I've never paid any attention to the Dead Rising series. To be honest, I never really even knew what it was other than just another zombie game. And in fairness, there were a lot of zombie games back in 2006. So I suppose it just kind of got lost in the sea of zombies for me at the time. But a few months back, I started reading about the original game and something really piqued my interest.
As much as the original Resident Evil was inspired by Sweet Home, it was also pretty clearly inspired by Night Of The Living Dead. At least to the extent that most zombie related media had been up until that point. Our protagonists were mostly trapped in one single house. The zombies moved slowly. It was a simple setup. Fast forward to Resident Evil 4 and now we were in a huge open area and the game was focusing on a much faster pace with much faster zombies. Sure, Resident Evil 4 is an absolute classic in the series. But it also doesn't feel like traditionally rooted zombie material. If anything, it owes more to Dagon than Night Of The Living Dead. Which brings us to Dead Rising. This is a game also made by Capcom, and done so possibly as a reaction to Resident Evil 4. But rather than ride on the coattails of such a huge hit, it went in another direction. One that went back to slow, lumbering zombies. But more importantly, one that seems to flat out embrace Dawn Of The Dead as its inspiration. Alright, look, the similarities were so obvious that a lawsuit actually happened. Although nothing actually came of that lawsuit, it's hard to not draw some pretty huge similarities. Dawn Of The Dead is about a group of survivors who must survive long enough inside a huge mall full of zombies until a helicopter can come and rescue them. Guess what the plot of Dead Rising is? Dawn Of The Dead is also a sly commentary of consumerism, and finds our survivors looting the mall and using anything they can get their hands on to almost toy with the zombies. Yeah, Dead Rising has all that, too. In fact, it's kind of the point of the game. So I guess to some extent, after understanding all of this stuff, I kind of had to play this game. And really, I started to wonder how I was able to remain a huge Resident Evil fan/defender for so many years, while never even looking into Capcom's other zombie series. Maybe they were always meant to complement each other? Or compete with each other? I'm embarrassed to say that had the game just been called Resident Evil: Dead Rising, I'd have played it a whole lot earlier. But it is what it is. Frank West is a fine enough protagonist. He's a sort of everyman in the sense that you're not playing as anyone with any sort of military training. Instead, he's a photojournalist, which makes his survival skills at least plausible. But he's no action hero, either. The most interesting mechanic to come from all of this is allowing Frank to take pictures of anything he sees, and the more gory or crazy the picture, the more XP he earns. The mall itself is an absolutely brilliant setting. Of course it comes with the Dawn Of The Dead consumerism thing baked right in. But really it should be thought of as a mini open world. Or maybe more accurately, one really gigantic dungeon. Between food courts and store after store, nearly every inch of the mall is a potential for finding new gear, be it food or weapons. And the true fun of Dead Rising, in the most arcade sense, is that everything is a weapon. In fact, the number of possible weapons available in this game is in the triple digits. I've attacked hordes of zombies using everything from baseball bats and beams of wood to soccer balls, toolboxes, skateboards and propane tanks. The truly incredible thing is that each weapon has its own feel, with both a standard attack and a throwing attack. It gives the game a sort of 3D beat-em-up feel in that sense. Also, the varied weapons is helpful given that I actually find the gun play in this game fairly lacking. I never could get a strong feel for shooting. Here's the thing, though. Dead Rising presents itself as a kind of zombie beat-em-up (or hack-em-up, or whatever), but in reality it has far more in common with the roguelike genre. In that sense, it was way ahead of its time, predicting a sub-genre that didn't become so popular until about a decade later. Given that I'm playing Dead Rising for the first time on a PS5, I'm bringing along the experiences I've had in games like Spelunky, Slay The Spire, Dead Cells and so on. But back when Dead Rising was released, I think the format was probably a lot to wrap your head around if you were going into it expecting a zombie survival game, or straight up action romp. The truth is, this game has a really interesting and dense game loop. The main game mode is 72 Hours, which is actually six hours in real time. Your goal is to survive 72 in-game hours and get back to the roof of the mall to make your helicopter escape. It sounds easy, right? You actually just need to make it through six hours of gameplay to beat the game. But it's definitely not that easy. Basically, dying means you need to start the game all over again. But you keep all the XP you've earned, or more importantly all the upgrades you've earned (more health, more stamina, more item slots, etc) and skills you've unlocked. The early going is not easy. I've literally died the first time zombies entered the mall on some runs. It can get overwhelming fast. But subsequent attempts mean that you're more powerful, and it also means you're more familiar with the mall itself. This is a short game that is meant to be played in a long fashion. As campy as the presentation may be, this is a thinking man's game at its heart. Like any other good roguelike, you might prioritize one objective over another in each subsequent run. Finding other survivors and escorting them back to a safe zone is definitely satisfying, and nets you some serious XP, for instance. Or maybe you work on advancing the story. Or maybe you just explore the mall to familiarize yourself with your surroundings. More likely, you seek out zombies to farm XP slowly. Any of these options is viable and fun. And I have to say, successfully weaving your way through a large crowd of zombies and coming out unscathed can bring the same sort of satisfaction as making it through a blanket of bullets in a shmup. Having said all that, it's also easy to get cocky. I've had some great runs end by just turning a wrong corner and getting absolutely overwhelmed by a large crowd of zombies. And by the way, yeah, there's a lot of zombies in this game. It's actually insanely impressive just how many zombies can be on the screen at the same time while the frame rate remains constant. I won't lie, there were moments where I actually shouted in disbelief, knowing full well I was about to watch poor Frank get completely devoured. All these years I thought that Dead Rising was just a stupid action zombie game. I always thought it was like a dumber version of Resident Evil. But I'm glad that I gave it a chance because it's actually way deeper than that. In reality, this is an extremely interesting and obtuse game masquerading as a stupid action zombie game.
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