Post by Gilvan Blight on Jun 24, 2008 13:09:30 GMT -5
Quickly: Great Concept poor execution, I gave up on it.
[glow=blue,2,300]Summary:[/glow]Dead Rising gives you the chance to be the star in a typical Zombie Move. This game is so much like a Romero zombie flick, that Romero sued the developers and won.
You take on the role of a reporter sent into some small town investigating odd reports of violence and riots. You start off flying into town via chopper taking pictures of what looks to be rioting in the streets. Very vicious rioting with citizens tearing each other apart. It's not long before things seem a bit strange and over the top.
You get dropped off on top of a Giant Mall in order to work on your Scoop with directions that the chopper will be back in 72 hours, and you have exactly this amount of time to explore the mall and find out what's going on. You meet up with some Government, MIB, types and quickly find out Zombies are everywhere. The game progresses with you completing various tasks around the mall each leading to a cut scene that explains the story and what's going on. I didn't play the game long enough to really find out anything though so I can't tell you much more.
The gameplay it's self consists of you running around the mall, grabbing pretty much anything as a weapon and battling your way through hordes of undead trying to get to various check points. Once there you will have things like Boss Battles or Escort Quests (well those were the two things I saw). Pretty much anything in the mall can be used as a weapon. Things like Tossing stacks of plates from the food court, tripping zombies with tin cans, using hedge trimmers to trim limbs, etc. There are even uber nasty tools like Chainsaws and lawn mowers about. Combined with these are comic items like a Lego head that you can toss on a zombies head so they just bump around aimlessly.
Controls are complicated. There is only one attack button that is case sensitive depending on where you are standing or what item you are holding or what timing you press it with it does various attacks. You have a jump button that works about as well as jump in Grand Theft Auto III. You have a button for aiming that you combine with the left stick to throw things, which is highly annoying as you also use the left stick to walk. You have another button to swap to aiming for your camera, this gets combined with a whole new control scheme for zooming and taking pictures. I'm probably forgetting something as well.
[glow=green,2,300]The Good:[/glow]The demo of this game started you in the middle of the mall just taking out tons of zombies in interesting ways and was awesome, which is why I bought the game. This aspect of the game is still awesome. Running around trying to find and try out the various weapons is great. Even more amusing is finding a variety of clothes to steal so you can look either pro or ridiculous as you kill wave after wave of undead. The mall is realistic and interesting and it's fun just to explore. The story is interesting enough that you really do want to figure out what's going on. This story combined with the hammy voice acting and cut scenes really does make this feel exactly like a good Zombie Movie. The graphics are pretty good for the number of moving characters on screen but they won't win any awards.
[glow=yellow,2,300]The Bad:[/glow]The controls as noted in the summary are just complicated and don't work that well. It seems like a modified Grand Theft Auto engine that just doesn't work that well for a game where you are going to go through waves and waves of bad guys. Trying to take pictures at the same time pretty must results in loss of health. Even harder is trying to stop moving and aim to shot something. This is brutally evident in the first Boss battle of the game, which I lost at multiple times as I just couldn't get the hang of running for cover, stopping and aiming. This isn't something that should be hard to do. The controls often lead to my death...
[glow=red,2,300]The Ugly:[/glow]So we'll take the fact that the game is already brutally hard due to a wonky unresponsive control scheme, and add to it the fact you can't continue. When you die it's load a last save or re-start. Now combine this with the fact that there is no auto save, and you have to go out of your way to find a washroom to save in. Lastly just add a touch of the fact that all of your 'missions' are on a time limit and the last thing you want to do is run around looking for a washroom. Sound like a bad combo to you? It sure was for me. I quit playing this game after only the 3rd mission. After dying once, and not quite understanding that "save your progress and go back to the title screen" meant that I had to start from the beginning but kept my xp, and then dying again after that re-start and not hitting a save point before dying on the first Boss (which I beat the first time around, thus my reason for not saving yet), I was pretty much done. I don't really have any interest in dying again due to lack of ability to control my character, and then having to re-do large portions of the game due to not taking the time out to save. This one's going up for sale on Amazon.ca soon if anyone wants it.
[glow=purple,2,300]Overall:[/glow]I so wanted to like this game. I loved the Demo, it was so much fun. I wanted the game to be the demo just more so. Unfortunately that more so is just some unnecessarily complex control schemes and the lack of a much needed autosave, or continue feature. After having to re-start the game twice, I've given up on this one. It's too bad as it really did feel like a good Zombie Movie and killing waves of undead with various things found around a mall was a ton of fun.
