Leveling Down

Dead Rising is a campy, horror game filled with fun – what other game allows for smashing zombies with random things in a mall?

When a friend saw that I was playing Dead Rising this weekend, he asked me what it was. Apparently it doesn’t have the mainstream popularity of a game like Gears of War or even Elder Scrolls: Oblivion so hopefully I can enlighten everyone about why this game is so good. It has its own cult following for several reasons.

If a gamer were to ask me what Dead Rising is like, I’d probably best sum it up in one sentence: It feels like Grand Theft Auto and Resident Evil combined, but in a shopping mall. The graphics engine seems very similar to the Grand Theft Auto series on the PS2, but inserted into a mall with zombies. Of course, they look sharper and clearer due to the 360, but I wouldn’t say the graphics are amazing in this game. They get the job done but it’s no Gears of War. The gameplay is again, similar to Grand Theft Auto as well – missions and such are carried out through phone communication – you need to go to point A to rescue someone or fight someone in point B, etc. It feels Resident Evil-ish since of course you’re fighting the undead, and with Resident Evil being a Capcom property, it echoes forth the fact that it’s a Japanese game.

Introduction
This game is Capcom’s first original intellectual property on the XBOX 360. It comes from the guy behind the Mega Man games, and the game has a strong following because not only is it a good Japanese developed game on the 360, the premise of the game is completely different from anything else on the system (or maybe any system, for that matter). Therefore, the cult following consists of Capcom fans, Japanese games developed for the 360 fans, and game fans of the action/adventure/survival horror/humor type.

Capcom was quite surprised by the numbers that this game sold in the United States, and therefore has decided to continue releasing more games on the XBOX 360, starting with Lost Planet on January 16th. This is a big deal since Capcom is a Japanese developer, and the XBOX 360 is an American product that is doing miserable in Japan. Capcom realizes that even though the 360 is tanking in Japan, there is quite a large and profitable Western market for their games. If they continue to strongly support the system, other Japanese companies like Konami and Namco could follow. Maybe we’ll eventually see Metal Gear Solid 4 and Tekken 6 on the 360.

The chainsaw juggling clown is one of the tougher bosses of the game.

Storyline and Premise of the Game
In this game, the storyline follows a photojournalist named Frank West, who goes to some town looking for a story and finds that the town has been barricaded off and is infested with zombies. Apparently, almost the entire town of 54,000 some residents have become zombies. He asks the helicopter pilot to drop him off at the rooftop of a mall in the center of town and return there to pick him up in 72 hours. Frank wants to get some good photos and find a killer story. Upon entering the mall, he encounters people that still have not become zombies, and all of these people are dealing with the zombie infestation of the mall in their own way. Some are barricading themselves in local stores, while others are just getting drunk and waiting for their inevitable gruesome death. Throughout the 72 “game-time” hours, Frank learns about the background of why the outbreak occurs and who is responsible.

The premise behind the game is engaging – it’s timed, so throughout his 72 hours there, Frank needs to follow the storyline’s clues and pursue the villain responsible for the outbreak. At the same time, he learns of about 50 or so different people stuck in the mall that can be saved. Many of these “survivors” are quite comical: Japanese tourists, slutty high school girls, and cowards that you need to knock some sense into before they’ll come out of their own hiding place. One of the funniest guys you can save is someone who was stuck behind boxes in the backroom of one of the stores. Right after you tear all the boxes down, he thanks you and mentions how he was stuck back there for two days but is totally oblivious to what just happened to the mall. He starts walking out of there thinking he should be paid overtime, but then sees the mess of zombies right outside the store window! “Whoa! What’s going on here?”

Besides people stuck in the mall that need to be saved, there are also people that have gone crazy in the mall – they are the psychotic human “mini bosses” of the game. For example, one boss in the game is a man with his two sons that have decided to hunt the zombies with the sniper rifles. Not only do they shoot at the zombies, they also decide to shoot at humans as well. One boss is a chainsaw juggling clown who has gone crazy, and another one is the manager of the supermarket that affixes all sorts of pointed objects to his shopping cart to run you over when you enter his store because he’s afraid you’re going to make a mess.

The game becomes a somewhat stressful time management game because you need to balance out pursuing the main story with who to save and bring back to the “safety zone,” a sealed off portion of the mall that the remaining survivors have set up. You can play through the game and follow only the storyline without saving any of the people that need help, or you can try to save everyone without even following the storyline. Obviously you can do both, but on the first playthrough of the game it’s pretty much impossible because Frank is weak in the beginning of the game so it will take him more time to rescue people. What’s also funny is that you can skip both the storyline and saving people to just have fun in a mall infested with zombies.

