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September 16, 2005 - Dead Rising was one of the pleasant surprises at this year's E3, with a demo that displayed thousands of zombies stalking the floor of a ravaged shopping mall. The build we played in may took place in a hardware store and offered us access to an assortment of makeshift weapons, but lacked a HUD or any real objectives. It was obvious that the game has progressed significantly since then as we headed back into the bastion of consumerism to crack some skulls.
The build at TGS began with a quick intro that set the main character up as a reporter willing to wade through of smelly, violent crowds in order to obtain a big scoop. The plot was familiar except that these crowds are comprised of unholy corpses searching for human flesh. The game started as we were dropped on top of a kiosk in a circular meeting area of the mall. The floor below swarmed with zombies, and the only option is to jump into the fray.
In this build there were a huge number of weapons available. Almost everything could be picked up and put into an inventory including a baseball bat, a metal pipe, and various food items that replenish health. Larger tools included a parasol that leveled crowds, a garbage can, and a heavy cash register. Simply holding the B button near one of these items picks it up and attacks are performed by either mashing or holding down the X button for a special attack. For example, holding X with the baseball bat causes the main character to wind up and shoot for the bleachers with any zombie head that gets in the way. After a certain number of uses a weapon will break and become useless, but this hardly presented a problem in the levels we played. Players can cycle through their weapons with the d-pad and it appears that a rather large number of objects can be stored at any one time. This game isn't about item management, its about chaos and action.
In the mall lobby, two humans stood on top of the other food kiosks. By jumping near the food stands, the main character can automatically climb to the higher level. Zombies can also be used as a climbing surface in a hilarious animation where we ran over their shoulders and heads.
Players can talk to the trapped humans to receive new objectives, or bash them over the head along with the zombies. Later, you'll have to decide if you are willing to sacrifice the life of a human in order to whip out their camera and snap a priceless shot of a zombie attack. For now, we took the heroic path and headed into the hardware store where more humans were hiding. In this area we immediately headed for one of three chainsaws and sliced our way to the back of the store. The blood animation have come a long way since we last viewed the game with a shiny wet spray bursting from every corpse that was mowed down.
After rescuing two humans we were rewarded with a shotgun that neatly fragmented the zombies ahead of it. The right trigger causes the camera to zoom over the main character's shoulder and give players a first person view that is useful for precise aiming. Advancing from the hardware store, players then enter a butcher shop where giant slabs of meat hand from the ceiling. Here, a giant fat man is holding a woman captive and the journalist must intercede. This boss battle plays out using the same combat system, only this time the enemy has a very long health bar and a charge attack that made lining up a shot with a projectile weapon very difficult.
In the case of Dead Rising, the power of 360 has been used to increase the sheer number of objects on screen. Every shelf is packed with objects and the number of zombies on screen, moving and inanimate, never seemed to dip below 20. While Dead Rising doesn't have the visual oomph of a game like PGR3 we can already say that chopping our way through crowds of living dead is definitely a good time. We'll have more on Dead Rising in the weeks ahead.
