My Bits and Bytes: Gore and zombies in Dead Rising

Xbox 360's Dead Rising
There's one thing that certain in this lifetime: taxes and zombies! Wait! Zombies? I may have messed up that cliché, but if that just doesn't show my love for zombies and the zombie genre, nothing will. I read a few reviews of this game before purchasing it on day one and although there were some items that I didn't like, the criticism didn't deter me from picking up a game with lots of zombie mayhem.

You start of the game flying into a city on a helicopter. You notice that the National Guard is quarantining the city but you have no idea why. Your reporting/photographer skills are all you have and you get dropped off on the roof of the mall. You have just witnessed city dwellers dying at the hands of a mysterious group of “people” and buildings and cars in flames. Then the games starts and there is no turning back.

Once the story starts, it's the usual “meet people and find clues” about what's going on storyline. The good thing about it is that the story quickly involves zombies and just like in George Romero's “Dawn of the Dead,” the zombie mayhem begins quickly and doesn't stop. Hell, within the first 10-15 minutes of the game, you witness at least 10 gory deaths caused by the zombies.

Your character is asked to go on little tasks throughout a mall and you meet trapped people within different stores. It's up to you if you want to save them or not but you're almost required to in order to level up. The maximum level you can reach is 50 but it's going to take you a LONG time to do so and will cause you one of the biggest headaches in the game.

The story takes place over 72 hours but it's not our real time. With that being said, the leveling up system requires you to play this game (or at least the first couple hours) a few times before making any real progress. I didn't mind so much because I loved finding new ways of killing zombies or earning a new skill set to take care of them without any sort of weapon.

The other problem with this game is the save feature. You can only save in bathrooms scattered throughout the mall and in the “safe” area of the mall that your comrades are located. Did I also mention that if you don't have a widescreen HD TV that the text size is almost impossible to read? I have a 36” TV and excellent vision and I can barely read the text!

The graphics, sound, story and action are all great in this game. I've enjoyed Dead Rising and trying to unlock some of the game's (almost impossible) achievements — 50000 zombie kills anyone? If you like linear games and hate repetition, chances are you probably have to rent this one. I hope that Capcom will come out with a few patches to fix some more of the frustrating parts of this game. Three out of five.