A zombie game set in a shopping mall, I wonder where they got that idea.... Zombies have pretty much been done to death now, Dead Rising however, was near the start of the zombie buzz. Released in 2006 and spawning many new additions, this is truly one of the great current game series around. You play as Frank West, a photo journalist who's covered wars y'know. Frank is dropped off at the mall and is determined to cover the zombie outbreak story and get it out to the world. Frank has three days to get his story, so he can make it out by getting picked up by his choppa buddy, Ed.
The game has a 'if you can pick it up, you can use it' approach, meaning whatever you can pick up can be used to kill zombies, benches, boxes, baseball bats, you name it! Things that don't start with a B can also be used too! Zombies aren't the only thing to fear, psychopaths are even worse. People who have gone crazy due to the outbreak, they often have survivors held captive, but they are hell-bent on killing you. The battles are often good, but always cheap, striking you while you're already down and taking plenty of health from one attack. You do feel like you've accomplished something when you take them down. You level up through the game and unlock new moves and such throughout, you can level up by bringing survivors back to the safe room and killing zombies of course. Otis, a mall security officer gives you your side missions and let's you know when there's a survivor or a psychopath around, he calls a lot and is really annoying, but you can't help but love the guy.
The game has multiple endings and will probably require a couple playthroughs too. After completing the main story, there's Overtime mode, which sort of extends the main story. You also get 5 day and 7 day survivor mode, which has you try and hold off for longer than the original 3 days. Plenty of extra modes to try once you're all done with the story. I was genuinely quite frightened by this game back in the day, maybe it was because I was pretty young, but I was always weary watching the cutscenes waiting for something bad to happen. I always panicked when I would run into a psychopath. Sadly, future DR games never had me feel the same way, infact they tamed the games down way more. If you killed Adam the clown, you'll know how violent this game was. The psychopaths are great though, they're memorable and very disturbing to watch in the cutscenes, a lot of their death scenes are so brutal to watch too. As well as a chainsaw wielding clown, you have a raincoat cult and convicts driving around in a car with a gun turret.
The map is a decent size, numerous places to go and a whole bunch of shops to explore. Likeable characters and a great performance from Frank West, most of the other characters weren't portrayed as well. A good story that actually has a good zombie outbreak, most zombie related outbreaks are just contaminated food products or some virus got out. An unclear ending though, if you complete overtime mode if you ask me.
This is one of the most frustrating games I've ever played, yes the boss battles are cheap and annoying, but nothing comes close to the dumb AI survivors. You'd think they don't want you to save them. Sometimes when calling them they just stop and you have to call them again to get them moving. You can give them weapons but they're more likely to hit you than zombies. They'll walk in front of you as you're about to clobber a zombie, you'll clear a path for them but they'll run up to the one zombie you missed and there could only be one around and they could get grabbed by it, meaning you have to go back to them to smack the zombie off them.
The game is old and with that comes poor controls, how I longed for aiming and shooting with LT/RT, instead we had aim with RT, fire with X, disgusting right? Only one save, if you screwed up and left yourself with no time to get to the next case mission, you done fucked it up, buddy! Also, manually saving by having to find a bathroom, the amount of times I would die and have to go so far back was depressing, I'm used to autosave, we really do take that guy for granted. Dialogue only exists in cutscenes, when you get a call from Otis, it shows up in a damn text box, nothing makes good gameplay by trying to read a phone call with literally hundreds of zombies around you!
A nice touch was that some of the zombies you see are fallen survivors, they will look familiar as they were people you've came across, I thought that was a good small detail. You can drive vehicles and take out multiple zombies at once and you can even ride skateboards indoors to traverse more quickly. The photography is annoying at times but it's necessary to the game seeing as Frank's a photo journalist. The game has lots of hidden secrets that you most likely didn't even think of, you can blend food items together to create consumables that give off effects such as, running faster or invulnerability. The graphics were pretty good for the time but they come across as cartoony now. Being constantly grabbed by zombies as you try to get by is the worst, especially when you think there's enough distance to walk past, only for them to suddenly leap onto you. The game is funny and most importantly, fun. There's nothing like being dressed up as a woman and putting teddy bear masks on the zombies, actually makes the outbreak look less frightening when they all look like slow, friendly bears!
This game is "faaaaantastic". There's so much to do and so much to explore, you nev- *transceiver rings* - hang on. - *answers call* - GODAMMIT OTIS, WILL YOU STOP CALLING ME EVERY TWO MINUTES, I'M TRYNA REVIEW THE GAME.
Sorry about that, Dead Rising 4 is out later this year with a Christmassy trailer, I for one am looking forward to killing more zombies in hilarious ways with my good buddy, Frank.
8/10
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