A must have game for xBox 360 owners.
The Basic Premise
Frank West is a freelance photo journalist who catches wind of something going down in the small town of Willamette, Colorado. Hiring a helicopter pilot to get him past the military cordon and into the town, as he flies in Frank sees some very strange things. Determined to get a closer look at what is “too quiet” to be civil disobedience, Frank lands on the roof of the Mall.
Well, one thing leads to another (Involving an idiot, a barricade and a poodle), and now Frank is trapped for at least three days in the Mall- which has filled up with zombies.
You take control of Frank, and decide how to spend the next three days. Will you try to rescue other survivors? Will you try to get to the bottom of the outbreak? Or will you just wonder around aimlessly snapping photos and lopping off zombie heads? The choice is yours.
Gameplay
This is where Dead Rising really shines. The game has all the elements of a real winner; it's new, interesting and for the most part solid. The game takes place in the third person, and revolves around two main concepts- exploration and combat. There are two other concepts which are also important- photography and survivors.
The two main concepts first. The mall is a big place with many shops, and it slowly opens out more and more as you complete "scoop" missions. These scoop missions take place at set times during the three days of the game, and allow you to find out exactly what's going on in Willamette. The first time you play through the game though, it's best to focus on exploring the mall and killing zombies to level up Frank, or else the later missions can be VERY tough. Getting familiar with the mall takes time, but once you've learnt your way around and know the spawn points of all the gear (some of which change as the days wear on), the game becomes a lot more fun, and you can try to get the "real" ending without endless frustration.
Combat is very well done when fighting zombies. Perhaps the most amusing aspect of it is that almost anything in the mall can be picked up and used as a weapon, from Katanas (Very effective, but not durable), through to toy lightsabers (not effective at all), there are loads of thing lying around that prove very useful, or in some cases downright bizarre. Handguns, soda cans, Frisbees, hunks of meat, shopping trolleys, park benches, parasols, bowling balls, delivery vans, other zombies… Everything and anything can be used to mash, blast, decapitate, eviscerate and mangle zombies. Check out the dead rising trailer, and you'll see what I mean:
Combat can be problematic when fighting psychopaths (Insane survivors), as while the slow targeting and movement system works fine for shambling zombies, Dead rising's psychopaths can frequently out maneuver you while you aim. With a little practice though, you can learn to compensate for this, though some psychopaths (such as the three escaped convicts) are VERY irritating thanks to this little oversight.
Now, the other two concepts. Frank is a photojournalist and so is there to take pictures. Aside from having memories of your best sessions in game, taking photos allows you to earn PP (Prestige points), which are the game's version of XP. Snapping a lot of photos is key to trying to keep up with the game's difficulty curve, and players who forget to do it often find themselves struggling against later psychopaths.
The other way to earn lots of PP is by escorting survivors back to the mall security room (the only safe haven from the zombies). Your good friend Otis the Janitor (probably the game's biggest, most infuriating oversight), will contact you on your hand radio to let you know of survivors wondering around the mall. Some might be psychopaths, but others might be in genuine need of help. Otis is annoying. When he calls you, Frank stops whatever he's doing and picks up the radio. Fine. Until you get a call when you're in the middle of a horde of zombies. You can cancel the call of course, but if you do so then Otis will repeatedly call you back, saying how rude you are and carrying on talking until you let him finish. A neat idea for first time players of the game, but once you've played through and are repeating the game, he's just annoying.
Dead Rising has a strong RPG element. Gaining the aforementioned PP causes Frank to level up, giving him more health, new moves and the ability to carry more equipment. When you complete the game, your XP carries over to a new save, making replays a lot more fun. You also need to scavenge to survive and make tough choices about what to carry with your limited inventory. Will you stock up on food to keep your health topped up? Or weapons to fight the undead? Items degrade as you use them too, sure that Katana is nice and all, but after about 10 uses it's going to snap in half and be useless. Now the knife may not be as swish, but it'll last a lot longer… which do you go for? It's survival horror "meats" (see what I did there?), absurd Hollywood action.
