$20 Game of the Week: Dead Rising (Xbox 360)

Capcom is one of the most celebrated developers in the gaming industry. Throughout the years, they have released dozens of games. Many of these titles have become classics amongst gamers, achieving only cult status at the worst (Okami, Killer 7, Pheonix Wright), while at their best Capcom has created games that have spun off into mega-franchises (Mega Man, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry). One of their most prolific titles from the past decade casts players in the role of a hapless protagonist who has been thrust in the middle of a town infested with zombies. Using what little they have at their disposal, players must discover the truth behind the madness, assist any survivors, and live through the madness long enough to escape in one piece. The game I’m referring to of course, is 1998’s Playstation classic Resident Evil 2. The eagerly anticipated sequel pushed the series to new heights, becoming an instant best seller, and was regarded as one of the best games on the PS1. Capcom followed it up with more hits, including 2005’s Resident Evil 4, which changed the face of the series. Oh yeah, a while later Capcom released Dead Rising for the Xbox 360. While this sleeper hit carried the same basic premise of RE2, it was completely unrelated to Resident Evil. In fact, it gave gamers an experience that was unlike any previously seen survival horror video game.

In Dead Rising, you play as hapless photojournalist Frank West. Frank has been dropped inside a shopping mall in Williamette, Colorado, a town whose residents, save for a handful of survivors, have been turned into zombies (and before you ask, no, it’s not the T-virus). Frank and his trusty camera have been left behind for 3 days. During this time it’s up to him to investigate the zombie outbreak, rescue as many survivors as he can, and survive long enough to escape when the helicopter comes for him. How you spend the next three days is up to you. Are you gonna be a good Samaritan and rescue as many people as you can? Are you gonna help the government agents discover whose responsible for the chaos? Are you gonna stay holed up in the safety of the security room? Will you simply go all out and kill as many zombies as you can?

This game revolves around one thing: killing zombies. You’ll be up to your neck in them. You can’t swing a stick without hitting one. And I mean that literally. There will be hundreds on the screen at one time, and it will make it difficult to get through without swinging a stick. You won’t just use a stick either. You can use a gun, a sword, a hammer, a chainsaw, and just about anything else that isn’t a food product and isn’t nailed down to kill zombies. See that box? Pick it up and throw it at the zombies. See that lawn mower? Run the zombies down. See that propane tank? Pick it up, throw at the zombies, then shoot it to blow them up. Pack of CDs from the record store? Throw them at the zombies ninja star style. Umbrella? Water gun? Garden shears? Trash can? Just about anything can become a weapon. You’ll have fun just experimenting to see what works best in any given situation. For those times you are unarmed, Frank has a selection of melee moves he can use on the zombies. As he levels up via an RPG-like stat system, he unlocks more attack. Another dynamic of the game is Frank’s camera. He can take pictures to gain experience points. The more action in a shot, the more points he is awarded. You even gain bonuses for certain material, such as a drama scene, action shots, and even erotica (by shooting photos of scantily clad female zombies).

After their last two failed attempts to create a GTA-style free-form game (Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance and Final Fight Streetwise as loathe as I am to mention those two again), Capcom has made great steps towards creating their own style of sandbox game. That’s not to say it involves hookers and carjacking, but Capcom presents a situation and allows players to approach it any way they choose, rewarding them differently for however they choose to play the game. The game’s list of achievements encourages this. It’s a real treat when you play the game and the achievement randomly pops up for doing something, weather it’s using a certain type of weapon for killing zombies, killing a certain amount of zombies, or anything else unexpected. The game’s real time clock, multiple endings, and experience system encourage multiple playthroughs, so you won’t see everything on the first time through. You can restart your game while carrying over your experience points from a previous play through. You don’t even have to complete the game to do so. This helps players get an edge, as they can choose to ignore the story and concentrate on gaining as much expereince as possible, then carrying their increased levels over into a new game.

Speaking of which, the story sticks to a strict schedule. If you want to see what’s going to happen next, then it’s imperative that you be at a certain place at a certain time, otherwise you’ll miss important clues. This tends to bind players a bit, but it makes you want to play the game through another time just to check out everything you missed. You pretty much have, as the game only has one save slot. There are lots of hidden Easter eggs, including costumes that reference some of Capcom’s other games. Keep an eye out and you’ll find Mega Man Legends Servbots, Arthur’s armor from Ghost Goblins, and even Mega Man X’s costume.

Dead Rising has three major shortcomings keeping it from being perfect. First of all, our friend Otis, who lets us know about survivors via phone calls all too frequently. To make matters worse, when you answer one of his calls, you’re left vulnerable as you can neither jump nor attack. If you get attacked while talking to him, he’ll hang up, call back a few seconds later, scold you for being rude, then start from the very beginning of his message. Speaking of survivors, many of the NPCs have the worst AI this side of a Dynasty Warriors allied general. You’ll constantly have to tell them where to go, least they get caught in a crowd of zombies. They move too slowly at times, and some of them are even drunk and/or impaired. You can arm a few of them with weapons, give them health items, and can even lift a few of them, but more often than not the NPC sidequests tend to be more trouble than they are worth. Finally, it seems that whoever designed the text and subtitles did so under the impression that all Xbox 360 owners have a large-screen HDTV. Text is too small to read on many standard definition TVs, and to make matters worse, there is no chance of Capcom fixing the issue in a patch. We’ll just have to hope that Capcom makes a sequel which addresses these complaints.

Even with these flaws, Dead Rising is the perfect game for zombie lovers everywhere. A blurb on the front of the package states that the game is not intended to be an adaptation of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. This is ironic, as Dead Rising is the closest thing there is to getting a video game based on the classic horror film. It provided hours of mindless fun, and hours more of replay value. Capcom has once again created something unique, and has once again shown players why they are one of the best developers in the gaming industry.