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.
