Dead Rising (2006)

Beat overtime, ending at level 30. After playing Dead Rising 2, I took this game off my wishlist, deeming it not worth paying for. So I played it for free on xbox gold. It had the same problems as 2 and much of my time playing was swearing: “No don’t pick that up/do that your moron”, “Get the Jesus up there”, “Fuck sakes don’t get grabbed”, “Move god damnit”, “What the hell are you doing over there!?”. Clunky controls, irredeemable time limits, stupid quick time events, and escort quests everywhere. Most of the game was frustrating but it was quite a different experience playing on console instead of PC.

I died in the tutorial because the QTE to get out of zombie grabs was shown in the slow text crawl on the bottom of the screen, instead of front and center where I was looking. Well that was not game over as I just woke up in the safe room. The weapons I found most useful were the hunting knife, lead pipe and 2x4, because of their speed. The pipe and wood had the optimal balance of speed and range, though the knife was a bit more risky with less range. They were great for just clearing a path. The sledgehammer at the beginning could last much longer but it was slow and risky, while the standard attack had very short range. The nightstick was another common weapon, but its normal attack has terrible range, so the charge attack was better. The handgun was good for clearing out zombies if you had a safe distance, but not good for moving through them. I focused on the cases fighting Carlito with handguns. The shooting controls were not good. I changed it to arcade but that proved to be a bad idea because of using the same thumb to aim and shoot. Why can’t right trigger be shoot and left trigger be aim like a normal shooter? So I beat that and rescued a couple survivors. I tried to get back to the security room from the main entrance, fighting very carefully with only 1 hp only to find the door welded shut. God damnit. Had to go the long way around through the park leading 3 survivors when the convicts in the jeep showed up. What the hell, how is this fair? I did manage to run past and get those to the safe room. Then I messed up the next case and had to reload a backup save.

I had resolved to kill those convicts figuring I would get rid of them for good to make future travel safer. It took quite a few tries and at one point I looked for guns and went to the gunstore only to get shotgunned to the face. Ok so knife and handgun it is. I almost killed 2 of them by just running around knifing, but it was very random how well I performed. I then decided to hang around the trees and got them stuck for easy pistol kills. Then I took the heavy machine gun, mowed down the gunstore owner, then beat Carlito 2nd fight in seconds. But this turned out to be a dead end series of events because I did not have enough time to get the medicine, even though I owned the store manager with my shotgun. So I had to replay that entire day and looked online to see other options. Oh those shutters blocking the way to the Carlito fight were up now so I did not even have to take the long way around. And there is an easy smg there in the fountain. Very good. Took a few tries to beat Carlito this time because the smg is so much weaker than the HMG, that and the terribly slow aim speed. Then I think I did the medicine, killing the store manager with smg. Then finally went back to beat the convicts again and use the HMG to kill the gun store owner. From then on I kept stocked up on shotguns as much as I could. I killed the fat cop psycho with shotgun and had several women following me back to the safe room, but 1 died somehow. I did appreciate the ability to make survivors stand in a specific spot, so I could work on clearing out zombies rather than trying to rush through and hope they don’t be incompetent. The fight with Isabella on her motorcycle was a pain and took a couple tries, because of the slow aiming speed again. I ended up baiting her into running me over, then shotgunning her from a pile of stuff. I hated the dodge move done by double pressing movement stick, because of the amount of times that I accidentally performed it; same reason I hate double pressing left or right to run. Near the end I beat the cultist leader; a fair bit of shooting but had to finish him with knife. His sweet sword lasted me the rest of the game and killed quite a few soldiers. I did the bomb mission in the tunnels and barely managed to scrape by on the 1st attempt. My truck was wrecked and I had to go on foot with only 1 hp and no healing items, while Carlito tried to run me over and the zombies were thick. I did not think I would do it and resolved to take that bastard Carlito down with me. I unloaded shotguns into Carlito’s truck until it blew up and he ran away, then got a level up from; oh that sweet free healing. Killed the butcher no problem with shotguns.

