A Gore-Soaked, Zombie Festival of Fun! (Dead Rising (Xbox 360))

Member Name: johnpeter50

Product:	Dead Rising (Xbox 360)
Date:	09/09/06 (313 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Luscious Visuals, Hundreds Of Weapons, Hundreds Of Zombies, Replayability

Disadvantages: Uneven Play Mechanics, Chaotic Mission System, Occasional Controller Mishaps, Single Player Only

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Willamette Shopping Mall, a consumer paradise over-run with zombies, cult leaders, maniacs and psychotic shop-keepers. You play Frank West, a freelance photographer-cum-journalist who plans to spend the next 72 game hours trying to discover how this incident first started. Under your guidance, Frank will need to perform a variety of actions including taking photos, leading survivors to safety, discovering the terrible secret that initially created the un-dead…Oh…and attacking a copiously large number of zombies.

In the traditional third person ‘sandbox’ game-style, you’ll be allowed to freely roam the shopping mall on foot over the seventy-two hour period, completing cases and side missions, browsing stores and, naturally, killing just about everything in sight.

As well as completing missions and saving survivors, you’ll also need to work on Frank’s vital statistics. This is most easily accomplished by achieving ‘PP’ (prestige points). Using an in-game digital camera, you can take snapshots of the zombie masses in various states of disarray. You’ll get extra points for including hidden stickers in the frame, capturing humorous zombie slip-ups, ‘erotic’ poses and extreme moments of brutality. In a traditional RPG style, the more ‘PP’ you attain, the more your gauge will fill, until you finally achieve a ‘level up’. Each time you reach a new level, another statistic will improve, be it speed, health or throwing ability.

‘HACK & SLASH’
During your time at the mall, you’ll have access to a full array of weapons; in fact, you’re able to use anything you can pick up, be it a bench, chainsaw, shotgun, parasol, shower head, watergun, golf club or even a chair! The effects of these weapons vary depending on how you choose to use them. For example, should you select a sickle, a quick tap of the ‘attack’ button will slice a zombie’s head clean off; however, if you hold the button for several seconds, you’ll perform a floor sweep that’ll instantly ground nearby zombies.

The sheer range of weaponry is staggering, with well over 200 different items for you to enjoy experimenting with. Naturally, the speed and effectiveness of these weapons varies quite dramatically depending of the situation, but needless to say you’ll have a fun time working out what massacres the best…

‘WHAT'S IN THE BOX...?’
The range of items is similarly impressive. There’s a wide selection of food available to help replenish Frank’s strength – apples, orange juice and baguettes are strewn throughout the mall’s food courts. However, what makes the health system of particular note is the range of states that the food can take. Raw meats can be cooked for an extra health boost, frozen vegetables can be left in your inventory to thaw and milk can turn sour if not consumed for several hours; Items can even be combined in blenders to create special ‘power juices’ that’ll affect how you fare with the zombies.

Other items include books and magazines that can be stored in your inventory to provide you with bigger bonuses, longer weapon lifespan and other glorious extras. Whilst this range of literature takes up valuable inventory space, it often provides you with an added advantage when it’s most desperately required.

As if all that wasn’t enough, you can also go looting for various clothing and accessories. Frank can be adorned in a number of different costume combinations; shoes, suits, sunglasses, hats, masks – even pretty purple dresses can be worn should you wish to give Frank a more feminine look!

GRAPHICS
Capcom created this game with the high definition capabilities of the Xbox 360 in mind, and boy does it show! The sheer level of detail is astounding, with supermarket shelves stacked end to end with a variety of different products, each with their own individually-labelled packaging. Textures are particularly life-like and attain a realistic vibrancy that other consoles simply fail to match; plastic chairs glisten in the coffee-bar, wood retains fine levels of naturalistic grain and metallic surfaces seem heavy and dense.

The whole mall is well designed, with each store consisting of a unique style and look; from the bric-a-brac, ‘day-glo’ of the toy store to the sombre, sterility of the jewellers; even the chaotic ‘North Plaza’, with its layers of unfinished renovation work, seem effortlessly realistic.

SOUND
With multi-channel sound as standard on the X360, the developers had a great opportunity to deploy layer upon layer of terrifying sound and music, and in some respects, they have delivered. Spot effects are bone-crunchingly good, with melodramatic slashes, crashes and thumps exploding to life. Frank’s wry sense of humour is often expressed in a simple ‘snapshot’ comment such as “faaaan-tastic” or even just a quick giggle; announcements are often made over the ‘public address’ system asking shoppers to enjoy their trip and zombies groan and moan with terrifying regularity. All-in-all, the general effects are spot on.

However, the soundtrack is somewhat limited, and easily becomes grating and repetitive after several hours of play. What’s more, the soundtrack is pretty throwaway, and missing the creative soundscapes of Capcom’s other zombie-infested games. Nevertheless, with the Xbox 360’s ability to playback your own music in-game, it’s most likely that you’ll be mashing monsters to the sound of your favourite artists anyway, rather than relying on the in-game ditties.

PLAYABILITY
In terms of gameplay, ‘Dead Rising’ is generally easy to get to grips with, apart from the awkward control mechanisms. Many of the buttons seem counterintuitive at times, and can often mean having to consciously think about what you're pressing. Whilst this isn’t a problem most of the time, it can mean the difference between life and death during a difficult ‘boss’ battle...

Likewise, the game throws you in head-first at times, requiring great things of your low strength character. Naturally, as your level increases, these demands aren’t as taxing, however, some will question whether the difficulty is ‘too much too fast’. For example, you may encounter an early ‘boss’ that requires a set of heavy, long-range artillery for ensured victory, only to find that you haven’t yet completed side missions that provide these weapons!

Similarly, chaos often reigns supreme; you’ll find the tight time schedule becomes a real pest when all you want to do is explore for half an hour. Constant walkie-talkie updates mid-mission become a real grievance, especially when ‘Otis’ has the audacity to inform you that it’s rude to interrupt *him*! Capcom could have really benefited the game from including a better mission activation method (such as Grand Theft Auto’s glowing markers) than the constant radio assault.

However, if you can cope with the controls and learn to filter out unnecessary side-missions, you’ll find that the game is fairly fluid and an awfully good laugh. Areas are dense with details for you to explore, and the mall is bursting at the seams with side-quests and hidden corners.
One example of this depth would be the ‘frying pans’. You receive a small ‘PP’ bonus for using a pan on each of the stoves dotted around the mall. Should you wish to, you can also seek out and use each of the stoves within the complex to receive a much larger “All Stoves Used” bonus as well! Frying pans can be used cold to thwack and slam zombies, or heated up and used to frazzle their faces. Such a range and level of diversity for just a single aspect of the game is staggering.
In fact, Capcom have used this depth to their advantage, so that you’ll return to the game time and again to hunt out new and interesting material. As the 72-hour mode comes to an end, other modes become available to entice you back into the zombie-infested world. Even when these are modes are exhausted, it’s likely that you’ll want to return to unlock the variety of ‘Xbox 360 achievements’ that simply aren’t attainable in a single play-thru. Much of the fun comes through taking your well-developed, high-level character back to the start and returning to the side missions for which you were simply too weak to complete the first time around.

Overall, this is a highly enjoyable title that brilliantly demonstrates the raw processing power of the 360. If you’re into similar ‘zombie-shooter’ games then I thoroughly recommend ‘Dead Rising’; if not, then I’d still urge you to download the demo off ‘Xbox Live’ to experience a quick snippet of the fun you could be having with this game.

Summary: A highly enjoyable title that brilliantly demonstrates the raw processing power of the Xbox 360!