Retro Review : Dead Rising

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if your local shopping centre was full with zombies and you could use anything from that shopping centre to slaughter those zombies? Like raiding a hardware store and using the sickles or hedge clippers to rip into the zombies? Capcom might be making your dreams come true with their latest stab (we had to ? ed) into the zombie genre.

Dead Rising sees you taking control of photo-journalist Frank west, who is after his next big scoop, so he decides to charter a helicopter to the quiet small town of Willamette where weird and unusual things are happening. The opening sequence sees you flying over Willamette photographing all of the weird things that’s happening before landing on a helipad on top of the mall. This sequence gives you the chance to experience what you are about to see in the main game without getting attacked by any of the walking undead. After landing on top of the mall your given 72 hours to discover what is going on by exploring the mall and uncovering the truth.

On your first jaunt through the game you?re not going to be able to discover everything as this mall is huge and the 72 hours (6-8 gameplay hours) is not enough to rescue all of the survivors, fight all of the psychopaths, going through the main story and exploring every shop.The best bet here is to follow the main storyline and rescuing a few of the hostages then go for the rest of the survivors and psychopaths on your second and third run as your stats should be high enough to get you past some of the tougher psycho’s.

Getting through the main storyline while slaughtering a lot of zombies with almost anything is the fun part of the game. At the start of the game your given basic weapons to use like metal pipes, planks of wood and baseball bats but besides these basic weapons there are a few interesting ones like hitting zombies hard with golf balls and trying to kill as many zombies as you can with a bowling ball. Later on in the game is where all of the best weapons come into it like mowing down loads of zombies into a gory pulp with a lawnmower or slicing them in half with a katana or a chainsaw. Unfortunately for frank the weapons don’t last long so stocking up on the right weapons and having enough health on you as well needs you to think up a little strategy because item slots are limited to certain amount of items.

One best example of this is when you are facing off against the many psychos you might of only taken one bottle of orange juice then not having enough health so you end off dying having to restart over again and this is where one of the main problems of the game pop up and that?s the small amount of save points in the game, getting killed then having to restart all over again can be really annoying and can leave you swearing a lot at your television screen. One of the other main problems with the game is the difficulty curve, when you go up against the zombies in the game you could be killing a lot in one go however when fighting one of the psycho’s the difficult setting just ramps up and you find yourself dying a lot having to redo the fight over and over again which can become annoying. However. these are only slight problems in a really solid game.

Controlling Frank is smooth as there is only one button to attack with and holding the right trigger is used to aim with so you can throw an item at your enemies. Aiding Frank in his journey to find the truth is his camera, Frank can use it to take photos of important events as well as capturing all of the zombies, doing this will give him PP points and as soon as he has gained enough he will level up and learn new techniques to fight the zombies with or his health bar and items slot will increase. PP points are also gained by rescuing survivors in the mall or by defeating the psychos.

Dead Rising for the most part is a fantastic game, getting to take all of your anger out on zombies is a good way to let off some steam if you’ve had a bad day. The storyline -if you follow it- is engaging and really strong with a very serious note added to it which takes away some of the comic book style violence of the game itself. The game is let down by the save system and the learning curve plus the graphics are not the best on the 360 but you can see a lot of power of the console is used on the amount of zombies one screen. It can also become a little repetitive and there is also a slight problem with slow down when there are too many zombies on screen at once.

Overall Dead Rising is a worthy game that should be added to your collection and gives the 360 one of those triple a titles that it needs. Apart from very minor flaws this is a must have game.

8/10