An extremely unique and very fun game. "....Santa Cabeza!"
And guess what? Something is.
The town's population is being turned into stereotypical zombies. Not smart ones from Resident Evil 4. Not fast ones from 28 Days Later. Slow, stupid, hungry zombies. And it's a good thing, too. Because you end up killing thousands of them over the course of the game.
In the game, you are stuck in a huge mall for 72 hours before your helicopter returns. (72 game hours ends up being a tenth of that in real life: 432 minutes.)
The game constantly refers to them as zombies, and not "infected", or any other name movies have used. I think it makes alot of sense, because if a zombie epidemic struck in real life, people would call them zombies considering all the movies that influenced "zombies".
Alright, back to the actual review.
You can use pretty much everything in the mall as a weapon.
This list includes:
Benches, Garbage Cans, Stepladders, Knives, Umbrellas, Katanas, Chainsaws, Lawnmowers, Convertibles, Motorcycles, Fire extinguishers, and the list goes on!
You can make power-ups out of combining two food items(food items are used to gain health when needed) in a blender. Power-ups include Energizer(invulnerability), Spitfire(spit turns into bullets), Quickstep
(self -explanatory), and a few others.
While in the mall, there are a few things you can do. You can do the missions which are required to continue the story, side missions that usually require you to kill psychopaths, and escort missions. And you can take pictures. Taking pictures is one of the best ways to gain Prestige Points. The basic expirience system of Dead Rising involves gaining PP(Prestige Points), to reach higher levels. As you gain levels, you learn new moves, gain maximum health, or gain maximum stock.
Other than the 72-hour mode, there is Overtime Mode, and Infinity Mode. Overtime continues the story and infinity mode has no story. All you do is try to survive in the mall as long as possible.
The major downside of the game are that alot of the time, survivors you are escorting act dumber than the zombies. They crash into walls, and ignore your calls to follow you. Sometimes I've just killed the survivors because they wouldn't follow me. And I'd also like to point out that Dead Rising wins the award for the most annoying noun ever. Santa Cabeza. Characters say that so much it becomes extremely annoying....
All in all, this game is a great investment considering I bought it for only 30 dollars. Go buy it, and have fun, which definitely shouldn't be hard.