Vital Stats

Genre: Survival Horror
Players: 1
Online: None

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
ESRB Rating: M
Release Date: 8/08/06

Platforms

• XBox 360

Dead Rising is probably about the only survival horror game that manages to have a playable combat system without wholly abandoning the genre’s trademark tension. The game’s over-the-top amorality and shamelessly open design combine into an experience that’s difficult to get into, but ultimately a fun investment of your game time.

Marking Time, Waiting for Death
Dead Rising follows the exploits of Frank West, photojournalist, as he passes 72 hours in a zombie-riddled mall. While he’s ostensibly there to discover the cause of the zombie outbreak, Frank spends much of his time zipping from place to place in the hopes of saving survivors, and sometimes confronting the psychopaths who have been unhinged by trivial things like the dead consuming their loved ones.

This all happens through the use of scripted events. At set times through the course of the three days, Frank receives calls informing him that people have been spotted by the mall security system. Once this happens, he has a limited amount of time to find the person in question and dispense whatever form of justice seems appropriate. The designers were thoughtful enough to provide both a mall map and a continuously updating waypoint, though the latter can get a bit confused in open spaces, to help Frank reach his destinations in time. However, the time constraints are tight and success requires a constant battle against the clock.

Whenever he takes photos, meets survivors, saves them, or manages to kill zombies and psychopaths, Frank accumulates experience that makes him stronger, faster, and tougher. Character advancement is doled out in experience levels, a la every Japanese RPG ever, and the experience is retained every time the game ends, win or lose.

This is fortunate because, especially during early playthroughs, Dead Rising simulates what would happen to most of us in a zombie situation. Frank, weak and unarmed, wanders out into the mall, and if the zombies don’t get him, the heavily armed nutjobs will. There are no continue points, save points are far apart, and loading a saved game reverts your experience to that earlier point. At low experience levels, Dead Rising is hard.

It’s reasonable to guess that the game’s designers expect players to run the first few game hours over and over again until Frank is just tough enough to eke out some success. The game’s numerous cut scenes can all be skipped (prepare to make friends with that load screen), the otherwise repetitive tutorials can be deactivated, and whenever you die, the game makes a point of offering a restart with all experience intact. Some will enjoy the challenge and say the game’s difficulty curve is self-correcting; the less charitable will call it lazy design to the point of maddening difficulty.

In fact, the most important component to enjoying Dead Rising is a willingness to accept failure. It’s not accidental that simply meeting survivors is worth experience and a completely separate boost is rewarded for actually saving them. Sometimes you just run out of weapons before you can save Simone from the third mob of twenty zombies that she just had to wander through. You don’t have to give up, there’s a pair of Japanese tourists across the mall you just might be able to save instead.

These factors, combined with the fact that Frank eventually grows into a zombie murder machine, make it difficult to pigeonhole Dead Rising into a single genre. At the beginning, it feels like an unpleasantly realistic zombie apocalypse sim, and by the end it feels much like an action game.

However, it’s the middle, the part where Frank narrowly survives every encounter, and the game becomes a war of attrition against the endless zombie hordes, that the game feels like survival horror done well. It’s never quite scary, but it’s disturbing, gory, atmospheric, and tense. Games like the Silent Hill series approach horror through dread, the terrible feeling that something is wrong that you can’t quite sense. Dead rising arrives at horror through terror, the shock of acknowledging that the disemboweled clown is still laughing.

Knee Deep in the Dead
Dead Rising is the first game since Grand Theft Auto 3 where you can rediscover the simple joys of beating a dead hooker. That she’s shambling toward you, rotting gently, just happens to make the act a little more justifiable.

Though a surprisingly large portion of the game boils down to pathfinding through the zombie hordes (weapons have limited durability, so you’ll fast learn to save them for times of need), the melee combat is one of the game’s strong features. Frank will auto-aim at the closest target for easy zombie disposal, but this can be instantly overridden by pressing in a direction as you attack, just in case you think you know better. Also, even though weapons don’t last forever, virtually every object in the mall can be picked up and wielded in an arguably threatening manner (some are more hilarious than others). So, if you have the weapons and the time, it’s a real pleasure to just cut down hordes of the undead.

That’s not to say it’s perfect, though. Frank isn’t too worried about the health of the survivors, and sometimes the autotargeting will result in a Gallagher-esque moment with the survivor’s head. While this will prove frustrating for completionists looking to save as many people as possible, for the most part, the loss of human life has very little game impact.

