Dead Rising: Broken, or Broken Like a Fox?

Nobody was more psyched to get Dead Rising, at least in September 2008, than me. It’s been out for a while now, and I’ve heard amazing things about it. I knew that it would be a long time before I bought an Xbox 360 (the “red ring of death” problem was like coating the console in poison, as far as I was concerned) so I tried to intentionally avoid knowing anything about the game other than:

1. It is a zombie game
2. People generally seem to like it

That being said, I can not believe how multiple-personalitied (schizophrenia isn’t really the right word) this game is. It seems to have been designed by two separate groups of people at Capcom, with absolutely no communication between them. Let’s start with the negatives, although I’ll try not to harp on the problems with the game’s text: it’s waaa-aaay too small and “optimized” for High Definition Television. I do not have HDTV. I am not getting one to play 360 games. I hooked the 360 up in my office, and had Dayna’s 80s-era TV available. I had to switch it out with a more modern flat screen just to play this game. The text is a little clearer. But with how amazing in every respect Resident Evil 4 was (the 16th best game I have ever played)  — also a Capcom game — some of the decisions made with Dead Rising, like this one, are perplexing. I’d expect this crap out of Acclaim.

But that isn’t all. The game defaults to not inverting the y-axis. I like it inverted and I don’t care if it isn’t inverted by default, I am happy to change it. But Dead Rising won’t save my change until I actually save the game… and that opens Pandora’s box, filled in this particular instance with my issues about game saving.

The save system in Dead Rising is broken. Having discussed this with a few people, I sort of see what the designers were going for, but my conclusion is still that it is a problem. Initially, the game gives you a couch to save on and a restroom that you can save in. A bunch of other restrooms are scattered throughout the mall… and you need a key to access them. I mean, come the fuck on! I consider a game that “hides” the ability to save to be unfinished and broken.

The designers attempt to skirt around it by saving your “state” even if you die and restart. While playing, you’ll get experience points. You can then upgrade your skills and — I assume — get better attacks. If you die, you can “Save Status and Exit.” That means that you start the game over, but you keep all your experience points. That’s unique, as far as I have found, in games. You’re going to die because you won’t be able to save once you really get into the mall. And it’s really important for the game designers to give you plenty of stuff to do, if you’re going to be starting over constantly. I have not spent enough time in the game to decide if I like this or not. It’s going to come down to how much content I can experience without feeling forced to do the same thing over and over again. I know it takes about four minutes, after restarting, to skip the cut-scenes and get back to the free-form part. Your character’s walking speed is fairly slow, and if Capcom really wanted to have a game mechanic that demands restarting, they need to let you press a single button to get back to the freeform, sandbox-style fun. They failed at this.

That being said, there are some amazing features in this game. There are seemingly hundreds of weapons, with each one having neat properties. If you get a hockey stick, you can use it to smash zombies, sure. But will also see your character throw down pucks and hit them into zombies, knocking them over. You can get a skateboard, and then frigging 720 Degrees (the arcade game) is essentially included as a mini-game. Nightsticks, knives, mall sit-down benches, cash registered… it’s hilarious. And the last bit I saw before writing these initial thoughts was a scene where a group of hoodlums find a guy with his girlfriend and kill him just for the hell of it, leaving the girl surrounded by zombies and it is now YOUR job to get her out. Video games have such amazing potential to cast their audience into a role brimming with emotion, and potentially it’s always going to be more powerful than movies, books and TV because it’s *you* doing it interactively, but the medium is so horrible juvenile, with games being developed by children, managed by children, tested by children and designed by children. Every once in a while, the thousand monkeys making these things get something right, and I had an absolutely amazing and terrifying experience trying to get the girl to safety. It was the first escort mission I’ve enjoyed since playing the arcade game Crossbow about 20 years ago.

So, with everything Dead Rising gets wrong, I am going to stick with it and see what there is to experience. I can easily see not finishing this game because repetition really irritates me (isn’t this a cheap way to “re-use” content, like with Halo and Hexen?) but in the meantime it seems to be a fairly fun ride.