Dead Rising - A Rocky Start to the Series

There's no "Dead Rising!" voice over, first sign of trouble

Dead Rising

For some reason in 2006, the creative minds at Capcom decided that although their Resident Evil franchise was alive and well, the zombie genre had more undead avenues to trek. A series that starts far from the tank controls and could appeal to a more American audience with plentiful rotten heads to crack on new modern hardware. There's a much more filmy feel to Dead rising, it's a real love letter to the 70's Romero films, such as the 1978 Dawn of The Dead, which also takes place in a mall. In my opinion, Dead Rising is more a Hollywood take on the 'Everyman saves the world' zombie game, as opposed to the superhuman feats of former S.T.A.R.S members punching boulders and fighting evil scientists who dream of world domination. That isn't to say Dead Rising is more "realistic" or even that Resident Evil is less realistic. They're both just problematic murder fantasies for at-risk youth, depending who you ask. Though I'm not asking, I'm playing, playing Dead Rising. 

Some Criticism

I'm a critical guy, I criticize a lot. Games to me have to meet certain criteria, I don't believe in giving a low score simply because a game is hard. Some games are meant to be harder than others, as long as that difficulty makes sense and is fair. If difficulty comes from poor design or unintuitive gameplay, then that's a mark against the game. I bring all this up for a reason, Dead Rising is pretty rough, Sure it's the first installment of the series, but playing through the entirety of this seemingly polished game was quite an ordeal. On the outside it looks good, though playing through the game exposed some really fun-halting quirks that put me off. It would be unfair to this game 'bad' and not be specific, so I'll take some cheese with my whine get to where it all started, the Willamette Shopping Center in Colorado.

How It All Got Started

Helicopter rides are a recurring theme, this time I'm being flown into disaster. Frank, our protagonist, is heading to the sleepy little town of Willamette Colorado, the mall to be specific. There's signs of chaos all around, plenty of reasons to turn back and do restaurant reviews instead, though I guess hardboiled photojournalist Frank West craves carnage more than chilidogs, fair enough, he's covered wars and I've already eaten my chilidogs. We're both well equipped enough. After learning the ropes of photojournalism (take photos of cool shit) and first meeting the mysterious Carlito on the rooftop, its time to head down to the actual mall and snap some more photos and interview some of the non flesh-eating residents holed up on the ground floor. At least until the barricade is breached and the living dead pour into the shopping mall, devouring the first handful of survivors In the game. Now Frank knows what's up, chicken butt. 

No, don't!

After escaping the initial onslaught, the security room is now the base of operations. We meet Otis, the security guard and DHS agents Brad Garrison and Jessica McCarney. Brad and Jessica are two of the major plot characters in the game and will be hanging around the security room to initiate missions. The rest of the time, Otis will be kind enough to call you on the radio. You haven't experienced true suffering until that little radio starts beeping. Every so often the radio will go off to alert Frank of some scoop, story relevant or just survivors. The radio cannot be skipped, if interrupted it will ring again in order to finish the message. Pretty annoying, but we've only got 72 hours before Ed returns in his helicopter, so let's start investigating. 

Getting Around The Mall

When it comes to getting around the mall, Frank is pretty slow. Photojournalism isn't a sport, so things like dodge-rolling and sprinting aren't going to happen. There's some unlockable movement abilities and possible movement speed upgrades, but those take a long time to unlock, not to mention a move like the football tackle causes a brief slowdown that leaves frank immobile just long enough to nullify any net gain in speed. There's the skateboard that I didn't use, and Frank can jump and climb up ledges. It's a mix of good and bad, but off the bat, It's damn hard point a to point b in a hurry, kind of a huge disadvantage when you're stuck in a mall full of the undead, but that presses us into the only reasonable course of action, that being action itself. 

