Assuming you're willing to put up with the frustrating flaws, Dead Rising is quite the unique and innovative experience.
Put this unique idea together with Capcom - a company that is known for its zombie horror games - and a truly unique title for the Xbox 360 is born. Dead Rising takes the fairly bland "beat-em-up" genre of games and adds several new twists to it to come out with a fun, yet frustrating, zombie killing mayhem.
The game premise is simple: you have three days in a shopping mall to gather as much information and photographs of the zombie infestation as possible. Along the way, you'll meet other characters that are also trying to stop the infestation as well as hostages that need rescuing. Survive the thousands of zombies by picking up anything and everything to be used against them, and you'll make it to the end of the 72 hours. Most items in the various stores of this large and diverse mall can be used in some way, whether it be to attack your enemies or restore your health, and you'll need to utilize all of them in order to survive the game.
Of course, there's a good chance you won't be surviving the game the first time through. Due to a slightly flawed saving system that can put you in impossible mission situations, the game will most likely need to be restarted a few times before it can be completed. To make up for this, though, Capcom lets you keep your character's statistics and level at the current state, instead of truly restarting the game each time. After building up a strong character, flying through the game will be a much easier, and more appealing process.
Graphically, Dead Rising is gorgeous. The character models are amazing - truly enhanced when being played on a high-definition receiver - right down to the skin textures and facial expressions of each person. The stores in the brightly colored mall are quite diverse, and each reflects it as so. And, while you'll have to load the various sections of the mall you're in to compensate for this, its generally worth it once you realize the fine attention to detail that Capcom put into each and every shop. Most notably, though, are the zombies - in the heat of the moment, players can expect upwards of 1,000 fully animated zombies on their screens at one time, all of which look gorgeous. Capcom has always been known for their fine graphical touch, and they continue to hold that title in their latest title. Oh, and the best part? The frame rate hardly ever drops, despite how much chaos is going on.
As far as sound goes, the game delivers what one would expect in such a unique situation. The mall has very easy going music playing through it, while zombies will moan and groan before being beaten with whatever weapon the player is currently using. Other than these, don't expect much, though what is present is well done - especially the voice acting during cut scenes.
All in all, Dead Rising is a very good game - it's a fun new take on a bland genre of gameplay, and provides a frustrating-yet-addictive method for doing so.