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Dead Rising

Written by DM on Thursday, August 17 2006

Dead Rising is another in a long-line of zombie-themed Capcom games. It is fair to say that if anyone knows how to do the walking dead right, it is the people who brought us so many Resident Evil games that it is hard to keep track these days. Does Dead Rising rise from its grave or should it stay buried? Let’s find out. There will be no mode-by-mode in this review as there is only one mode in this game (the one you get when you hit start).

The story behind Dead Rising is surprisingly similar to the movie Dawn of the Dead. You play journalist Frank West who helicopters in to the scene of reported strange happenings at Willamette Mall, in classic small-town America. When Franks lands and proceeds downstairs, he, of course, finds the mall overrun with the walking dead, zombies. Frank’s journalistic instinct takes over, and he begins to unravel the mystery surrounding the thousands of creatures that now inhabit this middle-town America mall. Thus your adventure in Dead Rising begins.

When you begin, you have 72 in-game hours until your ride returns with his helicopter to pick you up. Everything in the game is based on these 72 hours, and the time that you have left until said 72 hours expire. Your main objective in the game is, of course, to figure out exactly what happened to the townsfolk to turn them all into zombies. Your secondary objective during this ordeal is to save as many people as you can by escorting them to the safe security room. Yes, I said escort – if escort missions are not your thing, then Dead Rising may not be for you. This game is more or less all escort missions, and until you get the hang of just how to escort survivors properly, you will find yourself failing the missions many times over. As you fend off the zombies who attack your escortees, you will find yourself injuring the survivors with collateral damage – it in inevitable. Thankfully, there is no bonus or penalty for the health of the survivors when they arrive in the safe room.

Dead Rising, to put it bluntly, has two main drawbacks. The mission system and the save point structure. Both of these aspects of the game take some getting used to, to say the least. Keep in mind that Capcom designed Dead Rising to be played through at least three or four times, and they make no secret of this.

The save system DR utilizes is confusing at best, in true Capcom fashion, there are only certain points on the map where one can save his or her game. In Dead Rising it is in bathrooms and on couches, which are interspersed through the various sections of the mall. The problem arises after the save process is completed; you get an option to either continue the game or, “save status and quit.” This second option has been the downfall of many a gamer in Dead Rising. It sounds like the game saves your progress and lets you quit the game to the main menu so that you can go do what need be done in real life, right? Dead wrong. This option ends your game folks – all progress is erased and a new game begins. Your level, items, and clothing will all be there when you restart, but any survivors you have rescued and any progress you have made on the main “zombie” case will be erased. This combined with the fact that there is no option to have more than one save unless you select a completely different storage device, has lead to a multitude of forum threads claiming the game is “bugged.” In fact, it is just a very poorly worded menu choice. Simply put, Capcom has designed this game to be played through many times, as I stated earlier, and they have no reservations about designing the game around that fact.

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