There’s also the problem that the game automatically selects your next inventory item when an equipped weapon breaks. This means that you’ll be hewing limbs from walking corpses one moment, and then accidentally chugging a gallon of health-restoring milk the next. It’s not a big deal when you’re loaded for bear, but sometimes that was your last weapon and you’ll miss that health in the next couple of minutes.

Ranged combat is more problematic. Though simply tapping the attack button with a firearm still exploits the auto-aim system, it’s a well-known fact that zombies (and, well, everybody else) are particularly susceptible to brain injuries. Unfortunately this calls for manual aiming from a first person perspective. This would be a welcome feature, but entering the mode roots Frank to the spot and always defaults to a particular firing angle. While the former problem is pretty much endemic to survival horror games, the latter is particularly annoying because sustaining damage snaps Frank out of the first person perspective and ruins any effort you’ve made with the touchy aiming controls. Unfortunately, Psychopath AI attacks rapidly and with unerring aim, so you’ll end up simply eschewing guns for most of those encounters.

Things to do in Willamette
There are a lot of scripted events in Dead Rising, but only one is mandatory. The goal of Dead Rising is to reach a helipad to catch a ride out of the mall after 72 hours of game time. Frank can do this with fifty survivors in tow and full knowledge of the zombies’ origin, he can cower on the helipad for 72 hours, or he can dress up like Agent 47 of Hitman fame, hop in a parked car, and run over 53,594 zombies (achievement unlocked!).

There’s also a lot of photography to be done. Experience is awarded for particularly close and well composed shots of various themes, like brutality and horror. The scoring system is more nuanced than the one in Beyond Good and Evil, but not fundamentally different. You just point, click, and reap rewards for good photos.

While the sandbox freedom will appeal to fans of Grand Theft Auto, the sandbox doesn’t make the game’s narrative any less linear. As soon as you stray from the beaten path, there’s no way to get back on without loading or starting over from scratch. It’s actually pretty easy to lose track of time while hunting down survivors and accidentally lose the thread of the plot.

Furthermore, after skipping the plot, the steady flow of survivors runs out 12 game hours before the conclusion. This means that the game has nothing left to offer except a pile of zombies and the various ways to kill them and whatever fun you can make up for yourself. If you happen to be an achievement-oriented gamer looking to satisfy a few conditions for a certain playthrough, this section of the game is best played by leaving and making a sandwich.

However, if you do manage to reach the helipad after completing the story, it is possible to unlock an additional day or two of content. However, this extended game is considerably more action-focused than the core Dead Rising gameplay, so don’t expect more of the same.

Production Values of the Living Dead
Dead Rising is one of the first games to legitimately require a HD television. Unfortunately, this isn’t because the game looks so wonderful in HD, but because the text is small unto illegibility. The game doesn’t look bad, though. The character textures look a little too flushed to be quite human, and the animation is a little stiff, but those are just about the only noticeable flaws. The game pushes dozens of zombies through crowd behavior without dropping a frame, and the open environments are navigable with surprisingly little of pop-in. The game doesn’t always look quite perfect, but it looks nice and the visuals never mar the gameplay.

The voice acting is remarkably competent. None of the characters is particularly likeable, but this is clearly intentional and the voice actors carry it well. Psychopaths in particular steal the show. While none are particularly believable, the actors play raving clowns, inbred hicks, and deranged cultists to the hilt and quite unapologetically. It’s not very real, but it is entertaining. Kudos also go to the zombies, whose constant moaning, growling, and hissing permeate the mall without being annoying or excessively repetitive.

There’s very little music in the game to speak of, but what exists is largely atmospheric. There’s some awful muzak piping through the mall PA system between announcements, and the remainder of the music is composed of variations of short loops of electric guitar and electronica. It’s never obtrusive, but it’s never memorable either.

The game’s story is no worse than the story of an average zombie film. Unfortunately, it’s no better, either. At its best, it’s hilarious, but the rest of the time you’ll be left wanting to wash your brain. There’s very little actual character development, and the game is wanting for a real protagonist (unless you count a change from living to dead). All told, it’s worth watching the cinemas once, but they’re perfectly skippable afterward.

In Short
Dead Rising is a pleasantly unique, if sometimes frustrating, take on the survival horror genre. The game is difficult to recommend to the casual gamer as a purchase due to the investment of time required before the game becomes fun. However, everyone should enjoy spending some time mashing zombies for fun and profit.

What It Costs: $30

What It’s Worth:

• To The Hardcore: $50 (buy)
• To The Genre Fan: $50 (buy)
• <To The Casual: $10 (play)/li>