Dead Rising... an answer to a horror fans dreams...

The game Dead Rising is loosely a survival horror game that takes place in a mall. You are a journalist who is equipped with a camera and a quirky perverted attitude. You are dropped off by hellicopter where you will begin to document what's happening for 3 days. On the third day the helicopter will return and pick you up. When you arrive at the mall you are completely shut out of whats going on and you have to do odd missions at different times in order to piece together whats happening. Conceptually one of the most amazing ideas for a game ever, but is it all it's hyped up to be? Well, when I first heard about Dead Rising I knew that I had to purchase a 360. Not only did I freak out about this game but I never stopped talking about it with my cousin Matt. We'd spend hours a day at the factory basically freaking out about how amazing it would be to go to the hardware store at the mall and pick up a chainsaw and plow through hundreds of zombies.

The game utilizes all the stores in a mall and combines it with endless amounts weird weapons and some novelty things to kill and humilate zombies with. Now it truly is amazing when you run amuck and kill zombies but there are a bunch of little things that they should have spent more time developing. The first major one is the AI in the npc victims that you have to save. When you go out in the mall you are called by the janitor who reports various locations that you should scout out because he saw someone on the monitors there. When you get to these people you have to escort them back to the security room. Sounds easy enough, but is it? NO! Well okay that's exagerating a bit much but. The AI is pretty bad, the characters don't respond well to just following Frank. In fact sometimes they stand dumbfoundedly in front of hundreds of zombies. They get stuck in weird places and etc etc etc. The only easy ones to rescue are the ones that you can carry on your back.

Now I could sit here and bash the AI in the npc's but I want to focus on the entire game. The game itself is really solid, it has a pretty weird storyline and you can tell it's by capcom because of it's strange awkward American stereotypes. There are fun little puzzles like finding a book on speaking Japanese in order to save two tourists and other things like hurrling a gumball machine into a crowd of zombies and watching them slip. You get to take photos which help you level up and get new mele combat moves and also build up strength, stamina, and health. All of these elements are great and honestly if you can get past that annoying AI and some of the really awkward storyline you have a really amazing game. Oh and the kicker is, in the fine print you can clearly see the disclaimer "in no way related to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead" haha.