Dead Rising
August 17,2006 - Zombies are one of the most common, rehashed type of character to come into a game probably second only to the alien. All that aside, Capcom’s Dead Rising stands out as one of the freshest takes on zombie games yet put out on a game console. Dead Rising is a beautiful mess. It’s one of the most clever, creative, and flat-out fun games released in years, yet at the same time it’s incredibly frustrating, problematic, and nearly broken in some instances.

For a game that really lasts six hours or so, provided you play through the main story, there’s a lot packed into it. The gameplay revolves heavily around the gimmick that you can use “everything as a weapon.” Whether or not that’s entirely true isn’t really the case, because even if you find some things you can’t use, almost anything that you’d want to use you definitely can. The story puts you in the shoes of a photojournalist named Frank who really doesn’t have any business being so good at killing zombies. Frank is a freelancer who has spent a good portion of his career, from what we understand, covering wars and other terrible things. So when he finds out there’s something big going on in this mountain town he is determined to dig it up. Frank hires a helicopter pilot to fly him in and on the way the pilot notice there are Special Forces barricading the area to keep everything inside. Why?

Well, there are zombies infesting the area. It’s the apocalypse for all Frank knows. Thankfully, there’s a giant mall. A mall bigger than the Mall of America located in the quiet Midwestern town of Willamette. Frank tells the pilot to drop him off on the rooftop and asks him to pick him up in three days to the minute. You’ve essentially got 72 hours to beat the game, and in game time, it’s closer to about six or so.

The game’s plot may sound a lot like George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, and rightfully so, except it’s taken in a lot different way. Instead of being trapped in the mall trying to find a way to keep the zombies out, almost right away, the zombies are let in the building and you’re off just wailing away at their slow, brain-dead bodies at your own pace. You progress through the game by uncovering story cases that try to explain the mystery behind why the dead have been resurrected. Luckily for all of us, the story is actually pretty interesting so you don’t feel this is just your standard beat-em-up game that relies too heavily on its gimmick of using everything as a weapon.

Here’s the problem with the story mode, however; if you somehow fall behind the time a specific case is supposed to start, you’re screwed. You get one save slot in the game and if you somehow save at a point where it is impossible to fix your mistake—and trust us, that happens—you’ll have to restart the game over completely. Now that may sound awful, but you’ll have the ability to restart the game with all your stats and maintain your character’s level. Actually, if you’re having problems progressing it’s quite nice to restart and breeze through the early parts while picking up a few levels, so when you’re back to where you were before you can easily work over the mission you had troubles with. The way you level up in Dead Rising is by completing missions, doing certain achievements, and as a photojournalist, taking great pictures so you get that Pulitzer you’ve always had your eye on when you break this horrific story.

Taking good pictures can be a challenge. There are a lot of times when you’ll find yourself taking pictures you thought would get you a lot of experience that just end up being dull and not worth anything really. It’s the little things you want to get. Instead of getting a swarm of zombies heading at you, why not go for something like a reunited couple hugging after being estranged from one another in this hellish nightmare? That’s the kind of stuff a good photojournalist would do, and Frank is a great photojournalist.

The kinds of things you can do in the mall besides just doing the story missions are pretty cool. If you rescue people, for example, you’ll get a lot of points; but oftentimes these extra tasks can be difficult. If you succeed, however, it’s almost guaranteed you’ll level up. Other than that, really just exploring the grounds is one of the more interesting things to do. There are over 54,000 zombies in the game, which is apparently the population of the city, so obviously if you can kill all of the zombies in the game, you can unlock the “zombie genocider” achievement. What kind of an Xbox 360 game would this be without an achievement to unlock? To tell the truth, as gimmicky as achievements are in general, the ones in Dead Rising will urge you to make more daring decisions and try things you wouldn’t generally think of doing, such as dress up entirely in a Mega Man costume, or a white freshly pressed three piece suit, echoing the memory of Tony Montana.

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