Dead Rising: Review

(Xbox 360; $59.99; Rated M for Blood/Gore/Violence/Language/Partial Nudity/Use of Alcohol; capcom.com/deadrising)

(four and a half stars)

There’s only one enemy that’s more fun to kill than a Nazi in video games, and that’s a Zombie (which would mean that killing a Zombie Nazi would be the pinnacle, but I digress). Though there are no Nazis in “Dead Rising” to obliterate, there are thousands (and I mean thousands) of zombies to do away with.

Players take on the role of Frank West, adventuring photojournalist, who commissions a helicopter to take him into Willamette, CO where the national guard has barricaded all entrances and exits due to “civil unrest.”

“Unrest” is putting it mildly, “Undead” is more on point. As Frank flies overhead, he starts clicking away at the mayhem happening beneath him- school busses being overturned, helpless women being pounced on by gangs of ghouls, and children running for their lives-

It’s like Geraldo Rivera’s version of Heaven.

Frank has the chopper set him down on the roof of a shopping mall, telling the pilot to come back for him in 72 hours, where he’ll return to civilization with the story of a lifetime. And so players are trapped in a mall for 72 hours, infested with zombies.

If this sounds like the greatest movie plot of all time, you’re not alone- an explicit disclaimer in the game and on the box specifies that “Dead Rising” is not developed, approved, or licensed by the owners of George A. Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead;” but “Dead Rising” is certainly one heck of an homage to the Romero classic, though the tongue-in-cheek presentation is much more “Shaun of the Dead” than “Dawn.”

While in the mall, players are faced with moral dilemmas in progressing through the game. Should you rescue a survivor who is about to be food for the undead, or should you use the horrific moment to capture a Pulitzer-winning photograph? The choice is yours. If you decide to take the shutterbug route, the photo could net you a boat-load of experience points which go towards leveling up Frank’s speed, agility, skills, or inventory. At the same time, the death of a survivor can affect the outcome of the game, so should you choose to play Errol Flynn, it’s best to grab a weapon and jump into the fray.

Thankfully, you’re in a mall, and weapons are a dime a dozen there. Though there may a shortage of guns and swords in such a place, the most benign and commonplace objects can be used to send the undead back to the Hot Place. Pick up a stack of plates from the cafeteria and turn them into flying discs of death; toss a cash register into the face of a ghoul and tell him to keep the change; my personal favorite is to cover a doorway in cooking oil and watch the brain-deprived idiots slip and fall onto the linoleum floor (ok, that’s actually tied with hijacking a lawnmower and playing Zombie Landscaper). The point is, almost everything in the mall can be used as a weapon, and many times you’ll overlook pistols and shotguns because of how much fun you can have with just a simple soccer ball.

The 72-hour time limit imposes an interesting restriction on an otherwise free-roaming adventure. Frank must pursue story leads in a timely fashion in order to uncover the mystery of the zombie outbreak, or run the risk of a trail going cold- thereby ending the game. So, while there are plenty of side missions for Frank to complete, he must stay focused on the task at hand or else the story fails to develop and ends. There are so many side missions, and so much to do and see in “Dead Rising,” that it has been programmed to encourage multiple play-throughs of the story in order to get different endings, achieve different bonuses and unlock different extras.

The good thing is that Frank retains all of his skills and abilities during multiple runs through the game, making the core game easier to complete and leaving more time to explore and unlock. Unfortunately, to encourage progression through the game, the developers allow for only one save slot in which to save progress. The problem is that if players get into a tight bind and save the game when they are at little or no health, they effectively save themselves into a corner and have no choice but to start the game all over again.

Yeah, that’s a little infuriating.

The single-save issue aside, “Dead Rising” flourishes with tight graphics, hundreds of zombies on the screen at once with no slowdown, fantastically creepy sound, and thoroughly enjoyable gameplay. For the lovers of the undead out there, “Dead Rising” is a can’t miss experience- destined to find a place along side of the more serious zombie fare like its cousin, “Resident Evil.” Hopefully the formula will be technically tweaked and expanded into a sequel involving the survival on a “Grand Theft Auto” scale city?

We can only keep our fingers crossed.