Reader Dracul sent in this review of the Xbox 360 game, Dead Rising. I’m sure we all remember this zombie cruncher from the early days of the Xbox’s timid entry into the gaming market. Let’s see what Dracul has to say about it. Take it away…
Contrary to what some may say about Dead Rising, how lame or uncanny this is with its strange sense of humor and random happenings around the mall, there is actually a pretty decent game in here. If you can manage to get through more then half of it without giving up, of course. You’ll discover plenty of certain little parts in Dead Rising where you’ll just want to throw the controller at the wall and scream, but we’ll get to those moments later. First off were going to take a little trip into Dead Rising and see what this game is about.
Enter Frank west. A freelance photo journalist Frank sneaks past a quarantine to cover the sudden happenings around a mall, that I believe is based off the horror classic Dawn of the Dead. Frank pays a local helicopter pilot to take him into the town, and the trip itself is filled with horrible events as they both witness the atrocities of a town overrun by the hungry dead. Raising your camera to quickly take shots of such happenings will earn you some vital experience points, giving you just that much of an edge before the game begins.
Dead Rising does have a story line, and its pretty in-depth, for a zombie game. I won’t spoil the story here, but it involves the actions of multiple other characters straight out of a direct-to-video B-movie. You’ll run into them as the game arcs through its three day storyline.
As for the actual gameplay, it could be better. Oh yes, there are millions and millions of zombies to lay to waste in wonderful and violent ways, so don’t worry about that. The mall offers a wide variety of combat moves and items, including golf clubs, bats, jewels and hedge clippers, even a boomerang and light saber. In basic, everything in the game can be and will be used as a weapon. Find yourself a bag of flour or baking powder? Cream a zombie in the face with that. A bottle of ketchup or some baking oil? Splatter it over the zombies and watch the fun. Then there are the shovel and katana…
Everything around you can be used to knock down, chop up, or brutalize the zombies into gooey corpse-messes. Further, the longer you play and advance through the storyline, the more stuff you’ll unlock, which will greatly help you and be fun to use during your next play through.
At first glance I thought this game would be fun. Single player, leaderboards, and the chance to chop up zombies! Well, it was fun, until I had to advance through the storyline and hadn’t leveled up enough to plow over the challenges thrown in my path. Then, I discovered it was best to start over, keeping Frank’s level and powers, and doing it all again. Still, those extra health boxes do come in handy, especially when you close in on the end of the game. For the final boss, they’re REALLY useful.
For one of the few first games released on the Xbox 360, Dead Rising was a really fun game. Though, I don’t think many out there really appreciated the game. Yes, it has a good few ups and downs, boring parts, and time-sensitive escort missions that might fail before you even have a chance to start them because of random zombie spawns and pathetic NPC programming, but there are bright spots.
You can use Frank’s camera to take fun little shots, there are missions to complete, you’ll find no end of zombies to beat into submission and take silly pictures of, or just wander the mall, slaughtering until you get bored.
If you have not played Dead Rising yet, it would definitely be a game to take a look at. For a zombie beat them up game it has it all. Guns knives, parasols, ketchup bottles and chainsaws. Hunt down Dead Rising at your local used shop, and gut-punch the undead for a while.
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I looked forward to this one and it was a crushing disappointment.
The controls are sluggish, first and foremost. Not a good thing when you’re in a mall full of zombies.
The missions are as you described, a mess, and you won’t advance very far in the game without them.
You can slice up zombies with the obstinate controls (or run them over with a lawnmower) until you get frustrated, which will likely be very soon given that the quality standards that made the missions crappy are prevalent in the rest of the game as well.
Made me think that maybe Capcom should stick to porting and re-releasing Megaman instead.
Such a simple concept with so much promise, completely fumbled and raped by a bunch of idiots.