Dead Rising is a action/adventure game centered around your character, Frank West. Frank, among many things, is a journalist who gets stuck on a zombie-infested mall after flying into the city, seeking to understand what happened to the town and why everyone has become zombies.
Gameplay: 8.5
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
The backbone to Dead Rising's gameplay is finding ridiculous objects and beating/chopping zombies to death with them. These can be anything from boards, pipes, benches, shopping carts, bowling balls, knives, signs, sledgehammers, lawn mowers, soccer balls, your own spit, plants, fists, other zombies, cars... you get the idea.
As the game continues you level up by taking pictures (you're a photographer and you can earn experience by taking cool photos), killing zombies or making escorts. Your levels unlock more health, more inventory space and, best of all, new combat moves. These moves are awesome - probably the funniest thing in the entire game. Picking up a zombie over your head and throwing him into a crowd, watching them all fall over is fun. You can also do a WWF-style grapple and rope-throw (grab him by the arm and force him to run in a certain direction) and see him bowl through a bunch of zombies, knocking them all down.. I can't tell you how many times I did that and laughed.
Besides just killing zombies, they incorporate gameplay objectives usually centered around killing bosses or rescuing people from unfortunate situations. You get rewarded for finding survivors throughout the mall and helping them back to the safe room you've established.
The bad thing about escorting people is that it's often a pain in the ass. The survivors can barely use weapons, constantly get overwhelmed and make you come back to help them, don't heal on their own and some of them will walk so slowly it's easier to pick them up and carry them or hold their hand... literally. Long rant short, it'd be a lot nicer if the survivors had any ability to think on their own. Dead Rising's rescuing format is about the same as if there was a real zombie apocalypse and you tried to run a convoy of toddlers through a zombie-infested town without losing a single one.
A lot of the bosses are not enjoyable to fight, either, and you have to rely on glitches to beat them. One of the most irritating bosses, by far, are the prison escapees in the central courtyard, driving around in an army humvee with a giant turret on the back, shooting you, zombies and whoever else might show up. You have absolutely no chance at winning this battle unless you know where powerful weaponry is and manage to get the humvee stuck driving into trees endlessly because of bad programming.
Even the final boss is prone to glitches and that's actually how I won the game. The final boss is supposed to be an epic fight, and I wound up punching him in the shins until he died... rather anti-climactic.
By the end of the game, the game isn't about killing zombies anymore. There's a point where all the zombies are replaced by stronger enemies and it takes a lot of the enjoyment out of the game, forcing you to play tactically against tough enemies instead of ramming through a hoard of stammering idiots. Who doesn't like ramming through stammering idiots? It's the reason the game is appealing!
I thought the game had a really confused concept. I was fine killing zombies and finding funny stuff to do, while escorting survivors. That's all it should have been. Apparently the developers thought otherwise. If you don't care about winning, it's at least nice that if you lose the main story you can still goof around in the mall, instead of being forced to continue. So, if this is all you want to do, you can, which can be redeeming if you get sick of the later stages of the game.
Presentation: 8.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
For it's time, and even nowadays, Dead Rising looks good. It's a funny game and their zombie animations can be hysterical. Spitting in a zombie's face or putting a hat on a zombie's head that covers their eyes is awesome as they wander around and run into things.
But, holy crap, if you have anything other than a big-screen, HD TV (which was semi-common in 2007), you are going to strain your eyes like crazy from reading their microscopic text that is displayed on the screen. Horrible fail right there. Even on a big-screen TV it looks pretty small, and no adjustments were made to compensate for a non-HD feed.
Theatrics: 8.5
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
Dead Rising has some good cut-scenes, reasonably good dialogue and characters that are somewhat memorable.
It's especially great how the cut-scenes rely on what your character is wearing and you can be wearing some ridiculous clothes (like a dress and a lego man head), in a serious cut-scene. You can tell the developers had fun with the game.
Although the story is actually decent, by the end of the game you really stop caring about it. For not being that important to the game, they did well at making an engaging story.
Considering a lot of the game's dialogue is in text format, it can kill your interest because you're more focused on reading microscopic text than taking it and going.
Controls: 8.0
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
Dead Rising's controls are pretty straightforward.. buttons for jumping, attacking, cycling inventory, calling for party members, etc.
They can get a little bit goofy when using items like the skateboard, shopping cart and when trying to execute some of your attack moves. They're okay, but suffer some flaws. You'll likely wrestle against the controls a few times throughout the game.
Replay Value: 8.5
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
Dead Rising is actually a pretty long game, and it has a lot of unique achievements that seem hard to get but are fun to try getting. I played through once fully, and a bunch of other times just messing around and killing zombies. The game actually is timed, too, and a single play-through will probably yield about 20 hours.
Fun: 9.0
How much fun was the game?
Dead Rising is a fun game overall. When it first came out it was one of the rare games that was hilarious for a really long time. The worst part is easily when they try to make it a serious game - all of the reasons the game was fun are all but removed about 75% of the way through.
Like I mentioned, you can lose the main mission and still keep playing in order to goof off. I think if I pick it up again, this is what I will do, as it's the most enjoyable.
Better boss fights, more consistency in gameplay and realizing what they do well and sticking to it could have really helped this game out.
