In Dead Rising, you play a photo journalist named Frank West who decends on the Colorado city of Willamette in order to catch a big scoop that he’s gotten a line on. Chartering a helicopter Frank flies over the city and sees all sorts of horrible murders and killing, it appears that the citizens of Willamette have all gone crazy. Landing at the towns Mall, the helicopter pilot tells Frank he will pick him up in 72 hours just as military choppers show up and chase him away.
First and foremost, Frank is a journalist, so he’s determined to find out what the story is, so he finds his way down to the main area of the mall and sees a group of people all standing around trying to figure out what to do, as a horde of maniacal people are desperately trying to get in. Well no sooner do you look around and are instructed to help bar the doors, quite possibly one of the dumbest women ever to be featured in a video game, opens the door because her toy poodle has gotten away from her. Now I can forgive this, cause the game rocks (more on this later) but the idea that a woman would open the doors when clearly thousands of zombies are trying to get in, in order to save her dog is just plain insane. I love my dog, but if he was foolish enough to run out into a field of the undead, then so be it.
Regardless of the semantics, the zombies come flooding in and you are thrust into the first real challenge of the game, saving people. It seems that most people in this town are incapable of saving themselves so you must run towards them and either verbally instruct them or in some cases, take hold of them and lead them to safety. You may be a journalst in search of a story, but you are a human being first and foremost and as it turns out, one with a heroic heart beating within him (sniff, sniff, so inspirational). Plus. it gives you an opportunity to do what you probably bought the game for, beat the undead until their the, uh, dead.
Using literally any and everything as a weapon, you must claw, hack, burn, shoot and any other adjective you want to the zombies standing between you and your story, and the still living humans.
In case you are scoring at home, Dead Rising was created by the folks at Capcom, those wonderful people responsible for the Resident Evil series, the Devil May Cry series and the Onimusha series.
Dead Rising has some new and innovative ideas for gameplay. First and formost, the game has you killing tons and tons, of the undead (and not so undead) using any and everything. If there was any game that managed to copy the gritty feel of a zombie invasion, it’s Dead Rising. For example, should you find yourself surrounded by a horde of the slowly shambling undead, and there was an axe laying next to you, you would in most cases, pick up said axe and begin hacking the hell out of them. Well, if that axe broke, your survival instinct would kick in and you would either engage in either one of your most primal instincts, fight or flight. Grabbing anything that wasn’t nailed down in order to ensure your survival.
Sooooo, what that means to you game players out there, is that if you can pick it up in real life, you can pick it up and use it as a weapon in this game. Grabbing steel racks, baseball bats, even dinnerware, all for the sake of survival. The game has just the right amount of items laying around, but items you would find in a mall. Run to the hardware store and grab a chainsaw, go to the music store, snag a guitar, hustle to the sporting goods store and lay your hands on a golf club.
Of course the Willamette mall must have had a serious shoplifting problem, because the mall security (and there are a lot of them) are all armed with batons and/or hand guns, making things a bit easier with the addition of firearms. Look sharp in this mall, the business owners also had their own stashes of weapondry and in some cases, some pretty high powered weapons are there for the finding.
You should probably know that there is an up to the minute body count that is in the lower part of the screen. I am well into the three thousands… this game is anything but boring.
The second really cool and innovative gameplay addition, is the fact that you are indeed a photo journalist in theory, not just in name. You must whip out your camera and try and snag the perfect shots, for your story. Taking a picture from far away of a group of zombies may score you some points, but take a picture of a sexy woman being bitten by a zombie and now you are talking pulitzer prize. Since the addition of sex, violence and terror in your photo ramps up the point value of your picture. But be aware, you must have forgotten your spare film, because you can only take and keep 40 photos throughout the length of the game. So if you don’t get a good one, access your photos and delete the crappy ones.
But don’t worry, even after taking those horrific photos, you still get the chance to rescue lots and lots of people. In fact, things will be better for you in the end if you manage to rescue many of them.
But for all the zombie bashing and photo taking you are going to do, there is an actual point to the game. That being your story. Remember, you are here to break a big story and that’s exactly what you want to do.
OK, so let me see if I can set this straight for you:
You end up meeting up with a few other survivors, two of which are government agent types. These agents are initially reluctant to work with you but through a series of events, realize you would make a much better ally then pain in the butt, so, the core storyline has you helping these agents discover the mystery of all these damn zombies. Now, there are several missions that must be accomplished in order to move the primary mission forward, that being your big story. But as you play you discover that there are many other missions that come up that don’t have anything to do with the main storyline. Think of it as an RPG, with side quests that are not crucial to the main game. Still, these side missions will have you running around the mall in order to rescue other human survivors and escort them back to the mall offices (a sort of base of operations).
Your contact in the offices is an elderly mall employee names Otis who calls you on the radio and informs you about possible survivors in the mall. Now I’ll tell you, this mall is really, really large. It’s almost like it was designed after all those giant supermalls around North America. It is essentially a giant circle shaped mall with a large park in the center and some fringe outcroppings. When you receive a call from Otis you can activate a menu that pulls up your wristwatch. There, you can select any of the current missions that are available, each mission has a timer bar connected to it, meaning you only have so long to complete the mission or it will be gone forever. Basically its a way to make things more real, if a person was hiding in the back of a bookstore, it would only be a matter of time before the zombies found them. So the timer bar is a good idea in my opinion. Now, this does make for some tough decisions because, eventually you will find yourself torn between running to one side of the mall to rescue a mother and child, or to the other side of the mall in order to keep the game’s core storyline afloat, remember, if you fail any part of the core storyline, the game will continue, but the main objectives are all gone.
