Review: Dead Rising (360)

It's important to break that to you as soon as possible. If you've watched so many zombie films that you can actually remember which is which, this can't satisfy you anywhere near as much as you hope it will - it's possible that no game ever will - but from the previews, the screenshots and even the demo, it felt like it might.

The main problem, to sum it up early, is that you never feel like you are struggling to survive. You never feel like you are in real, terrible danger. You just feel like a boy scout sent to do a few things, grab a few pictures for your scrap-book and be home in time for tea. The "few things" you're sent to do might involve undead genocide on a massive scale, or even murdering people who haven't taken well to the situation, but the point still stands. When designing this game, it should have been the first thing concentrated on and, while it is clear that Capcom thought about it, they didn't approach it from the correct angle.

The angle they did approach it from might even make it worse. Presumably to represent some attempt at reality, it is only possible to have a single save slot, so saving covers everything you've done before to prevent you going back. There are obvious problems: you can save in a situation impossible to recover the game from and reloading nearly always requires massive amounts of back-tracking. If you die, it's game over with the choice to start from scratch (not tempting when you're already hours into the game) or reload, complete with the walk back to where you died. If it happens a couple of times, you'll almost certainly get a little fed up and run back, ignoring the zombies - and it works. You can run through unscathed; and once you start ignoring zombies, the feeling of danger is gone and the horror aspect of the game goes with it, leaving just bosses to fight and survivors to rescue.

It's hard to work out which is more dislikable. Is it boss encounters - fighting psychopathic humans strong enough to take twenty or thirty bullets and eventually killing them by exploiting accidental AI flaws? Or is it rescuing survivors? They might have been bright enough to survive the initial onslaught, but when it comes to escorting them, they are utterly dumb and make life as difficult as possible. It might be satisfying getting them back alive but it can't be denied that the gory cut-scenes of them being killed and mauled are also pretty pleasing - they deserved it, the idiots.

Or is the most annoying thing the time schedule it's all held together with? In the 72 hours you're in the mall, set things happen at set times - a certain survivor will snuff it at 7.26pm and if you don't get to them before that, tough. The same goes for the missions - get sidetracked and the mission expires, and that's it. No more missions unless you reload, which is incredibly annoying until you realise something - you're not meant to do it all in one go. Levelling up is done by getting points: kill zombies, take photos and rescue survivors, and after you finish the game the first time, all your levelling up is kept. The second time through, it becomes a lot easier. The third time, rescuing survivors doesn't seem such a chore and it really starts to make sense as a game.

You don't have to replay to experience some great things about the game, though. The opening, for one, is a great way to get it all going. The character Frank is probably the most well-rounded to be created in a game; he's understandable and realistic even if he is a selfish git. Taking photos and documenting the carnage (and cleavage, those crazy Japanese) works well. The obvious bit, killing zombies, is great fun, especially when combined with the large (although not vast) range of weapons and items to use on them - each unique and, together, adding a humorous, quirky tone to the proceedings. Anyone that has enjoyed a zombie flick will get at least a bit of entertainment here, if only from the little dance Frank does when changing his outfit.

Unfortunately that doesn't make the annoyances (unreadable text in standard resolution, awkward but bearable controls), the structure and all the other problems fade away as they affect everything. There is every possibility that Dead Rising might start appearing high on favourite game lists, though. Work at it, replay it, go for all the achievement points and you might fall in love... but it needs effort. Don't put any effort in and this is just too flawed and you won't get anything you couldn't get from the demo alone. Like many zombie flicks in history, this is for a cult audience only. It's a genuine shame but it just isn't very good.

Rating: 6 / 10

Words by Andrew Revell