Dead Rising (Xbox 360)

This is “Dawn of the Dead: The Video Game”, so much so that they had to include a disclaimer on the front disavowing any connection to George Romero or his iconic zombie movie. In it, you play Frank, a photographer who goes to Willamette Mall (the apocalypse starts in Oregon, I guess?) to investigate the strange goings-on. And what’s going on? Zombies, of course.

So, here you are in survival horror as only the 7th generation of video game consoles can produce. Once the game starts going, you basically have to use whatever items (and there are a lot of them) you can find in the mall to slog through hordes of zombies, rescue survivors in the mall, and advance the plot. And it’s pretty darn fun… Although not at first. You see, you have to level up in order to walk faster than a geriatric candidate for hip replacement, to have more than four measly bars of health (getting grabbed by a zombie will more often than not drain at least two of them), and to have kickin’ hand-to-hand combat skills so you won’t immediately die when your only weapon breaks.

Oh yes, your weapons break. That’s kind of annoying, but I guess that’s what happens when the American manufacturing base gets shipped over to China. There also are a lot of weapons you can pick up that are pretty much useless. Unless you find the idea of killing zombies with an electric guitar amusing (which, since they squeal guitar riffs when you connect, it is, kind of), you’ll be pretty much sticking with stuff like knives, chainsaws, mannequin torsos (they’re deadly, don’t ask me why) and, in the later parts of the game, machine guns. The good news is if you die – and in the early stages of the game, you will die a lot – you can start the game over with all of your experience intact.

As with all good monster movies, you will find out that the real monster is man. From time to time, you’ll have to take down various psychopathic non-zombified humans that are up to no good. Again, early on this is annoying as hell, because you’ll probably be stuck with a peashooter of a pistol that takes maybe one pixel of health off with each shot. And the game, depending on how much of the main story tasks you complete, has a multitude of different endings to enjoy.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention – the game is 72 in-game hours long, or 6 hours of gameplay. At night, the zombies become more dangerous, and all of your main and side quests occur at certain points of said 72 hours. It’s an interesting way to present the game, but it’s kind of a shame that there isn’t a sandbox mode (not counting the infinite survival mode where your health constantly ticks down) where you can just mess around.

So there you have it. It’s survival horror with not-so-bad controls and interesting gameplay. I’m kind of annoyed that the mall is somewhat unrealistic – how many malls have a big park in the middle? And where are the department stores? But the rest of the game is good, although you have to be patient at first. Also, if you’re into that kind of thing, you can run around in a dress and Mega Man helmet.

4 out of 5