Now from what I have read, there is a way to rescue every single person in the game, but I can’t imagine how to do it. I guess if you get the walkthrough guide you can do it, but otherwise I just don’t see how it can be accomplished. I’ll explain. Let’s say you are in the center of the mall, in the park. You have three missions in your log, all three are ticking down in terms of time, (just so you know, each mission doesn’t have the same amount of time given to it, some have plenty of time while others do not) and you do have plenty of time to accomplish them. But then Otis calls, and informs you of something else happening in the mall, it’s clear on the other side of the mall from your other missions and the timer is really short. Do you stop what you are currently doing and go try to accomplish the short timed mission, or do you ignore it and try and save the ones you have more time for? Of course, this can all be sorted out by merely not answering the radio when Otis calls, because if you don’t answer, then the clock doesn’t start on the new mission. It’s all about time management in this game and I stink at time management. But since the 72 hour clock still moves forward, people in trouble the first day simply won’t be around the second, whether you answer the radio or not.
I’d like to pause for a minute and provide you with an article I found recently.
Taken from the Seattle Gazette:
Seattle- A recent study involving the preparedness of Seattle area residents has found that despite public awareness and a rather large county budget for the defense of zombie attacks, the area is primed for a zombie uprising. The study, conducted by the League of Women Zombie slayers and their counterparts, The Ash Campbell Institute for Smiting the Undead, revealed that Seattle as a whole is lacking the rudimentary tools for adequate zombie defense. “For goodness sake’s we’re a bunch of meaty treats just waiting to be gobbled up by the undead!” Ana Polley, head of the League of Women Zombie Slayers was quoted as saying at last month’s Zombie Prevention and Elimination conference held at the Seattle Red Lion. “We’re merely fourteen volunteers, how could we possibly stave off an attack of that magntude, should Seattle fall!” “Seattle has some of the worst gridlock in the country, everyone would try and escape on I-5, it would jam up so fast, the zombies would just work their way from car to car, becoming a massive crowd of brain craving, Starbucks drinking zombies!”
Nathan Romero, assistant to the chairman of the Ash Campbell Institute further acknowledged the serious lack of planning by city government by offering up this quote. “Seattle has always been a prime target of the undead, there are urban cemetaries all throughout the city.” “Studies show that although slower then most live humans, a Zombie can easily overpower two or three average men in mere seconds.” “And let’s not forget that Bruce Lee lay here as well, and lord knows what kind of damage he could do once reanimated, I shudder to think of it.”
In fact our questioning got us no where with the Mayor’s office and when asked what happened to this year’s zombie defence budget of $58.99, one city official who asked to remain annonymous, did offer up this fact. “The money is gone, I think we spent it on a couple of Pagliacci’s pizzas one night.” It would seem that the city government does not take the Zombie threat seriously.
The League and the Institute are however, not ready to throw in the towel, they constantly pass out pamphlets in Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market, trying to make sure that Seattle residents take their own precautions in the event of a Zombie outbreak. Warning everyone to have plenty of nails, hammers and scraps of wood near every door and window in the house in order to quickly baracade themselves in if necessary. To keep a genreous supply of water and food and coffee in the pantries in order to ride out the initial wave and wait for the National Guard to show up with flame throwers. And last but not least, practice those head shots with your ranged and melee weapons, the only way to put a zombie down for good, is to destroy the brain.
Capcom, kind of removed the scary element out of this particular zombie game, unlike those I mentioned before, it is hard to be scared when there are just so many zombies walking around, and I mean, many zombies. The graphics in the game are really top notch, there are scenarios where literally a hundred zombies could be walking towards you as you stand on top of the counter at a fruit smoothee bar. There are many different character models for the zombies and while you will see the same zombie more then once, the developers did a bang up job of making many different molds to copy. Creating an original one for every zombie would simply be to much to ask for.
But still, the game looks great, the zombies movements track well, the core charactrer design is pretty good, I though our man Frank was kind of goofy looking when his cut scenes would occur, he’s got a slight receding hairline and moves with all of the grace of a Mack truck, but the dude has got violence down to a science. And as you play, good ol’ Frank begins learning new moves both offensive and defensive. Plus he begins to increase his carrying load and health meter, so in a way, there is almost an RPG type of feel to what’s going on. And in a strange twist, if you should ever need to start the game over (you know, cause ya blew it) you will start over without losing any of the special moves or characteristics, an interesting turn to say the least.
Now, like any good game, the hits just keep on coming, and in this game, the hits usually involve some non-zombie person whose mind has snapped from the pressure of the surrounding events, thus the need for a mini-boss style fight. These fights are usually the tough ones and I noticed that this is the time to whip out that gun you have been carrying around and let the lead fly. Some are integral to keep the core story flowing and trading lead with this one dude (I won’t ruin it) happens more then once. While others are there for the sheer amusement and challenge, my personal favorite is the clown who likes to play with chainsaws, oh and the psycho cop who has tied up all the pretty young women, that was a real treat.
So don’t come into this title thinking it’s going to be a creepy one like Silent Hill or Eternal Darkness, more like a fun “B” movie from the mid 80’s.
It’s really a great game across the board, Playstation couldn’t pull it off, and certainly the Gamecube couldn’t either. Maybe the new generation systems will get a port once they launch but to be honest with you, this is easily one of the best three games on the 360 and one of the best games in recent memory, all systems included. Sure the save function has left some players feeling a bit robbed (you can only save in the office or a bathroom, and for a mall this size, there isn’t that many bathrooms) and there is some hokey dialogue to go along with the “B” movie feel to it, but trust me, there are several surprises that the folks at Capcom thought up that I was just so pleased with. They didn’t rest on their laurels, they actually hunted them down and beat them with a plastic plant.
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