Zombie Slayer

Capcom's Resident Evil series has slow shambling zombies that would lunge at the player in an attempt to grab/bite them. This works in a few different ways. In Resident Evil, it's possible to lure a zombie and dodge at the last moment, or secure areas entirely, great game design. Dead Rising has copied this zombie combat to some degree, though it shouldn't have. Dead Rising features MOBS of zombies that respawn, some deal small melee damage, others will tackle the player entirely, stopping the action and if my button prompts aren't successful, will do what damage that Flex Tape can't even fix. This combat would make sense in other games, but its poorly suited to the enemy counts in this game. This made the game harder, but in a random annoying sort of way. What would have made more sense, is that if certain zombies would grapple and others wouldn't, making it easy to prioritize and dispatch of choice mobs with extreme prejudice. That solves the problem of limited weapon uses too. 

This is normal

Weapons

The weapon selection in Dead Rising is a big selling point of the game. Being trapped in an American shopping mall gives the opportunity for a range of melee and ranged weapons to use. Anything from mundane to bizarre can be used to dispatch the overripe citizens of Willamette Colorado. After the initial novelty wears off, it becomes painfully clear that some weapons are better than others. It's really satisfying to one-shot a zombie with a dumbbell to the dome, but the most useful weapons are guns, knives, and the baseball bat. Guns are good for headshots, but rare. Baseball bats and knives deal crowd damage and multi knockdowns, essential for dealing with the horde. I learned the hard way that some super powerful weapons will only deal single-target damage, or are one use only. Gotta choose wisely, there's only so many inventory slots, and weapons break with use. Unless you have godlike foresight, you'll end up searching the mall like me, not good when you're strapped for time. 

I'm Going Psycho

Can't blame him

Saving survivors can be a great way to accumulate prestige points and thus unlock more skills, but not every survivor is sane. Psychopaths, the non-zombie bosses of Dead Rising offer impromptu boss fights that either may or may not be story relevant. The janky combat system of Dead Rising rewards repetition and forethought more than reflexive skill, so the retries start piling up. It would be better to tackle these maniacs with at higher player level, but leveling in this game has it's own set of problems. There's a recurring theme here, new employees require experience. This whole game could be compared to unpaid internships, get paid in experience and take those skills to a better job. I realized that rescuing all the survivors and killing all the psychos wouldn't be happening in my first playthrough, or any playthrough for that matter. 

Oh Hey, Look At The Time!

Time to get specific about time. Frank West's functioning wristwatch shows us that time is sped-up in Dead Rising, A successful playthrough of the game should take about 8 hours, I wasn't even close to this. It seems to me that the real enemy in Dead Rising isn't the zombies, psychos, or even Carlito, its the time constraints that everything is centered around. Missions and survivors all have a limited time to address, even the campaign missions. There's the possibility to fall into an inescapable fail-state that can't be mended with by simply loading an old save. I was far too deep into the 72 hour timeframe to recover the playthrough and keep going, so a complete restart was in order, nice. I would assume that a game like Dead Rising would be easier to complete for a 'C-' ending, but harder for the 'all survivor' runs or 'A+' ending, but no, the game just can't be played that way. It takes clairvoyant levels of foresight, or maybe just mindless repetition to beat this game. 

Underwhelming Finale

I've put Dead Rising on the back burner a few times in favor of other games. I really did feel like playing the game was a chore. From online forums, guides, and reviews, I deduced that beating the campaign starting at player level 0 was nearly impossible, same odds for winning with all survivors or slaying all the psychopaths. I broke the golden rule of looking at walkthroughs, but at least I didn't break my keyboard over my own head. So my final frustrating run of the campaign involved heavy use of walkthroughs to explain things, avoiding all survivors and psychopaths alike, simply waiting in the security room until the next part of the plot unfolded, all whilst my eye twitched at the constantly blaring radio. My final attempt got me the 'C' ending to the game, a higher grade than I give Dead Rising.

Done

Final Thoughts

My thoughts concluded; Dead Rising is pretty rough. The annoying design choices and lack of overall disclosure when it came to playing the game is just unforgivable in my opinion. The first 8 or so hours I spent playing this game would have been better spent power-leveling, had I known the unknowable. Dead Rising is a confused mess of conflicting activities and time constrictions, sure it's the first in the series, but it proves as a tough entry point for people that may have already bought the entire collection. Speaking of collections, I've got more to play, so until next time, Comrades.