Dead Rising

I'm not going to bang on about the save though, for two reasons. First, I'm recommending the game anyway and am quite comfortable letting you make your own mind up about this; it won't stop you playing Dead Rising either way. Second, I rather like what it represents. It's about consistency. You have to survive three days. If you don't survive, you can pick it up from an earlier point and try something else, or quit and start again, but what you can't do is take one path and then shortcut your way back to another path. You can't play it like a tree, sprouting off in different directions through multiple arcs. You have to play it like a river. You are a hawk, soaring over the game, compelled to its end; your wings the paddles of, well yes I'd better stop that. You are not a hawk. You are, however, forced to survive on instinct, and then if you want to survive again on pre-eminence that's your choice. I'm allowed to like that, I reckon.

In any case there's still much else to like. Physical combat, while it's not as precise and engaging as something out of a square-peg-square-hole-foot-in-ass beat-'em-up, blossoms as you level up. You gain moves like the brilliant double-lariat - a windmill attack of swinging arms that smashes faces with great success - and some excellent throws. The only question mark over these is the controls - couldn't they do better than pressing X and clicking the left analogue stick at the same time? Still, it's a last resort anyway (although jump-kicking people in the head is always fun), and like the limited-use weapons, there's a sensible system of pauses and balances to make sure you can't take ludicrous advantage. If the zombies grab you, you can fight free - but you don't want to be grabbed, so you need to evade their grasp, and to do this you can't just swing rampantly immune to capture. Although you can climb onto their heads and waddle across their shoulders, brilliantly.

In rushing to splurge something about the game after an initial burst of excitement earlier this week, that "although" was probably the key. The hook was not the company of psychos and homeland security agents and mad immigrants, but the upholstery of luxurious zomb. The novelty, which scarcely wears off before the end of the game, is the epic scale of things beyond your reach; there simply isn't enough time to do everything, to help everyone, but everything is good enough that you do want to do everything, and this along with the continued growth of your character (I was only level 25 when I finished it first time) precipitates replay. Beyond the three days, there's clearly more: even over the course of a single runthrough, you will scarcely exhaust your desire to mine the secrets of the Willamette Mall, which run deeper than you'll discover in two or three plays. Not only that, but you will find there's more to it than 72 hours. "Overtime mode" is not just a free-play; it's a post-infection model. What if things go wrong? As it turns out, what would happen is the story would continue, only you'd have special forces to worry about. There's another unlockable mode after that, too.

So, Dead Rising is the epitome of survival horror. It has RPG elements and fantastic replay value - more so than virtually any game on the 360 besides Oblivion. It has teddybear masks. It makes brilliant use of the achievement system: there are 50, all worth 20 points, and while things like "Zombie Genocider" capture the eye (kill 53,594 zombies - the entire population of Willamette), you'll find the ones that pervert the gameplay to be most enjoyable. Like Geometry Wars' Pacifism, these invent activities, like placing novelty hats on zombie heads (helpfully for this comparison, this also pacifies them), and trying to knock down ten in a row with a bowling ball. So what, to reach my point, is actually wrong with it? Explain that mark.

Well, first of all I'm extremely unimpressed by the absence of child-zombies.

Second, it can't help inheriting some of the things that Capcom and a multitude of other devs have always been doing wrong but never seem to sort out. Things that always prompt those "how could this have gotten through QA?" questions, to which the answer usually is "while causing the QA staff continually highlighting it in their reports an extraordinary amount of personal agony". Things like the way the transceiver is continually ringing. If I don't answer, it's not because I'm rude; it's because I'm fighting off hundreds of undead! And having it break down when you go through doors or get struck is daft. They could at least let you change the ring-tone.

That's hardly the worst though. Moving up the scale, there's the font size. Not a problem for those of us with HDTVs or those running it through PC monitors, it's a huge problem for anybody with a standard definition set. You simply won't be able to read the subtitles or transceiver mission descriptions. You can hear the voices, but the transceiver messages - the source of everything non-story - aren't narrated. Oops. A special kick in the particulars, also, for the NPC intelligence. I realise it's difficult to do. I'm even tempted to pass it off as some sort of ingenious commentary on the futility of helping others in times of zombie crisis, but when I'm trying to escort a pair of Japanese idiots across a hallway and they keep running into the horde, I'm less tempted. And when I hit the "hold hands" button next to a girl I'm meant to escort, and the camera frames us from in front, not behind, and I go to turn and she slips from my grip for no discernible reason, I shout. Breaking up is not hard enough to do.

Upon which note, it's also worth pointing out that the zombie-spawn code is a bit ragged on occasion. Particularly noticeable if you decide to mount a rescue during the opening lobby scene, where having zombs miraculously spawn behind you in an area you've cleared out is heart-breakingly savage, fortunately it's not much of a problem elsewhere. But it is one of those "the game's fault I failed" things, and hence worth a mention.

But probably my least favourite things are the nature of the boss combat and one particular instance late on. Boss-combat is not intelligent enough. For the number of them there are, Capcom ought to have done a bit more than the old lurk-and-pounce (and-usually-get-shot-or-stabbed-trying). For all the fun you have just playing with Dead Rising, the least interesting aspect is tackling boss enemies. And that particular one I mentioned, effectively the penultimate mission, sees you bring down a corpulent crackpot only to be left with virtually no time to reach the next briefing. Fail, for whatever reason (and a bit of post-boss dilly-dallying is a natural impulse), and you not only have to redo the flight, but the whole boss fight as well. There's not enough time to reach a save-point as well. Truly stupid - particularly as there's no earthly reason for the timing to be so tight.