Dead Rising - Xbox 360

I know I'm late to the party with this one, but better late than never. This game has been on my radar every since it was released with the 360. I was pretty excited about this game, there's nothing like killing tons of zombies. I enjoyed Burn zombie Burn and Zombie Apocalypse, so this was more of that with more on the side and topped with a little more.



So in the end, I probable hyped the game too much in my head, being so long and so many people raving about the game. I just had so many things that I didn't like about the game. So let me list them in Goods and Bads. MM, proper engrish makes I happy.




The Goods

1. I really enjoyed the sandbox layout of the game. The go anywhere in the mall and use just about everything has a weapon or an item to enhance your performance. Just like the GTA's its always fun to frig around and blow shit up, plus killing zombies.

2. The humorous and inventive ways to kill zombies. I thought the shower head was one of the more useless items until the very end of the game when I stabbed a zombie in the head with it and it showered blood from the nozzle.

3. (This is a double edged sword for me) I appreciate the new game play mechanic, trying something new with giving a time frame to have all this stuff happen. It's a great way to tell a story and push a sense of urgency on the player.

4. I did enjoy being able to carry over my stats if I died..... (See the bad #4)


The Bads.

1. Exactly what I said for the Goods in number 3 is also why I dislike it. Yes I appreciate what they were trying to do, but I don't like timed missions. This whole game and all its missions are one big TIMED mission. Like GTA, I would avoid the timed missions like the plague unless I had to do them. I just don't like being pushed in my game play, I like taking my time and exploring these sandbox type games.

2. The inventory box had me shouting at the TV more than once. Not its setup or how anything is displayed. For example, I would have in my inventory a knife, orange juice(healing item) and a book (the books boost your abilities with items,etc) I would be slicing through a group of zombies so when the action gets fast and your trying not to get hit or swarmed, all of a sudden your knife breaks and it automatically goes to the next item in line. Which in many cases was my healing item or that damn book. So often in the middle of battle he would stop and "MMMMMM" over the book while surrounded by zombies. Resulting in me dieing and doing it all over again. That or I would drink my precious healing item while I had full life. This was infuriating.



3. I didn't feel the controls were naturally laid out. I mean all controls for every game has an adjustment period, that's normal. But even to the end of the game, it would do things that I didn't mean him to do, move , punch, jump, use. It all resulted in me going, "NO NOT THAT YOU FRIKKEN IDIOT!!!". Perhaps I should have checked the controls and see if I could map them to different buttons. But I didn't, I don't think I ever did that for any game, besides invert the Y axis that is.

4. I didn't enjoy that when I did die I had to restart the whole damn thing again. So at some point I said fuck all you survivors and the story and I just explored the mall and all it had to offer.


IT was when I took that approach to the game, it started to become fun again. I rescued people if I came across them or tried too resuce them, the AI in the game is horrible. Sometimes they would be great, other times it was horrible and I said screw it to quite a few people who didn't listen to me constantly pounding on the command button to ,"FOLLOW ME".


So in that respect this game is just like the horror movies. If you go out of your way to save someone, 9 times outta 10, I ended up dead. So my moral side was wanting to rescue everybody, but getting so frustrated with it all to the point that I wasn't having fun. So after I said screw it, you can all die I began enjoying the game again. But doing that the story became lost and I didn't know what caused what or why things happened.

So I enjoyed the game in parts and disliked it in other parts. Knowing what I know now, when I heard that Deadrising 2 was coming out. I was sure I was going to get it. But if it has that same time game play, then I would have to say No to this title. It was a fun little romp, but the time mechanic just makes me angry.

Here is a trailer for Dead Rising 2