Zombies somehow manage to make an appearance in just about every other horror movie and video game. They are usually something to run in fear from, but in Capcom’s Dead Rising, things are a little different. The entire game takes place in a shopping mall and although the place is loaded to the gills with zombies, you are often the one that is doing the chasing.
You play as the impetuous Frank West, a photojournalist investigating a very unique story taking place in a small town. Frank’s goal, of course, is to break the story himself with tons of first-hand footage. Before you know it, you are stuck in a shopping mall with the story unfolding right in front of you. Your job is to collect details of the story, to find out why everyone in the town is a zombie—typical Capcom conspiracy solving outing—and get out with your life.
More than just a couple zombies to deal with
Though Frank’s initial intent was simply to break this big story, he needs to do a lot of zombie slaying just to make it out. So how do you go about chasing down and killing the zombies that have infested the place? Being that you are in a shopping mall, it is naturally stuffed with all kinds of items fully at your disposal. Whether it is an umbrella, park bench, chainsaw, barbell, golf club, baseball bat, clothes hanger, propane tank, cash register, shotgun or a skateboard, they can all be used as a weapon against the zombies. Literally, just about everything you see and can pick up can be used as a weapon.
Although there are usually around fifty to one hundred zombies on the screen at once, this game is far from the Dynasty Warriors and Ninety-Nine Nights style of melee. Frank is no superhero and possesses the power of a normal adult human, so he has to use ordinary objects as weapons. Additionally, there are some comic-relief weapons in the game that do almost no damage, such as the giant teddy bear, toy light saber, Lego head, and even a squirt gun. Although there are tons of weapons put in the game just for kicks, there are also many more that can really deliver the hurt. Some of these include: lawn mowers, chainsaws, drills, swords, knives, and a full arsenal of firearms.
Besides the pure enjoyment of taking out hundreds of zombies with hundreds of different weapons, Dead Rising honestly doesn’t have much else going for it. It is a full game, but its strongest trait is the zombie slaying. The story is a little interesting, but nothing so epic or extraordinary as seen in the some of the Resident Evil series. The missions you have to perform are pretty are usually pretty straight-forward, sometimes even a bit dull, and there are a few other big problems.
Teddy bears do not make good weaponsDead Rising has a clear and major problem with the way it saves your game progress. It looks like they used some sort of default game saving code instead of creating their own to meet their needs. When it comes time to save the game, the Xbox 360 guide pops up on the screen and does all the work. On top of that, you can only save at very few specific spots throughout the game, which are few and far between. They include bathrooms and the security room, but almost always require the use of a map to find and by the time you make it there, chances are a zombie would have already tackled you and gnawed your head off.
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