FULL OF ZOMBIES.

Where did they spring from, the local fish restaurant? And OBVIOUSLY, they got the Jeep out of 'Toys 'R' Us'. And the mounted gun?

Oh, that was extra.


This is only a very small insight into Dead Rising. It has a gripping story which I won't ruin, more intense gameplay then I can describe, and it really is a true work of genius from the masters of zombie gaming.

Final Word: Hours of Madness-filled, Gut-wrenching, Gun-toting, Zombie-Killing FUN!

Score: A whopping 8.5 out of 10


~Thunderaven

03/04/09