I know what you are thinking… it's impossible to go wrong with a game that has something like THAT in it…
Dead Rising is Capcom's mall-horror-survival game that came out soon after the XBox 360 came out. I was one of the rabid fans in line for it when it was launching until I read some initial reviews about the save-system. Let me back up for a second…
Most people expect that when you get a game, you will start playing it, save your progress as you go and eventually pass it. I fall into this category of people…
now back to the story… So reading some of the initial reviews they absolutely blasted Dead Rising for using this Resident-Evil-ish convoluted single-save-slot system. The way it works is that you have a limited amount of areas in the game that you can invoke the save menu, much like the ribbons in Resident Evil. The only problem, is that you don't have slots, you have ONE save slot that you are constantly writing over as you save. The trick here is that since the game is all time-based, if you have say 2-game-hours to get to the Security Room before the next event happens (like a meeting with the mysterious person or something) and you save the game, and it turns out that you actually cannot physically make it back to the room in 2 hours, you have to restart the game because you've saved the game in a state that is impossible to continue from.
Note: When you die and decide to reload or restart, when you restart you keep all your stats. So the game gets easier and easier each time you restart.
I need to point out that the only reason I liked this game is because when I got it, I had read the reviews and KNEW I would be restarting. Because of that, I actually would get to the middle of the game, die and restart just so I could get my stats up making the 2nd half of the game easier. I did this about 3x and got up to lvl 31 before I just continued the game and ended up passing it.
The graphics in the game are fantastic and the sound is good to. The voice acting is pretty good and the animations are excellent. The only down side to the game is that you really don't have time to dawdle around and kill zombies. You likely aren't going to level by killing zombies, but by saving people, taking pictures and killing psychopaths (bunch of bosses).
I have to say that the time-based gameplay was never really an issue for me, neither was the saving limitations. One thing that will likely really surprise you is that when you find people on the other side of the mall, and it tells you to take them all the way back to the "Security Room", you ACTUALLY have to do that. A lot of times you will be so far away from the Security Room (basically home-base) that you will think to yourself "There is no way these people will survive", and you are exactly right. Most of the time they won't.
In fact, trying to keep NPCs alive that you are saving is SO frustrating and dare I say impossible, that what I did was just get them to join me, and then run off giving them enough time to catch up. If they got surrounded, I just left them. There are quite a few areas of the game that I just don't understand how you are support to actually save them because of so many zombies being around that you would need to kill to create a clear path.
Maybe when you get to level 50 and have 1-hit kills, it's easier to clear the paths?
Another thing I didn't make use of, that I plan to as I level characters are the books. As it turns out, you can keep books in your inventory to effect your stats. Like keeping an engineering book in your inventory to double the life-span of weapons (everything breaks after X number of attacks with it).
When I originally saw the news about this game, I thought it was going to be an adventure game like Resident Evil with an arcadey feel to it. The two things and made me mad enough to not get it for months was:
1. Time-based gameplay, no time to sit around and do what you want.
2. 1 save slot that you can actually use to save yourself into a corner and have to restart
It took me months to come to terms with those limitations, and after I got the game, knowing how it would be, I ended up having a lot of fun. I still think #1 is a huge problem with the game, it just flat out sucks that you can't walk around doing things on your own time. #2 isn't such a big problem after all, but it can be annoying ESPECIALLY if your XBox crashes like mine did one time and I hadn't saved for hours.
Graphics: 10
Sound: 8
Gameplay: 7.5
Story: 6
Fun/Replyability: 7
Overall: 8