Dead Rising (Xbox 360) Classic Review

This game was released both in North America and Japan back in 2006, and is still pretty impressive in terms of game play value. Interestingly enough, Dead Rising combines sandbox style games with role playing elements. Players gain abilities and earn experience points while completing missions and side quests while progressing through the story.

Game Play

Dead Rising's story centers around a man named Frank West who happens to be a photographer. He flies into the fictional town of Willamette, Colorado via helicopter only to discover that the problem with the town isn't riots or anything of criminal nature, it's actually hordes of zombies. Frank West tells the pilot of the helicopter to land at a local mall and to come back for him in a few days.

During that time, Frank West finds himself in loads of trouble. In addition to the main storyline, players can choose whether or not to do various side quests, or even learn more about the storyline. For example, if a player wanted to, they could just have Frank West run around killing zombies or have him wait in one section of the mall, instead of progressing the storyline.

Throughout Dead Rising players find various shops in the mall, and every single one has weapons. That's right, weapons are everywhere, and players can only begin to imagine the variety of weapons in this game. Around every corner is an endless crowd of zombies, which only gets thicker by the minute. By the last day, players practically have to use everything they have to make it through the waves of zombies.

Zombies aren't the only creatures lurking around the mall; human survivors are also going about their business and need saved. Thing is, not all of them wished to be saved, but you can receive achievements and different game endings for saving more people. Take note that there are a few murderers and psychos running around the mall that absolutely cannot be saved, and have to be taken care of.

Control & Sound

When it comes to the controls of Dead Rising, they aren't bad at all. Weapons are easily picked up and used, and some even have special features for players to use. Dead Rising only has one fault, which is the fact that standard definition televisions have a hard time displaying the text in the game. Dialog is often times very hard to read, but the game is still very playable.

If the player has a high definition television, then there's actually nothing to worry about. Text is displayed fine along with everything else, and Dead Rising will probably make gamers very happy with it's visuals. Aside from that, the sound effects of Dead Rising are decent and nothing to complain about and the voice actors seem to fit their parts very well.

Conclusion

Overall, Dead Rising gets a five out of five and will remain a classic in gaming history. Even though there's no multi-player, Dead Rising's single player and the players ability to choose to progress the storyline or not is amazing. Dead Rising has recently been re-released on Nintendo Wii, and Dead Rising 2 is said to be in the works.

For those looking to purchase Dead Rising for Xbox 360, Click Here. To pre-order the Wii version, Click Here.

Final Score

5/5 - Perfect - (5 Being Perfect, 1 Being Horrible.)