My Overall Rating: 8.6
Suggested Gaming Experience Level: Medium/Low
What kind of experience playing video games do you need to really appreciate this game?
Gameplay: 8.5
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
The backbone to Dead Rising's gameplay is finding ridiculous objects and beating/chopping zombies to death with them. These can be anything from boards, pipes, benches, shopping carts, bowling balls, knives, signs, sledgehammers, lawn mowers, soccer balls, your own spit, plants, fists, other zombies, cars... you get the idea.
As the game continues you level up by taking pictures (you're a photographer and you can earn experience by taking cool photos), killing zombies or making escorts. Your levels unlock more health, more inventory space and, best of all, new combat moves. These moves are awesome - probably the funniest thing in the entire game. Picking up a zombie over your head and throwing him into a crowd, watching them all fall over is fun. You can also do a WWF-style grapple and rope-throw (grab him by the arm and force him to run in a certain direction) and see him bowl through a bunch of zombies, knocking them all down.. I can't tell you how many times I did that and laughed.
Besides just killing zombies, they incorporate gameplay objectives usually centered around killing bosses or rescuing people from unfortunate situations. You get rewarded for finding survivors throughout the mall and helping them back to the safe room you've established.
The bad thing about escorting people is that it's often a pain in the ass. The survivors can barely use weapons, constantly get overwhelmed and make you come back to help them, don't heal on their own and some of them will walk so slowly it's easier to pick them up and carry them or hold their hand... literally. Long rant short, it'd be a lot nicer if the survivors had any ability to think on their own. Dead Rising's rescuing format is about the same as if there was a real zombie apocalypse and you tried to run a convoy of toddlers through a zombie-infested town without losing a single one.
A lot of the bosses are not enjoyable to fight, either, and you have to rely on glitches to beat them. One of the most irritating bosses, by far, are the prison escapees in the central courtyard, driving around in an army humvee with a giant turret on the back, shooting you, zombies and whoever else might show up. You have absolutely no chance at winning this battle unless you know where powerful weaponry is and manage to get the humvee stuck driving into trees endlessly because of bad programming.
Even the final boss is prone to glitches and that's actually how I won the game. The final boss is supposed to be an epic fight, and I wound up punching him in the shins until he died... rather anti-climactic.
By the end of the game, the game isn't about killing zombies anymore. There's a point where all the zombies are replaced by stronger enemies and it takes a lot of the enjoyment out of the game, forcing you to play tactically against tough enemies instead of ramming through a hoard of stammering idiots. Who doesn't like ramming through stammering idiots? It's the reason the game is appealing!
I thought the game had a really confused concept. I was fine killing zombies and finding funny stuff to do, while escorting survivors. That's all it should have been. Apparently the developers thought otherwise. If you don't care about winning, it's at least nice that if you lose the main story you can still goof around in the mall, instead of being forced to continue. So, if this is all you want to do, you can, which can be redeeming if you get sick of the later stages of the game.
Presentation: 8.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
For it's time, and even nowadays, Dead Rising looks good. It's a funny game and their zombie animations can be hysterical. Spitting in a zombie's face or putting a hat on a zombie's head that covers their eyes is awesome as they wander around and run into things.
But, holy crap, if you have anything other than a big-screen, HD TV (which was semi-common in 2007), you are going to strain your eyes like crazy from reading their microscopic text that is displayed on the screen. Horrible fail right there. Even on a big-screen TV it looks pretty small, and no adjustments were made to compensate for a non-HD feed.
Theatrics: 8.5
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
Dead Rising has some good cut-scenes, reasonably good dialogue and characters that are somewhat memorable.
It's especially great how the cut-scenes rely on what your character is wearing and you can be wearing some ridiculous clothes (like a dress and a lego man head), in a serious cut-scene. You can tell the developers had fun with the game.
Although the story is actually decent, by the end of the game you really stop caring about it. For not being that important to the game, they did well at making an engaging story.
Considering a lot of the game's dialogue is in text format, it can kill your interest because you're more focused on reading microscopic text than taking it and going.
Controls: 8.0
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
Dead Rising's controls are pretty straightforward.. buttons for jumping, attacking, cycling inventory, calling for party members, etc.
They can get a little bit goofy when using items like the skateboard, shopping cart and when trying to execute some of your attack moves. They're okay, but suffer some flaws. You'll likely wrestle against the controls a few times throughout the game.
Replay Value: 8.5
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
Dead Rising is actually a pretty long game, and it has a lot of unique achievements that seem hard to get but are fun to try getting. I played through once fully, and a bunch of other times just messing around and killing zombies. The game actually is timed, too, and a single play-through will probably yield about 20 hours.
Fun: 9.0
How much fun was the game?
Dead Rising is a fun game overall. When it first came out it was one of the rare games that was hilarious for a really long time. The worst part is easily when they try to make it a serious game - all of the reasons the game was fun are all but removed about 75% of the way through.
Like I mentioned, you can lose the main mission and still keep playing in order to goof off. I think if I pick it up again, this is what I will do, as it's the most enjoyable.
Better boss fights, more consistency in gameplay and realizing what they do well and sticking to it could have really helped this game out.
My Overall Rating: 8.6
Suggested Gaming Experience Level: Medium/Low
What kind of experience playing video games do you need to really appreciate this game?
No comments:
Post a Comment