Finished Dead Rising

I have finally finished Dead Rising. Even after all the times I have played through, it remains one of my favorite games on the Xbox. Upon completion, it was nice to look back on all the cool things about this game.

The essential elements of the story and setting combine to make an instant classic. Being a photojournalist stuck in a zombie infested mall for three days investigating the reason for the zombie outbreak whilst also saving any survivors you come by spells entertainment for me. You have your camera on you at all times so you can chronicle all of the inevitable moments of craziness. Being in a mall, you can use anything as a weapon - chainsaws from the hardware store, battle axes from the antique shop, etc.

To pass some time, you can even stop by the toy store to grab a Mega Buster or water gun to pester some zombies. Or perhaps a novelty mask to place over their face and watch them shuffle blindly around the mall. The game never takes itself too seriously and is full of Capcom franchise throwbacks such as the full Mega Man armor complete with the Real Mega Buster which I was sporting in my last play through.

My favorite aspect of the game is the Infinite Mode you unlock after completing the game once. Infinite Mode is a survival mode where you are dropped off at the mall and must simply survive as long as possible. In this mode, your health constantly depreciates and you have to scavenge the mall for food for survival. Unlike story mode, food does not re-spawn in this mode, so you have to be a good steward of the food you do find. There are two achievements tied to this game mode. One achievement requires you to survive for 5 in-game days and the other requires you to survive 7 days without saving. In real life time, the achievements take 10 and 14 hours respectively. You feel like you've really accomplished something when you see these two achievements pop up.

DR is unique among the many zombie games available. It successfully captures the mixture of suspenseful horror and tongue-in-cheek humor of the classic zombie genre. You don't have access to all kinds of powerful firearms in DR like in zombie action movies like Resident Evil. Instead you must use everything you find in the mall for survival. It feels like you are playing a mid-to-low budget zombie film which, in my opinion, is what a the ideal zombie game should feel like. Hopefully Dead Rising 2 will build on the first game's greatness when it comes out this fall.