Dead Rising

Dead Rising, from Capcom, the masters of survival horror, is the first true Next Gen game for the xbox 360. Any other game out there, its questionable that they could've been done on a lesser console. This one however, is the first 'must buy' if you want to show off your consoles prowess.

The first time you run into the mall and see two hundred to three hundred zombies shambling around in front of you, your jaw will literally hit the ground... simply because the game does this with ease whilst keeping a truly solid frame rate and an excellent level of graphics.

The concept is shockingly simple. You're a journalist, dropped into a town overrun with zombies, specifically at the mall, you have to survive 3 days. Sounds easy right? Hell no.

Dead Rising is unfortunately going to draw comparisons between two properties. The first is George Romeros zombie movies, and fair enough, it does borrow the concept of the Dawn of the dead movie. The second, the Resident Evil games for some reason.

Let me assure you, the only thing Resident Evil 1 2 3 and 4 have in common with Dead Rising is that there's zombies. But in Dead Rising however, the zombies are much more threatening.

We're not talking modern day running zombies though, we've got the old style swarming zombies. Ever see a zombie movie and wonder 'How the hell did they get eaten? They could've just walked around them!' or something? Get your ass into the maintenance tunnels of Dead Rising, where literally hundreds of zombies pack the halls and you have to wade your way through.

The game play is third person above and behind, the controls are fluid and intuitive, response time from Frank, the journalist, is superb. Capcom have really outdone themselves. The controls are simple, not complicated and every time you get a new skill, it's something to add to your arsenal to turn Camera from Camera toting wimp into Zombie masher extraordinaire.

The weaponry in this game, is incredible. Every sound seems spot on for whatever you're using. You can use things from knives to katanas, pistols to 50. cal machine guns, from chainsaws to fence post hole diggers called Excavators. Each weapon affects the zombies in an individual way for the most part. The Katana will slice zombies in half with whatever angle it hits. It may be from the shoulder to the groin or the head to the leg, it doesn't matter, no hit seems to be exactly the same. The Excavator is just pure gold but I won't spoil that one, it's got to be seen to be fully believed.

Dead Risings only missteps, are minor ones. Well, maybe one major one and the rest are minor. So what are they? 1. People complain about the one save slot. However, Capcom ensure you'll never have to truly start again as any progress in a previous game, if you're killed, can be taken over into a new game. Personally I found a way around only one save slot. I use a memory card and a hard drive in conjunction with each other. This allows me essentially two.

2. No true Free roaming mode. There's a survival mode you can unlock and thats nice, but there doesn't seem to be a true 'free roam' mode as such. Not that that's such a bad thing. The game might get a tiny bit tedious if that was all you'd do...

3. Unforgiving plot. In this game, you have main cases and side cases. Side cases are optional, they're usually rescuing people or defeating psychopaths. Main missions are the ones you must do to progress. Miss one of these and you're done.

4. Time goes by way too fast. An hour goes past in 4 minutes roughly. The game lasts 72 hours, you're looking at between 5 - 6 hours game play. But thats a truly MINOR quibble. The game has that much re-playability it's not funny. If you can get through this, or even half way, in your first few days, I'll buy you a beer :D So to conclude. Dead Rising isn't without its faults. Pobodys Nerfect as they say. It's my cup of tea and then some, but it's not someone elses, but they're not writing this review. My recommendation is this... if you want a showpiece for your 360, a game that you can either stuff around in for hours or play seriously, if you want something that's surprisingly deep for such a shallow concept, check out Dead Rising, you won't be disappointed.

Capcom is one of the best, if not most popular 3rd party developers of all time. They've developed a lot of popular series and have created some interesting game characters, including the ones from street fighter, and resident evil.

But then comes Dead rising, which puts you in the shoes of a young freelance photographer looking for his big scoop to put his name into history. What he doesn't know is that for 3 days, from September 19th, to the 22nd in the year 2006, He's in for a blood-soaked, fear-inducing, adventure filled with excitement.

Frank West is tipped off about something big happening in Williamette, Colorado, a fictional town of about 50,000 people. He hires a low budget chopper pilot to fly him in so he can snap some pictures of the town. it's not long before the national guard come and chase the chopper away, but not before Frank is able to land on the mall's roof, and get in. He soon discovers that it's not a civil disturbance, but a zombie apocalypse. And for the next 72 hours, it's him, a few survivors, and nearly 50,000 blood-thirsty, flesh-starved zombies.

I got this one very late in the Xbox 360's lifespan, and i'm still not sure why I waited so long to pick this one up. It's a lot of fun and worth whatever you pay for it.

The main idea of Dead rising is to collect as many Prestige points (PP) as you can, while helping 2 particular people discover why the zombies have risen up in the first place. You collect prestige points by using your camera to take photographs of people, zombies, anything that's happening in the disaster zone of Williamette. You also collect points by killing zombies with whatever is at your disposal, including knives, sporting goods, tools, Electronics, and my personal favorite so far, the Chainsaw. You get the biggest PP boost by rescuing survivors and guiding them to the only sanctuary left - The security room.

The best part of the game, is the fact that you have a lot of freedom. for 72 hours, you can do whatever you please. Want to be a zombie-killing machine with whatever is at your disposal? You can. Do you want to rescue survivors? you can. Do you want to take pictures for your big story? do it. And are you sure you want to know why the zombie apocalypse is happening in the first place? stay close to 2 particular people, stay alive, and you might just learn exactly why there is a zombie apocalypse in the first place.

