Dead Rising

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I’ve finally managed to get the hang of Dead Rising, and yes I’m fully aware Dead Rising came out like 2 years ago but I didn’t get a 360 until fairly recently and it’s my blog, I write what I want!

I always said if I ever got a 360 I’d have to play the "zombie mall game" so purchased Dead Rising with the attitude of a chortling 15 year old boy expecting a mindless free-for-all type fair where I’d merely be picking up a hilarious variety of items and bashing zombies until the game said I was done. And that’s certainly how the game was advertised, and it seems they had good reason for the misleading campaign. As it turns out you can’t just run around willy-nilly bludgeoning zombies, you also have to deal with survivors, government agents, and a series of criminally insane people running around the mall you spend the game trapped in. You’re also on a tight schedule and if you miss the time of any of the main plot events the game punishes you by closing off the rest of the plot and offering to let you start all over again.

Or at least, also from your last save, which due to the scarcity of save points could have been so far back it’s just better to start again with your current level and inventory.

Dead Rising seems like it is a game thats intended for multiple playthroughs seeing as you really can save your current level and stuff and start all over from the beginning if you die or mess everything up, and once you skip all the cutscenes everything can go by kind of quickly.

You also spend much of the game getting harassed via walky talky by an old janitor named Otis. Otis is helpful in that he can locate survivors, but what sucks is those survivors won’t actually appear until he calls you, so even if you know where they’ll be you can’t find them. On one of my many re-playings from the beginning I got to a spot where I knew 3 survivors ought to be. Otis finally told me about two of them as I passed through there again, but not about the third. I knew I had to fight one of the survivors to get him to listen to me but I was under the impression I couldn’t actually harm him with my blows, I discovered how wrong I was when I inadvertently smashed his face in with a barbell and killed him. Oops. One survivor down.

It wasn’t until I had lead the other guy to safety that Otis finally told me about the third survivor, a woman with an injured leg who needed to be carried. Luckily you’re invincible against the zombies while carrying a survivor, but not against three escaped convicts in a humvee… who came out at night. I could have saved her earlier and much more easily had Otis been on the freakin’ ball. Goddamn you Otis. You’ll be compelled to answer Otis’ calls because if you ignore him the walky talky makes an irritating sound every 30 seconds or so. And if you hang up on him because your face is getting eaten off by zombies he acts like you’re the rude one. Another drawback here is that the text the written dialog appears in is so tiny I can barely read any of it, it’s like the creators were expecting this game to only be played on 400 inch HD televisions.

Before I actually started to try and save survivors I’d merely approach them, making false promises of safety, and ensuring I took a photo of them for the achievements before callously abandoning them when shit got too real. But, you know, saving them makes for achievements too… so…

Oh yeah, did I mention that Frank West, our main character here, is a photojournalist? You can actually gain PP, the game’s equivalent to experience points, by taking good photos. And of course the aforementioned achievements resulting from photographing survivors, among other things.

I really shouldn’t complain too much about the game, however, because I always whine that games these days are too easy and I need a challenge. The whole time thing is just a bit nerve-wracking for me, that and Frank just moves so slowly. It seems he’ll pick up the pace with level ups but the way he just shuffles along annoys me to no end. And yet, I’m still really enjoying it. I find even when I end up having to start over I can get back to where I was fairly quickly, and its a bit easier since I’m at the same level as before.

And in the end, the game can actually be alot of fun. Thanks to the "everything is a weapon" policy and the ability to do things like change clothing, Dead Rising can offer at least one truly unique experience: fending off hordes of zombies with a push-broom while wearing a dress and novelty horse mask.