[glow=blue,2,300]Summary:[/glow]Dead Rising gives you the chance to be the star in a typical Zombie Move. This game is so much like a Romero zombie flick, that Romero sued the developers and won.
You take on the role of a reporter sent into some small town investigating odd reports of violence and riots. You start off flying into town via chopper taking pictures of what looks to be rioting in the streets. Very vicious rioting with citizens tearing each other apart. It's not long before things seem a bit strange and over the top.
You get dropped off on top of a Giant Mall in order to work on your Scoop with directions that the chopper will be back in 72 hours, and you have exactly this amount of time to explore the mall and find out what's going on. You meet up with some Government, MIB, types and quickly find out Zombies are everywhere. The game progresses with you completing various tasks around the mall each leading to a cut scene that explains the story and what's going on. I didn't play the game long enough to really find out anything though so I can't tell you much more.
The gameplay it's self consists of you running around the mall, grabbing pretty much anything as a weapon and battling your way through hordes of undead trying to get to various check points. Once there you will have things like Boss Battles or Escort Quests (well those were the two things I saw). Pretty much anything in the mall can be used as a weapon. Things like Tossing stacks of plates from the food court, tripping zombies with tin cans, using hedge trimmers to trim limbs, etc. There are even uber nasty tools like Chainsaws and lawn mowers about. Combined with these are comic items like a Lego head that you can toss on a zombies head so they just bump around aimlessly.
Controls are complicated. There is only one attack button that is case sensitive depending on where you are standing or what item you are holding or what timing you press it with it does various attacks. You have a jump button that works about as well as jump in Grand Theft Auto III. You have a button for aiming that you combine with the left stick to throw things, which is highly annoying as you also use the left stick to walk. You have another button to swap to aiming for your camera, this gets combined with a whole new control scheme for zooming and taking pictures. I'm probably forgetting something as well.
[glow=green,2,300]The Good:[/glow]The demo of this game started you in the middle of the mall just taking out tons of zombies in interesting ways and was awesome, which is why I bought the game. This aspect of the game is still awesome. Running around trying to find and try out the various weapons is great. Even more amusing is finding a variety of clothes to steal so you can look either pro or ridiculous as you kill wave after wave of undead. The mall is realistic and interesting and it's fun just to explore. The story is interesting enough that you really do want to figure out what's going on. This story combined with the hammy voice acting and cut scenes really does make this feel exactly like a good Zombie Movie. The graphics are pretty good for the number of moving characters on screen but they won't win any awards.
[glow=yellow,2,300]The Bad:[/glow]The controls as noted in the summary are just complicated and don't work that well. It seems like a modified Grand Theft Auto engine that just doesn't work that well for a game where you are going to go through waves and waves of bad guys. Trying to take pictures at the same time pretty must results in loss of health. Even harder is trying to stop moving and aim to shot something. This is brutally evident in the first Boss battle of the game, which I lost at multiple times as I just couldn't get the hang of running for cover, stopping and aiming. This isn't something that should be hard to do. The controls often lead to my death...
[glow=red,2,300]The Ugly:[/glow]So we'll take the fact that the game is already brutally hard due to a wonky unresponsive control scheme, and add to it the fact you can't continue. When you die it's load a last save or re-start. Now combine this with the fact that there is no auto save, and you have to go out of your way to find a washroom to save in. Lastly just add a touch of the fact that all of your 'missions' are on a time limit and the last thing you want to do is run around looking for a washroom. Sound like a bad combo to you? It sure was for me. I quit playing this game after only the 3rd mission. After dying once, and not quite understanding that "save your progress and go back to the title screen" meant that I had to start from the beginning but kept my xp, and then dying again after that re-start and not hitting a save point before dying on the first Boss (which I beat the first time around, thus my reason for not saving yet), I was pretty much done. I don't really have any interest in dying again due to lack of ability to control my character, and then having to re-do large portions of the game due to not taking the time out to save. This one's going up for sale on Amazon.ca soon if anyone wants it.
[glow=purple,2,300]Overall:[/glow]I so wanted to like this game. I loved the Demo, it was so much fun. I wanted the game to be the demo just more so. Unfortunately that more so is just some unnecessarily complex control schemes and the lack of a much needed autosave, or continue feature. After having to re-start the game twice, I've given up on this one. It's too bad as it really did feel like a good Zombie Movie and killing waves of undead with various things found around a mall was a ton of fun.