Dead Rising

This week’s Zombie Wednesday is going to stray, just a little, from my thoughts on the Zombie MMO I would design, and take a look at one of the best Zombie games I’ve seen in a long while: Dead Rising. Taking a look at this game shows alot of the play style elements that I want in my own game, minus the shady organization giving you missions. If it can be picked up, it is a weapon or it is food.

One of the things that I love most about it is the variety of zombies. Some almost run toward you, some shamble, some barely even notice you at all until you get right on top of them, some grab at you slow, some lunge quick once you are in range, and more, and any combination of those. It shows that much can be done without breaking the traditional zombie standards.

Personally, this is the first time I’ve encountered the “Save progress but Start over” type of game. As you level and learn new tricks, you can save your game and keep going, and if you die you have the option of loading that save and losing everything you’ve done since then, or saving your character progress and starting back at the beginning. This method results in some odd happenings sometimes. My brother, for example, was playing and got to a point where the main character is kidnapped and all his possessions, including clothes, are taken. The result: when he started the game from the beginning, all the opening cut scenes featured our hero wearing only his boxer shorts.

All in all, the game is great. The only thing it lacks is multi-player, but rumors abound that it might be coming in the Platinum Edition of the game or as downloadable content. If you love zombies, the game is worth it, even at twice the price.

2 comments

  1. That save mechanic is what finally drove me from the game, cursing Capcom all the way.

    At the beginning, it doesn’t hurt so much to just restart. If you’ve gotten 90% of the way through the main quest though, having to restart just blows. To make it even more interesting, there are points in the game so time dependent that you can quickly find yourself caught in a situation where you have no choice but to start over late in the game.

    Dead Rising is a lot of fun, but the save feature is its Achilles heel.

  2. Yeah, I’m having issues with the save mechanic… but then again, I’m not currently trying really hard to solve the game. I’m mostly running around killing zombies.

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