With this many zombies, maybe it’s time to go bowling?

Game Mechanics
Weapons
How can one have fun in a mall infested with zombies? Well, one of the main selling points of this game is that anything in the mall can be pretty much used as a weapon. The zombies are slow, but they have numbers. It’s possible to find your whole TV screen with hundreds of them stacked. What do you do then? You walk into any store and look for weapons! You can walk into a sports store and pick up a baseball bat, a hockey stick, a bowling ball, etc. You can walk into a toy store and pick up a giant stuffed bear or a nerf-like ball shooter. If you’re lucky you can walk into a hardware store and walk out with a sledgehammer, hedge clippers, or even a chainsaw. Many of the 250+ items that can be used as weapons in this game are more for novelty purposes. You can pick up a parasol at a food court table and just charge into a group of zombies with it open, knocking them all over. A shopping cart also does the trick. With weapons like hockey sticks and bowling balls, it’s interesting because not only can you melee with them, you can also use them as projectile weapons. With the hockey stick, you can use pucks to clear through the zombies, or with a bowling ball, you can pretty much just roll it into any zombies that are lined up in a row to knock them over.

However, if you want to actually beat the game, you need to clear through hundreds of zombies efficiently and effectively. There are really only a few preferred weapons of choice for me. The first type of weapon is any long bladed item. These do great against zombies since they are good at crowd control. Katanas, swords, axes, and machetes slice zombies in half with one hit. The longer bladed items like katanas and swords that kill in one hit also can kill multiple zombies as well. Faced with a throng of zombies that I need to go through, my first instinct is to equip my katana/sword and slice through the mess. My other weapon of choice would be the chainsaw type weapon. Similar to the bladed weapons, the chainsaws kill in one hit as well. I was never a fan of the guns in the game, because they had lousy crowd control. It’s funny because not only do melee weapons do a better job with crowd control, they do more damage so they are more effective against all of the bosses in the game.

There is plenty of clothing for Frank to try out in the mall.

Clothing
Another big draw to the game is that you can wear various clothing attire in the mall’s different stores. You can walk into a men’s suit store and put on a slick suit, or even a women’s store to put on a floral dress. It’s pretty disturbing to wear a dress, but the option is there. What’s also funny is that you can put on masks, or even put masks onto the zombies. Walking around with a teddy bear head on makes the beating up of zombies quite humorous. Putting on masks and head pieces onto zombies makes them blind, so they’ll just walk around bumping into one another since they can’t see.

Picking up zombies and throwing them at others is no problem once Frank levels up enough.

Leveling
When I first played this game, I was having a lot of trouble since there’s a leveling up system in this game. You start at Level 1 but can level all the way up to Level 50. As you level up, your life goes up, your damage goes up, the number of items you can carry goes up, and you learn a bunch of different moves. Your level carries over from game to game, so if you level to say, 35 in your first game, you can start a new game as level 35. This makes subsequent play-throughs much easier, allowing you to rescue more people since you’re a lot stronger early on. That’s why I played through the game twice – the first time was my learning experience and just playing through it blindly. The second time was a “max run session” where I was maxed out and rescued pretty much every human in the mall.

The new skills you learn are great also. At level 1 you have no skills and are quite weak barehanded. As you learn more skills you become a crazy barehanded fighting machine. The simple jump kick knocks zombies over as you’re trying to run by. Then you start learning wrestling moves like suplexes, face plants, and you can even lift up a zombie over your head and throw it at a crowd of zombies. One of the funniest wrestling moves you learn is when you grab a zombie and hurl him in a direction, knocking over anything before it slams into a halt. It’s basically the move that wrestlers do when they throw some guy off the ropes or into a turnbuckle. Martial arts skills also get acquired – jump kicking off of walls, karate chops that sever heads and limbs, and somersault kicks that decapitate all become part of your skillset. Eventually, you’ll learn to football tackle, or even a double lariat where you use your arms like clubs and knock zombies out as you spin in a circle. The most gruesome move you learn is the gut rip, where you reach into a zombie’s stomach and pull out its guts, killing it instantly. Pretty much, as I got closer and closer to the max level, I began using weapons less and my own moves more. It was just a lot more fun going barehanded against them.

The way to level up in this game revolves around Prestige Points, the experience point system of this game. There are two main ways to get them: the first one revolves around rescuing people. For every person you can rescue and bring back to “the safehouse” you’ll get lots of PP. The other way revolves around the use of your camera, since you’re a photojournalist.