By the end I went around killing soldiers until my inventory had that sword and every other slot filled with machine guns. I tried to shoot down that chopper in the park. My 1st attempt took so long that I failed the game. Then I looked up online how to do it because I was having an incredibly difficult time with the atrociously slow aim speed. Ended up having to change the controls back to classic. It took several tries but I finally shot it down, then went on the finish overtime mode. Ended up with about 15 survivors saved, 4800 zombies killed. The tunnel part with the anti zombie perfume was a bit annoying so after a while I started killing them. I had enough ammo to clear the tunnels; like 7 or 8 machine guns with 150 ammo each, so enough to kill maybe 1000 zombies. Plus all the melee weapons. I ended up going down to 1 hp though with some melee fighting and having to be extra careful at the end. Final boss fight against the tank was done without me taking a single hit, but then I died in the fist fight after. Got it the next try, still that fist fight was awkward.

Then I tried infinity mode. I liked the lack of rushing around with the only goal being minimizing damage and finding food to stay alive. It meant I could play more at my own pace, and spend more time clearing out zombies and getting familiar with each area and weapon. I started off by going for the smg in the fountain, then did the entrance plaza. The pyro psycho was there and I killed him with my smg; he really made a mistake when he tried to get past a group of zombies with acetylene tanks. I got a health book to boost healing items but I did not bother to find out where to get the other. I went from store to store looking for food and just waiting around for my health to tick down until I needed to eat. Then to the foot court where I killed Carlito with smg, which was a very easy battle. I stayed there a long time eating the food but decided to save the big stash of wine for later, so moved up to wonderland. There I killed the clown. I did not have enough bullets to kill him, so I lured him into a store and corner camped him with knife and katana. Then I went into the north construction area and made my way to the gun store to get a sniper rifle and load up on shotguns. Then went into the big hardware store and fought the psycho who used machete and dynamite. He was a pain in the ass and I took a lot of damage, but I got him with a fair few shotgun blasts. Then I climbed up on the shelves and waited for him to appear. Got a few sniper shots off and finished him with smg. Then I stepped out into the park and got shot by the snipers there. Nope, not fighting snipers in a big open area. Backtrack and go all the way around to the entrance again. Along the way I used a random juice that machete guy dropped, which made me stomach sick right in the middle of zombies. God damnit. The quick time events were not working and I nearly died. I had to time my movements so the stomach pains would not occur near zombies, lost the smg, and made it to that wine stash with only 1 health left. Then I did paradise plaza and the cinema. On the way back from the cinema, the photographer psycho attacked. He kicked my ass with his jump kicks and I used 2 healing items to beat him with a mix of chainsaw and shotgun. He died on top of restaurant tables, which put his full healing steak out of reach. Only place left to go now was the park so I went out. No snipers. The jeep convicts were off in the distance stuck ramming into a tree, so I sniped the 3 of them. Then I drove the jeep into the underground to the butcher. Was running over the zombies to clear the area when… who the hell is throwing grenades? Carlito shows up in his truck, so I hop out and get the heavy machine gun to wreck him in seconds. Clear the butcher but no boss in there. I go back to the gunstore and now the owner is there, but he was easy to kill with smg from outside the store. Some random survivor got killed in wonderland and did not drop any healing, then shopping cart psycho was in the food court. After that I had planned to get another smg then go to the cinema looking for the cult leader, but I never made it that far. The zombies were too thick. Final score: survived for 3 days 7 hours, and killed over 1200. I was disappointed that this was not the main game mode without any time limits, but at least I got to experience some psychos I missed.

I liked this game a little better than Dead Rising 2, I think because of better presentation and less ridiculousness. It still has the bad game mechanics that make the game far more frustrating than it needs to be. It makes no sense how the zombies not only keep coming back, but increase in number over time when you are killing them by the 1000s. Same with the soldiers coming back despite being killed, and all items respawning. It makes it feel too much like a game rather than a believable experience. I would rather the game have no time limits, with finite enemies and resources, so the challenge would be using limited resources to defeat enemies without dying.

6.5/10