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Dead Rising (X360)

• Developer: Capcom
• Publisher: Capcom
• Genre: Action
• Official Website: http://ww2.capcom.com
• Score: 5 of 5: Purchase

What if you took the popularity of the Resident Evil series, took a page from classic zombie horror flicks, added in some free-roaming game play, and crammed it all inside of a good old American mega mall? You'd probably end up with something a lot like Dead Rising, Capcom's latest non-Resident Evil zombie trip. Forgoing the deep, serious plot presented by their flagship zombie killer, Capcom opted out for more of a free-range zombie-slaughter adventure, allowing people to take out their aggression on the undead en masse. It seems to have paid off too, as Dead Rising may possibly be one of the most unique and enjoyable games released on the Xbox 360.

Dead Rising pays specific homage to a number of classic horror flicks, the most obvious being George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978). You play as Frank West, an unusually buff photojournalist at large, who has decided to investigate why the National Guard has roped off the rural town of Willamette, Colorado. The reason, as Frank soon finds out, is because the town has turned into a zombie-infested freak show. Frank decides to take his chances and get the whole story in a nearby mega mall and tells his chartered pilot to pick him up in three days. Until then, you're charged with surviving the undead and getting the scoop to end all scoops, as well as finding out just what's gone wrong in Willamette.

There are probably two things that set Dead Rising apart from any previous zombie-themed game. The first is the sheer number of zombies on screen at a time. If you ever saw the first video for the game at E3 2005, you were probably amazed at the closing shot showing Frank atop a truck overlooking a literal sea of zombies. While it isn't exactly as huge as that video looked, the final product isn't very far off. Each section of the huge mall is packed with hundreds of zombies to beat down on, complete with a kill counter to monitor the carnage. To get an idea of just how many zombies there are, one of the Xbox Live achievements is to kill 53,594 zombies in one game. One game. Needless to say, getting this many rotting corpses on screen without the frame rate bogging down to Hell is quite an accomplishment.

Of course, you'll need something to kill all those zombies with, leading to the game's second feature: the ability to use anything and everything as a weapon. The game forces you to get creative with anything you can find and has well over 200 items to utilize, including: lawnmowers, shotguns, baseball bats, gardening shears, water guns, bass guitars, compact discs, chainsaws, umbrellas, machetes, katanas, and cars; basically if you can imagine what you would find in a typical mall, you can wail away at the undead with it. It's all very fun and really gives you a feeling that you're doing everything in your power to survive being turned into zombie chow. Granted, some of these items don't exactly work very well (given the fact that you wouldn't really use CDs to attack people in real life), but I think it's a pretty novel idea to include even useless items in the roster.

There is one main game mode at the beginning of Dead Rising, although as you progress through the game, you'll unlock two others modes. 72 Hour Mode is the main attraction here and has Frank trying to survive for three days until the helicopter comes to pick him up. Time passes by in real time in Dead Rising (albeit at a much more accelerated pace), during which you're given case files to complete which help to uncover the mystery behind the zombie outbreak and are required to be completed in order to get the "ture" ending. You'll also be given side missions, or scoops, from the (annoying) Otis, which usually either consist of rescuing survivors, defeating psychopath bosses, or a combination of the two more often than not. The game is both linear and non-linear at the same time, as you can choose what missions you want to complete and which to ignore. However at the same time, every mission will play out the same each time you play, and there is significant pressure to prioritize the case files over much else.

There are also some RPG elements added into the game. Frank will slowly grow in level as he completes missions and attains new abilities. Adding to this, your character level transfers into a new game, so you won't end up at level one next time you start over. This feature, while being an interesting and welcome addition, presents a sort-of double-edged sword over Dead Rising. The game is almost unforgiving when you begin to play your first game. Frank will be severely handicapped, psychopaths will tear you a new one, and worst of all, you will have a difficult time managing all the different missions given to you. On the other hand, once you gain levels and familiarize yourself with the mall layout, Dead Rising almost becomes a little too easy, and you may be surprised at just how much more streamlined your second play through will turn out (although the Xbox Live achievements keep a pretty high challenge level).

There are a few other ideas that could have probably used some fine-tuning. Dead Rising relies very heavily on escort missions where you will rescue survivors and have to lead them back to your base of operations. The problem here is that the A.I. for the survivors isn't exactly the best, and you'll often find yourself mashing the Y button for them to follow while they decide that killing zombies can't be that hard. Probably one of the worst traits of the A.I. is that if you are escorting a large number of them, they tend to decrease even further in intelligence and run into each other rather than climb up into the safety of the security room. Another heavy criticism of the game is the save system, which doesn't always work well against the real-time mechanics of Dead Rising. Specifically, if you happen to be short on time for a mission and decide to save at a point where you can't make it there in time, you've screwed your game. Luckily, the persistent level transfer between games relieves this issue somewhat, and this issue becomes a moot point after your first play through more often than not.

As far as the visual aesthetics go, Dead Rising looks pretty impressive. However, while cut scenes look top-notch, the game doesn't exactly excel in the looks department as much as other Xbox 360 games have. Of course, most of the resources in the game are probably going into processing the insane number of character models on screen, so the graphics can easily be excused in light of that. They even managed to create a pretty large diversity of zombies wearing different clothing. Even so, I did find a few hiccups in the frame rate. Though these are pretty easy to ignore and don't really hamper the game play.

The audio, however, is nothing but superb. Probably one of my favorite things about Dead Rising is that each weapon has a different sound to it, and some of my favorite weapons are the numerous guitars if not for the sole fact that when you hit zombies with them, they make neat sounding guitar noise. And of course, the mall Muzak ties the zombie slaughter and mall setting together very nicely.

It's been reported that Dead Rising sold over 500,000 copies in just two weeks since its release in the U.S., and it's easy to see why. The game is probably one of the most original titles to be found on the Xbox 360 with the sandbox-style game play, and it delivers some downright fun zombie slaughter to boot. Some may find the constant zombie massacring to be repetitive, and there are certainly some ideas that could have used some fine tuning, something that Capcom should think about if the rumors of a sequel have any truth to them. At any rate, if you're looking for something a little more chaotic and open than Resident Evil, Dead Rising is the perfect way to quell your thirst for chainsaw-on-zombie action.

Sep 19, 2006 | 2 comments
Chris Massey