Dead Rising Member Review for the Xbox360

Imagine living in a small city. Nothing to do but spend time at the local megamall. Imagine the next day you wake up to find the entire city zombified. You try to escape, but the National Guard have blocked off all the exits. So you go to the megamall. Inside, you meet the man who can save your life, Frank West. He promises, "A helicopter on the 22nd!" This is the story of Frank West, a photographer in for the scoop of his life. In Dead Rising, you have to survive for three days in a zombie infested mall. Sounds hard, right? Well, the good news is that you can use anything in the mall as a weapon. It's not like the guards are going to stop you from raiding the stores, they're zombies.

    Graphically, this game looks great. However, it is almost a requirement to play it in HD. Otherwise the game looks a bit funky, and it becomes hard to read some of the words that appear on the screen. However, you can see every little mole on people backs, eack hair on their head and every tooth in a zombies mouth. (B+)

    The sound is very well done, with satisfying dinks and clunks when weapons make contact with the zombies. The music seems very well placed, with standard mall music playing in the background and metal music durning psychopath battles. The voice acting is great, but could be improved a bit. (A-)

    Gameplay is absolutly amazing. Not only are there 250+ weapons at your disposal, but you get an arsenal of dojo moves as you level up. To level up, you need to get PP. PP, or Prestiege Points, can be gained through many ways. The most common way is by taking pictures of zombies, people, or special stickers hidden in the game. You can get PP by killing zombies in special ways, such as with a special move. The fastest ways to get PP are by rescuing survivors and killing psychopaths. In the mall, there are many other people besides you. Most of them are your average people. They want you to save them and get them to your hideout. However, a few of them have been driven insane by the zombies. They try to kill you when you approach them. Some of them are easier than others. All of them are worth killing. You get PP points, find hostages, and get the weapon they used against you. This alone in worth it, simply because the weapon is much more powerful than your average weapon, and it lasts much longer. Now all that could be enough, but no. Capcom added cars. There is a large underground tunnel area with thousands of zombies that you can run over. Sounds good, but the controls are not 100% great. I give gameplay an A

    The overall dificulty is not to hard. In the beginning, the game can be pretty tough. However, when you get to a higher level, it becomes a lot easier. The good news is that when you die you can save your stats and start the game over.

    Overall, I find this to be a solid game. With long, continued gameplay, and an amazing story, it is definitly worth it to go to the mall.