Dead Rising can best be described as Resident Evil meets GTA. Either that, or “Dawn of the Dead as a videogame.” In the game, a city is overrun with zombies, and you’re given free reign to go around helping victims, taking pictures and making a bloody mess of things.
The game is extremely gory; so gory, in fact, that we were asked to sign a waiver if we wanted to videotape it. People are getting mutilated, burned, eaten and every nasty thing you can think of, and to make the gore a little more fun, you’re given points for taking pictures of the violence. The more dramatic the scene, the better.
Flying over the city in a chopper, you’re armed with only your camera and a really nice zoom lens to get the scoop on what’s going on. Scenes of destruction abound. Riots of zombies are attacking school buses, blowing up a gas stations (oh goodie, people running around on fire! CLICK!), even one scene in which a woman was overrun by zombies on a rooftop. She fired off some bullets in her gun, threw the gun at the closest zombie and ended up getting pushed off edge. Catching a picture of her being attacked on the rooftop was worth a fair amount of points, but catching her in the air as she was falling was worth a lot more. And yes, there was a gory splat when she hit the ground.
Once you’re dropped off at the mall, you’re given a certain amount of time to wander around before you need to return and meet the chopper on the roof for rescue (the time can be adjusted like a difficulty setting). The mall is filled with zombies and civilians to knock around and talk to, respectively. Almost anything from a park bench to a cash register can be used as a weapon, and talking with humans grants you quests that reward you with new fighting moves. Flips, throws, spitting, even twisting the zombie’s head off becomes available as you progress through the game.
The graphics look better than the last time we’d seen Dead Rising, and the framerate is rock steady even when there are what appear to be 100 or more zombies on-screen. Other than some concern about the length of the game, Dead Rising is looking like a great time for any zombie-game fan.
— Robert Dusseau