Dead Rising Reader Review

Dead Rising is a very impressive game initially. For the first few hours of game play you will admire the detailed graphics, great character models, the huge number of on-screen zombies. The shopping mall is huge, well-designed and genuinely interesting.

After the initial honeymoon period, some things started to annoy me. There is a strict schedule in the game and nowhere near enough time to investigate every scoop. You only have 72 hours to solve the mystery and do all the side missions (scoops). Frank West, the player character. levels up after receiving sufficient photo points (PP) and his abilities are upgraded. You get PP from killing zombies and taking interesting photos with Frank's camera. At the lower levels the game can be extremely frustrating as you are slow and easily killed and can carry very few items. In fact it is very difficult to advance the main story line as the bosses (psychopaths) can be very difficult to defeat. The save system is also a cause of some annoyance. You can only have one save game at a time and can only save in bathrooms and the security room. This is mostly not a problem but sometimes it is easy to loose track of time and save, thus making the main story impossible to complete.

After a while these problems become less annoying as you adapt to Dead Rising's peculiar gameplay mechanics. The combat is well designed and satisfying, if repetitive. The sheer volume of different items is amazing, although you won't find much use for the toy lazer sword and other purely humorous inclusions. The graphics engine is extremely effective and all the environments are highly detailed. The explosions and blood effects are especially memorable. The game rarely if ever suffers from slow down despite the enormous numbers of zombies on screen. The AI is a little stupid both for the psychopaths and survivors who often have predictable and repetitive behaviour routines. The controls for melee combat are excellent, responsive and surprisingly subtle at times. The opposite is true for firearms, which leave your character highly vulnerable if you want any kind of accuracy and the aiming is painfully slow.

As you increase in level and make more discoveries, the game becomes far more enjoyable and less frustrating. The zombie slaughter never really gets boring no matter how many you kill. Overall Dead Rising is a love it or hate it kind of game and can be overall punishing due to it save mechanic and strict real-time schedule.