I've always thought zombies were among the silliest of horror movie monsters. Yeah, they want to tear off chunks of your flesh and eat your brain, but they're dumb and slow and easily killed. What's to be afraid of?
If the movies of George A. Romero haven't properly educated you in why zombies are a threat, Dead Rising will. Because what zombies lack in brains and speed, they make up for with in sheer, staggering numbers. And bullets don't grow on trees, y'know.
Dead Rising casts you as Frank West, a freelance photojournalist who could be Max Payne's uglier brother, right down to the perpetual "Who farted?" facial expression. Chasing a tip about a small Colorado town under military quarantine, Frank stumbles across a sprawling, zombie-infested shopping mall and its motley collection of besieged survivors.
The resemblance to Romero's 1978 classic Dawn Of The Dead (and its 2004 remake with Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames) is certainly there, though Dead Rising doesn't use the mall-full-of-zombies setting as a way of satirizing consumer culture. Instead, it's a set-up for killing thousands of the walking dead with everything from shotguns to samurai swords to stuffed teddy bears. Hurt 'em with love, Frankie!
There are literally hundreds of objects spread out across the massive Willamette Parkview Mall that can be used to do harm to the shambling undead. From the typical (your usual assortment of firearms and knives) to the unorthodox (chainsaws, hedge trimmers, boomerangs) to the downright bizarre. If you've ever had a hankering to grab a hockey stick and rifle slapshots at zombies' heads, this is your game.
But Dead Rising isn't a next-gen Smash TV, urging you to simply run around and club zombies with frying pans and mannequin legs. Frank has only 72 hours (about six hours in real time) to unearth the twisty trail of truths behind the town's zombie infection before he's picked up by helicopter, and if he misses even one of these crucial clues, the entire storyline evaporates and you have to reload from the one and only save file that the game allows you.
In addition to being at the appointed place and time in the mall to receive the plot points that drive the story forward, Frank gets regular updates from a security guard telling him the location of survivors in need of rescue. As if balancing investigative journalism with Good Samaritanism wasn't enough, you'll also regularly be pitted against psychopaths in boss battles that can be hellaciously frustrating.
The game's saving grace is that if you start over from scratch at the beginning -- and you probably will, several times -- you keep whatever skills and stats Frank had built up through killing zombies, saving survivors and taking good photographs. Once he's stronger, faster and tougher, rescuing survivors and beating the mini-bosses becomes significantly easier. In fact, it's best to just let the hapless survivors be until after you've finished the main story mode and are returning for another play-through.
At its core, Dead Rising is an old-school game wearing next-gen clothing. Don't be fooled, this is not Grand Theft Auto in a mall with zombies. Capcom's Mega Man and Resident Evil roots are very much in evidence here, from the sometimes punishing level of difficulty to the archaic game-save system.
But Dead Rising's shortcomings are offset by its inventive storyline and unique gameplay. You can't deny the visceral pleasure of jumping behind the wheel of a jeep and plowing through several hundred zombies crammed inside a maintenance tunnel, or grabbing a lawnmower and cutting a crimson swath through a crowd of the undead.
And because there are so many items to discover and achievements to unlock and survivors to rescue, the game has absolutely immense replay value, assuming you don't throw your controller in frustration first. And if you must do so, at least aim for a zombie's head.
BOTTOM LINE
A lot deeper and a lot tougher than it seems at first glance, Dead Rising is an old-school game posing as next-gen zombie slayathon. It can be frustrating as hell, but like the swarms of undead who don't know any better, you'll keep coming back for more.
WHAM! Rating: |
8 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
M (Mature) |
Official Web Site: |
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