Dead Rising Review (Xbox 360) By pogothemonkey

8 / 10
29 Sep 2006 at 12:40

Review by: pogothemonkey

Now this game is a tough one. And I must say, the more and more I play it, the more and more im thinking it’s the ‘marmite’ sort of game. You truly do love or hate it. I know many a people who have been looking forward to this game for so long, but now just cant stand to play it anymore. I myself found that I was in this very boat. The key was to just plug away and get it done.

The Clever thing about Dead rising is the way that the game is so open and free in what you can do. To unlock all of the achievements available for the game, one would need to play through the game several times. Its is during my current third run through of the game, that its really started to shine. You play Frank. A Photographer who is flown into the city with a hell of a lot more questions then answers. As you fly over you see through the lens of your camera many zombies roaming the streets, attacking any humans that they can find. It’s a very clever way to start the game off, and keeps an element of curiosity along with story.
You land upon the top of the mall, and the helicopter pilot tells you he will be back here in 72 hours to come pick you up. This is where your adventure starts. You have 72 hours to discover as much as you wish of this strange zombie outbreak.

This is where the part of the game I enjoyed most comes into play. If your looking at dead rising for a story driven action title, you’ve got one. But on the other hand, you can do whatever you want to do. Personally I was struggling quite a bit at the start of the game. The zombies were very very tough and I found it hard to know where to go and what to do. I was trying to follow the story and keep pace, but then something happened (I wont spoil it) that didn’t allow me to continue it. So instead of sulking that I had to start all over again, I decided that instead I would just wander around, killing zombies here and there and helping the odd person out to safety. I found this tactic brilliant. It allowed me to work out how to get around and also made my character a lot stronger. This is the other interesting element of the game. Frank gets stronger, learns new moves, and can hold more items/or life, and you advance up in a level system. All this information is also carried over to the next game if you were to start again. I found that through developing him doing random things that passed the time, allowed me to play and enjoy the story much more thoroughly second time round.

I know this game isn’t for everyone. And I now realise that it has got a serious ice breaking period that a gamer will need to get through to enjoy. But its this style of game play with its sandbox style play that can help it appeal to a much wider audience. The game will also give the player a sense of something which a lot of games have lost these days, achievement. A bit of the old fashioned try and try again attitude will get you far in this title, and at the end of the day, any game with zombies in is always a winner. All in all a very well put together title, with enough diversity and option to not make it a linear one play only wonder.

8/10

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