Bullet Point Review: Dead Rising (XB360)
What I liked:
The Mall - The game, much like George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, takes place entirely inside a mall. And with that mall comes many stores and specialty shops that offer health, weapons, transportation etc. In fact the mall itself kinda becomes an unconventional character within the game itself.
What I didn't like:
Phone - The purpose of the phone in DR is to recieve little side missions so I can see why it is needed, problem is the damn thing never stops ringing. Once you answer it you cannot jump or use any weapons, and God forbid you hang up on the person you're talking to cause he'll phone right back, bitch at you for hanging up on him and then restart his conversation right from the beginning. Hopefully DR2 will have a hands free communication device.
Text - If you heard anything about this game, besides the screwed up save system, it's probably how hard it is to read anything within the game while playing on an SDTV...and believe what you've heard, reading anything in this game is impossible.
Arrow - There is an arrow inside the game that points out where you need to go. Trouble is, the arrow isn't alwalys right, and it doesn't tell you if your destination is up or down. Honestly I was pretty surprised how poorly the arrow is implemented.
A.I. - The majority of sidemissions in the game have you running around rescuing people from different parts of the mall. Once you find these people you must lead them back to your 'safe room'. That's fine and all and it totally fits into the scope of the game, problem is these characters aren't the smartest. More often then not they'll get caught on different things such as walls, tables, etc, and when I yell at them and tell them to follow me, they'll sometimes just stand there and get attacked by zombies. The A.I can really be fraustrating.
Game Structure - I don't care what others say about this game, the save system and basic structure of the game is terrible. Period. You are a news reporter in the game, and you must be at certain places at certain times to get certain information. If you miss those timings, the game ends and you must start from the very beginning. The very beginning...from the opening credits. Personally I cannot believe this game was greenlit for production with this type of gaming structure. If you miss these timings, why can't you simply just go back and reload the game from your last save? I cannot count the amount of people who didn't finish this game due to this huge flaw.
Summary - If you wanna play this game and finish it I'd personally recommend you download a FAQ runthrough and follow it word for word. That's what I eventually did and it made things alot more bearable. But beware, if you do follow a FAQ, realize you will be standing around alot waiting for the clock to start the next mission.
Dead Rising is a game with alot of potential and alot of good ideas but the execution of these ideas are absolutely horrible. Hopefully DR2 reboots and fixes these flaws. Go ahead and play it, just know before hand what you're getting into.
All in all I'd give Dead Rising (XB360) a 3 out of 5.
