User Review : Dead Rising

This is why I hate malls

I have always hated malls. I mean I love the convenience of having everything you need in one place but everything else I can do without. I always found it funny that people with no money spend more time at malls than anyone. At least in Dead Rising there are no cell phone salesman, and to be honest I would probably rather go to that mall with all the zombies; at least there I don't have to worry about sales people every time I walk into a clothing store.

Dead Rising is for lack of a better term a complete rip off of the movie Dawn of the Dead. I mean people say that Saints Row is a GTA knock off; well you haven't seen a knock off until you have played Dead Rising. Basically Frank (who is a photographer) decides to get the story of a life time by traveling to a mall that is in a city that has been over run by zombies. All frank has to do is survive for 3 days and be at the helicopter pad to get picked up; how he spends his time is up to you.

I'm actually going to give credit to Capcom for the plot of Dead Rising. Although it is not as fluid as your typical game's story, Capcom has given the player the liberty to do as much or as little as possible. You could just hang out and do nothing and just wait for the helicopter or you could follow the story and do any number of side missions; the choice is yours. One thing I really liked about Dead Rising is the fact that the story warrants multiple play throughs. With multiple endings and so many side missions it's impossible to do everything the first go around, so if you want to do everything in the game then you have to play it more than once. With the wide variety of weapons and tools at your disposal there is always something new to try while dispatching the legions of zombies.

Typically when games try to be innovative a lot of times they have flaws the first time around and Dead Rising is no different. As much as I like the game being designed for multiple play throughs it is annoying that you can't do everything in the game. You will always have to sacrifice something in order to do something else and that can get aggravating. With so many things to do and so little time to do each one because 90% of the missions in the game are only open for a small window of time, you will more often than not fail most missions because you are trying to do too many things at once. This flaw in the game is glaringly obvious when you attempt to save different NPC's through the course of your 3 days in the mall. Saving someone is just about one of the most aggravating experiences I have seen in gaming in a long time. First off you have to stay close to the people you are rescuing, you can't get too far away or they won't follow you when you change locations. Second they are horrible in combat; I mean it's nice that you can give them a weapon so they can try to defend themselves; but what is the point when they are awful in combat? Third and probably the most aggravating, it's extraordinarily difficult to save multiple people at one time. Since you have so many time constraints to be able to save most of the people in the mall you have to be able to grab multiple people and lead them to safety at one time. I can protect one or two people and get them back to the security office; I can not protect five or seven. Finally the boss battles are way too difficult. Now I love a good, challenging boss as much as the next person but Dead Rising has very frustrating boss fights. I can sum it up by saying you do too little damage and they do too much damage. Even if you are maxed out on your level the boss fights can still be frustratingly hard. Capcom could have done a better job of making the game more in sink with the characters level.

When I first started playing Dead Rising I thought I had just wasted $60. However as I started to understand how the game was designed Dead Rising grew on me and became a very enjoyable experience. With some tweaking of the game play Dead Rising could be the next great series from Capcom.