DEAD RISING REVIEW

FORMAT: Xbox 360
MAKER: Capcom

I have often fantasised about running amok in a shopping centre after hours, and thanks to THQ’s Dead Rising, that’s now a reality. Of course, the fact that said shopping centre is infested with thousands upon thousands of mindless zombies just makes it that wee bit more fun.

You are Frank West, a photojournalist stranded in a shopping mall absolutely teeming (and we mean to the wall) with zombies out for your brain. There’s three days ’til your ride out arrives, which gives the game its real-time 72-hour timeframe.

Comparisons to Resident Evil are inevitable, but whereas Resident was dark and ominous with the odd zombie here and there, Rising puts you up against literally thousands of the creatures, and it’s the sheer volume of the un-dead that creates the game’s biggest hurdle.

biggest hurdle. It’s gory, ridiculous and oddly amusing making your way around the giant mall thinking up new ways to take down your opponents. The missions are wide and varied, and although you think things would become repetitive, the scope of the place and variety of things to ‘play’ with is immense.

Naturally, being a photographer’, you can also take pics, and we came up with some particularly bizarre erotic snapshots with a certain brain-challenged secretary.

Just like the characters, though, you don’t need a brain to play this game, though a bit of lateral thinking does help. For example, health is replenished via food and drink available from the very US-centric food courts and outlets. However, you can increase the health value of foods by, say, heating them up in a microwave or blending stuff together. There are also a bunch of bonuses and modes, including the particularly scary ‘zombait’, which turns you into, well, walking ‘zombie bait’. We also got the sense that the zombies did get more powerful after dark, though you can pick up additional skills along the way via books and other tid-bits, including how to drive cars, pedal a bike and even learn other languages in order to communicate with that Swedish hottie who’s trying to gnaw your arm off.

The zombies themselves aren’t terribly hard to kill, bit again it’s the number of them. Almost every single one is unique, and kudos go to the developers for coming up with such a diverse range of feet-shufflin’ folk.

There is also an impending sense of peril and doom, helped along by some A-class voice acting and super-realism. The graphics are gorgeous, as you would expect, with the main characters in particular, extremely life-like. The frame rate rarely, if ever, bogs down, even when you’ve got hundreds of people crowded into the screen.

Likewise, the sound effects are some of the best we have ever heard. In particular, the weapons are spot on, with a resounding ‘thwack’ of a mannequin to the head echoing sweetly through what equates to a Retravision Superstore. The soundtrack is more atmospheric and perhaps not quite on par with the effects, but it’s broken up nicely with elevator music, an ironic contrast to the mayhem that ensues.

There are lots of camp and kitsch references to zombie lore and George Romero, so fans are in for a treat, and there is so much detail, unlockable modes and Easter eggs that’ll you’ll shut up for days. Allegedly, there are multiple endings too, though we got nowhere near that during our 15 hours of playtime.
If you want something unique and just good ol’ fashioned fun to play, give Dead Rising a shot, but beware, you just might become a zombie yourself. It’s that addictive.