Dead Rising

When I first got an Xbox 360 about a year ago, I was looking around various sites and blogs to find out what games to get for it. There were lots of outcries for Oblivion, which I bought and, frankly, still play to this day. There were also lots of people saying "Get this game called Gears of War when it comes out", which it did a few months later, which, again, I bought and still enjoy playing every once in a while. However, another game they told me to buy was a game that was called Dead Rising.

I bought Dead Rising. I want that $60 back.

Why? I'll tell you why, it was fucking terrible. The prospect of playing a person trapped in a mall infested by zombies does indeed sound fun, and hell, the game fools you into thinking it's fun for a bit. However, there is a problem. It isn't fun at all.

Now assuming people will even find this blog, I'll be expecting a whole lot of "BUT DAVID DEAD RISING WAS AWESOME I MEAN I CUT A ZOMBIE IN HALF WITH A FUCKING SWORD". Yeah yeah, the sword was awesome, before I realized it breaks within 5 minutes of getting it. I'll get to that later though, I want to discuss something else first. That is the leveling up system.

Now in Dead Rising, you get experience points for doing certain things. Killing a certain amount of zombies, taking pictures of zombies, rescuing survivors from zombies, yadda yadda yadda. Here's the kicker though, you really can't get any GOOD experience from ANYTHING unless you save survivors, which is a chore in on all itself. Again, I'll get to that later. Taking pictures for experience is useful for all of 10 minutes, when the zombies actually get into the mall. Then, if you so much as try to look through the camera lens, a zombie will sneak up behind you and moan something. I can only assume that, when translated, it becomes "It's raping time". Even if you do manage to take a picture, it's worth crap experience. I mean that with all seriousness. I couldn't take a single picture worth more than 450 points, which sounds like alot, but it's not. Forget about killing zombies for worthwhile points too, nearly dying 8 times to kill 50 zombies for 500 measly points is not worth it. "Why not take some weapons with you?" I'll get to how shitty most of the so-called weapons are soon, hold your goddamn horses.

So if taking pictures and killing zombies is worth crap points, that leaves saving survivors. This is shit too. The only people I can actually save are those two old dumbasses on the roof. Everyone else is in Zombie Country, and trust me, it's not fun rescuing them (though the game isn't fun in general), it's a fucking CHORE. For one thing, the survivors are fucking idiots. I swear, having them turn into zombies would actually make them SMARTER. I'm not kidding. These people are idiots. I yell to them "over here!" and what do they do? RUN THE OTHER FUCKING WAY. What is the other way? A GROUP OF ZOMBIES. Now I know you can give them weapons, but they're so stupid they don't ever use them. I don't know why, they just don't. Maybe it's because they're as smart as half a peanut.

Now, this may seem like a pointless bitch session, but rescuing people is the BULK OF THE FUCKING GAME. If you are going to make rescuing morons the focus of the in-between parts of the story, can you do us a favor Capcom and not make them fucking idiots? This is why people hate escort missions. Well, it's why I hate escort missions anyway. It's because everyone you escort has the IQ of a box turtle. Here's the kicker: The turtle is retarded.

The weapons are a joke too. First off, the third person aiming is shit. Like super shit. I can't even hit the zombie I'm aiming for. This leaves you to go first person, where you can precisely aim at the zombie's head. Only, this leaves you in the same position as taking a picture, where a zombie will come up from behind and stick his wink wink in your nudge nudge. Seriously, every time I aimed a weapon, I got maybe one or two well placed shots off before a zombie came up and decided to have a little nibble on my ear. This is bullshit, which leaves me to close range weapons.

Now the close range weapons are wide and varied, ranging from hunting knives to cash registers to katanas. The problem? Most of these weapons are shit. The baseball bats are shit as they can't kill anything in one hit. The guitars are shit because they are slow AND they can't kill anything in one hit. The chainsaws are shit because it takes for-fucking-ever to actually kill anything with them. The giant lipstick is shit because... well... it is giant fucking lipstick. The hunting knives are shit because they are too small. The cash registers are shit because they break too easily. This leaves us with three good weapons: The katana, the golden axe, and the mini-chainsaw.

Only these suck too! Not nearly as much as the previously mentioned weapons, but they still suck pretty damn bad. The katana does a wonderful job of killing zombies in one hit. Only it breaks very easily. Like, 5 minutes. Now I know there are various books that keep them from breaking so fast, but this only makes the sword last 10 minutes. Wow, ten whole minutes, that's just enough time to run to a different part of the mall before it breaks, meaning I have to go all the way back to the one place where you can get the katana, just so I can get back to where I was before before it fucking breaks again. Yippie.

Look, I know Capcom was going for realism, but a well-built katana does not break in 10 minutes. Well, a shittily made one doesn't break in 10 minutes either. This is fucking stupid. The axe has the same problem, which is why it's a piece of crap as well. Now why is the mini-chainsaw shit? Well, because you have to unlock it, and I'm not playing this game long enough to do that.

Now the story. Frankly, they should have looked this over before sending it off to morons who will go "WELP AS LONG AS IT MAKES MONEY LET'S DO IT TO IT HURR". The story is god awful. If you haven't read the wiki on Dead Rising or care about spoilers, I suggest you stop reading, because this is Spoilertown, USA.

First off, the zombies are controlled by bugs. This is at least a step up from the typical and cliche virus that turns people into zombies, but I would have preferred that over the stupid, idiotic bug thing. Why? Well apparently the bugs were made to make cows live longer or some shit, I don't know, I never played past the first day because the game is fucking horrible. In any case, the bugs got free and stung people. This is followed by mass stingings in a town where the game does not take place, yadda yadda yadda. Well, there's this guy who was in that town who watched the whole place get nuked, and he got angry. Well he took a few of the bugs and set them loose in wherever the hell this game takes place, then he builds some bombs to release the bugs into the atmosphere where they will spread around the world and bring an age of zombies talked about in the Survival Guide.

Think about that. A bomb filled with BUGS. That launches them into the ATMOSPHERE. Please please PLEASE tell me you don't think that is a good idea. It's horrible. It's fucking HORRIBLE. At least a virus makes sense, bug bombs is just stupid. It's like the guy who wrote this gave it to his 10 year old and said "Hey there Billy, write down how you think this zombie outbreak should happen." and little Billy wrote something down about mutant wasps being launched into the air via explosives. It's horrible, it's stupid, it's just a plain bad idea.

Dead Rising, you are a fucking waste of money.