For anyone who hasn't picked up a copy of Dead rising yet, I strongly suggest you do so. The replay value is great.

9/10

This is definitely a great game. It leaves you with anything as a weapon, and swarms of zombies waiting to have the faces bashed in or sliced in two. The graphics definitely are amazing, and so are the blood effects, and when you kill an enemy, their blood goes all over you and if you walk through blood there are bloody footprints. The game has a ton of twists, lots of places to go, and a lot of bosses and weapon choices. The voice acting is absolutely incredible, yet the AI needs a little work. The game has a surprisingly amazing plot, an amazing soundtrack, and also has very interesting cut scenes, like the one at the end of the game... which i don't want to reveal and spoil the game.

scale of 1-10... 100!

The idea is great. Go around kill zombies in massive numbers, and do whatever you want. Sounds like fun? It is, but it could be so much better, and the errors are so glaringly obvious that the game developers could in no way miss them. It makes you wonder, but that's okay it's still a great game.

The problems are numerous, the only thing the game does completely right is with combat and the shear amount of zombies. Everything else is need of fixing. The first problem is the fact that you only get one save file, but that isn't too bad, seeing as you can start the game over and over again with the same file. But the save system is weird at best, and is a tad annoying. Save points are hidden away, and can be hard to find, especially since you'll want to save often, as the game is quite difficult and you can easily find your self playing an hours worth of game play over again. Save often! The main problem with the game is the lack of any originality with missions, their either main missions, called case files, or escort missions, tons of escort missions. But thank god they are skip-able, you don't have to rescue a single person if you don't want to, however if you want to level up fast you may want to check them out. Also the case files must be done before a certain time in the 72 hour period your there, if you miss one it's game over, but you start with all you skills and abilities. The game isn't actually 72 hours, the time is accelerated.

There is also the fact that you have to unlock the mode that I was most looking forward to, complete freedom, you don't get that when you have to do a case file. That annoys me, as sometimes I just want to go around and just have fun. You'll have plenty of time to do it, but you're always worrying about how much time you have left. Also if you decide to do this you miss out on those annoying escort missions.

Weapons are fun and intuitive, they make the sounds they are supposed to make when you hit them, and killing the zombies never seems to wear, although you could theoretically get through the whole game without hitting a single one. The game is hilarious! It's not going to scare you, it's going to make you fun. This is a casual game, I just wish some parts of the game were made to fit the casualness of the rest of game.

The photo part of the game can net you some cool pictures to show to your friends but that's about it. And it feels rather useless. Their are a few other problems that I noticed but nothing major, a few collision problems, and there is a minor amount of repetitiveness. Also the text is freakishly small. But all the problems are out done by how much fun you are going to have. If you are looking for a good fun game, this game is for you, but it will annoy some, make some extremely angry, and give everything others wanted. If the developers are going to make a sequel, they better fix some things, it's the only thing holding it back from greatness.

Upon reading the basic plot for this genre I was intrigued, and thought how can you go wrong with a game based on a mall full of zombies with well over 150 weapons at your disposal? Upon actually playing it, I admit to being impressed as there is much to see and do in the game. It pays homage to the famous "Dawn of the Dead", but is not an exact copy, only the scenario is the same.

There are different ways to go about this game. You play as Frank West, a freelance photographer who is dropped off a small town mall on midday, and have 72 hours in the game (which translates to around 10.3 hours real time) before the chopper returns to collect you. In this time, you can either follow the story, and complete the set missions, or just go berserk with whatever weapon you can find on a mindless zombie rampage. As far as weapons go, they range from the brutal and devastating such as the small chainsaw, shotgun, katana, machine gun...to the downright useless and comical items like teddy bears water pistols, dinner plates and CD's! The more effective the weapon, the more satisfying the zombie death, ermm "re-death?" is. Alongside the vast range of weapons available, there are a series of hand to hand moves Frank can master upon levelling up. Levelling up happens when you collect enough points to progress to the next level, which is always rewarded with with an extra health bar, an extra inventory bar, or a skill. Best thing is, you can carry your skill onto the next game, so don't worry about not reaching level 50 as you can simply start again and continue building.

I find this game super addictive with massive replay value, as you can never get bored of laying into the hordes of literally never ending undead with your insane arsenal of grizzly tools. The zombies re spawn constantly and in the same numbers, so don't be shocked when you re-enter a room to find it packed wall to wall with zombies after clearing it out afew minutes before. If the walking corpses aren't enough, you have human dangers to deal with. Whether its felons tearing round on a armed jeep, a Vietnam vet with a machete, a disgruntled food store owner with a spiked shopping trolley or much worse...they are just around the corner. Survival takes a new meaning in this game, as there are very and I repeat VERY few places you can let your guard down. There are human survivors around the mall, who have to be not only located, but persuaded to come back to the security room and then escorted. Escorting survivors can be very irritating, as many are slow at moving and just run into crowds of zombies, meaning you have to keep going back to rescue them.

You are given time limits for everything; psychos, missions, survivors etc. You can easily check when the cut-off line is for each objective by checking your watch, you will need to do this in order to plan out an order of tasks, starting with most urgent.

All in all, an immersive, blood soaked, no holds barred rampage worthy of its 18 certificate. Just remember to get hold of Adam's chainsaw and the 3 books which boost its impact if you REALLY want to do some crowd controlling.