This photo should score some high points – that human is dangling and will fall to her death soon.

Photography
The photo-taking element of the game is pretty in-depth. There are five different types of photos you can take in the game: horror, brutality, drama, erotic, and outtake. Most of the pictures you take will probably be horror, since zombies tend to be classified under horror. Of course, there are the four other types. You can get a nice brutality shot if you get a zombie’s head blown off. Drama is usually taking pictures of the survivors when they are scared or feared, erotic ones are women that are scantily clad (or apparently have large breasts), and outtakes are amusing pictures. Erotic pictures are quite rare – I was surprised to take a picture of one of the survivors and it came out erotic because even though she was wearing a sweater, her breasts were large and the game highlighted them in the photo to tell me it was an erotic photo. That had me laughing for a bit. I enjoyed taking funny pictures too – zombies wearing masks, survivors making funny expressions, etc. The game really gets you to appreciate photo taking since the quality of the photo determines how much PP you get. The better the shot, the more points you’ll get so you’re encouraged to zoom in whenever you can. Besides just taking random pictures throughout the game, there are several “awesome shots” peppered in the game that you need to snap quickly to get a ton of PP. For example, if you give food to one of the survivors, he’ll burp right after – take a snapshot of this to get a lot of points since it’s a special “outtake” photo.

As if zombies weren’t enough – you have to eventually deal with crazy cultists too.

Achievement System
In some games, the Achievement System is an afterthought and sloppily put together. However, in Dead Rising, it’s really been well implemented. In other games, you’ll get Achievements for simply beating each level, but in Dead Rising, these Achievements really are something to be proud of. All 50 Achievements in this game are each only worth 20 points, for a total of 1000 points. Some of these Achievements are much more difficult to get than others, and I felt they should have been weighed different amounts. Still, I’m having a lot of fun trying to get as many as I can.

Here are some of the 50, for example:
-Clothes Horse: Change into all costumes available in the mall.
-Karate Champ: Defeat at least 1,000 zombies barehanded.
-Zombie Road: Walk over 33 feet on the backs of zombies using the Zombie Ride.
-Tour Guide: Escort 8 survivors at once.
-Costume Party: Place novelty masks on at least 10 zombies.
-Gourmet: Eat all types of food available in the mall.

A lot of these Achievements are quite detailed, and made me do things I didn’t even know were possible. A lot of the names for these Achievements are quite witty and the tasks themselves can often be amusing. I was laughing out loud for a while when the zombies clumped together, and I just climbed onto one and walked all along their backs to get the Zombie Road Achievement. Costume Party had me snapping photos left and right since I had several zombies all wearing Servbot hats and bumping into one another.

This is not a cutscene – there really are that many zombies surrounding you.

Final Thoughts
When I initially played this game for the first hour or two, I was stressed and frustrated by how difficult the game was since I was dying left and right. If I wasn’t dying, the people I wanted to save were dying as I was overwhelmed by the immense size of the mall and getting lost all over the place. I continued to stick with it though, and after a few hours of play, I understood how I should be playing it and it went on to become one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in a while. The game is deep and it has a steep learning curve. But once you learn it, the game becomes second nature and quite enjoyable. The mix of comical gore, emphasis on photography, the combat engine, and a well scripted storyline had me addicted. When I was playing the game all weekend, I felt the similar addiction that I get when I’m burning through a season of 24. I couldn’t stop and wanted to keep going.

However, there are still a few problems with the game that prevent it from getting a perfect grade in my book. The first problem is the bugginess of the clothes system. Basically, it’s very easy to try on a piece of clothing, but often times you can no longer take it off if you try on a different piece. It’s like the code for clothing isn’t robust enough to manage putting on a certain piece of clothing, then another piece that occupies the same spot, and then taking the piece off. The second problem I had was the AI of the survivors you had to rescue. Their AI was very frustrating because you’d try to lead them somewhere and they wouldn’t move how you wanted them to. The AI of these humans is probably enough to get people to stop playing this game because it’s that frustrating. However, I learned that by giving these humans shotguns and katanas, they could fight their way (albeit slowly) through to where I wanted them to go. Complicated waypoints just didn’t work for them. I had to have them plow through everything.

All in all, I give the game a B+. The game is deep and satisfying enough if you can handle it, but at the same time it’s not a must-play game for everyone since the graphics aren’t amazing, and certain frustrations of the game can deter people from playing it through to completion.

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