Dead Rising

This game is really something else. I mean, technically speaking we've come a long way. Up until now, I didn't think I'd ever see so many zombies on screen at once. I'm talking hundreds. So many in fact that you literally have to walk on their heads and shoulders when they're filling up a service tunnel wall to wall.

I love the fact that you can use pretty much anything you can find in the game's shopping mall setting to end these miserable creatures lives. Believe me, you haven't lived until you beat the living crap out of a zombie with a giant salmon or even a gumball machine. You can dispose of these rotten carcasses in dozens of different ways and at the very least, it never gets old even after you've killed over fifty thousand zombies. The control scheme is well mapped, even though it could get a little haphazard when you have to do something in a hurry. Fatal Frame fans will love shooting pics with the camera, which adds a pretty fun element to the game.

Graphics and sound are top notch. The cinemas use the in-game engine and thankfully, the game has top-notch voice acting that won't make you cringe like Resident Evil. When you're standing in a zombie infested area, you can hear them growling all around you thanks to some superb surround sound. All the weapons make great sound effects that sound pretty accurate to what they should or would sound like.

Now, while this game is a lot of fun, it's not without its problems. It may get frustrating to some because of its ill planned save system and game clock. It's hard to explain but sometimes you can make a lot of progress, only to literally ruin your entire game because you weren't at a certain place at a certain time. And the save system should've enabled some sort of autosave function, which it sort of has but not the way it should. Also, the AI of the survivors can be pretty clunky sometimes and will do questionable things when you're trying to get them to safety.

There's one problem that this game has which I'm not sure if it affects everyone the same way. The in-game text is really small. Now, I don't have an HDTV at the time of this writing so I don't know if that's where the problem lies but the text is so small that it's really hard to read. Couple this with the fact that a lot of the time, important information is conveyed to you through these text messages and it's entirely possible to miss vital points of info because you just can't read it. Regardless, it's still an inexcusable goof on the part of the developers.

In the end, this game is a lot of fun but I think that people won't fully grasp how to play the game correctly until the first run through. After ending the game, I was able to enjoy it even more the second time around, not to mention that I've saved nearly everyone.

This game is a definite purchase and has great replay value. I didn't even mention the unlockable infinity mode, where you try to stay alive for as long as possible.

Zombie flesh eating greatness at its best

RRRR