Dead Rising (video game)

Dead Rising is an open world action-adventure game developed and published by Capcom.

Plot
Frank West, a photojournalist who becomes trapped in a shopping mall within the town of Willamette, Colorado that is suffering from a zombie outbreak, and finds himself not only surviving by salvaging various items for weapons, but also rescuing survivors trapped in the complex and dealing with crazed psychopaths, while attempting to stay alive to uncover the truth behind the incident.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Unlike most zombie games where instead of guns being your main weapon, you kill them with virtually anything you find around you in the mall.
 * 2) Frank is a likable and relatable character that's fun to watch on screen.
 * 3) The game has a time limit for the whole story, which brings in challenge to the game and has players having to manage their time. If you fail the story you cannot continue it, however, the Mall is open for you to explore and to have fun.
 * 4) Anything that can be picked can be used as a weapon, which is a really unique concept.
 * 5) An interesting story about a photojournalist trying to find the truth behind a zombie outbreak.
 * 6) The game has a leveling system, which, when leveling up, gives you more health, more inventory space, more speed, and new moves you can use when bare-handed.
 * 7) You can rescue survivors in the Mall, which gives you PP when you take them back to the safehouse.
 * 8) Frank can use his camera to capture unique photographs that can give the player PP. There are 5 genres the player can capture: Horror, Erotica, Outtake, Brutality, and Drama. Taking pictures at a certain time or of a certain body part will score you PP bonuses. The better the picture, the more PP.
 * 9) With that there are PP stickers and Photo Ops. Pictures taken of certain survivors' actions when the Photo Op symbol appears over there heads can score up to 10,000 PP at a time. PP stickers are pictures taken of notable landmarks in the mall can score up to 1,000 PP at a time.
 * 10) You can customize Frank's looks with lots of clothing from the stores in the Mall.
 * 11) There are also achievement outfits that can be unlocked by performing an achievement/trophy. You must first beat the game with these achievements/trophies unlocked in order to receive the outfits.
 * 12) When you kill 53,594 zombies in one game, you unlock the real mega buster, which kills zombies in one shot and kills psychopaths in 2-3, which gives the game a lot more replay value. Although there is one aspect that sucks about it (BQ #2)
 * 13) The game has mini-bosses called psychopaths, which are challenging and each have their own unique personality and look.
 * 14) The game has 7 different endings depending on certain conditions.
 * 15) *Ending A: If you solve all cases, talk to Isabela at 10 AM, and be at the helipad on time, Ed will show up to pick up Frank only for a zombie to get behind Ed and bite him, resulting in the helicopter crashing into the Clock Tower at Leisure Park. Frank falls to his knees, in defeat, while a bunch of zombies shuffle up behind him. This is the canon ending as it continues into Overtime Mode.
 * 16) *Ending B: If you don't solve all the cases but be at the helipad on time, Ed lands the helicopter on the helipad and Frank runs inside and asks Ed if it's okay if there could be more 'passengers.' All the survivors Frank saved board the helicopter and leave the mall as a zombie comes and watches them fly away. There are three different dialogue options for this ending, depending on how many survivors the player has saved (minimum amount, moderate amount, or maximum amount).
 * 17) *Ending C: If you solve all cases but don't talk to Isabela at 10 AM or solve all cases but don't reach the helipad in time, Ed, on another building, looks through his binoculars to see if Frank made it. Ed can't find him and suggests he's dead. Meanwhile, a zombie sneaks up behind Ed and kills him.
 * 18) *Ending D: If you're a prisoner of the Special Forces when time runs out, Frank struggles to get out of the Special Forces helicopter, but one of them holds up a machine gun in front of him to stop him. The helicopter flies away from the mall with Frank as their prisoner.
 * 19) *Ending E: If you don't solve all of the cases and don't be at the helipad on time, Ed lands the helicopter, but can't find Frank. He is about to leave, but Otis comes out and all the survivors board the helicopter and leave the mall while a zombie watches them.
 * 20) *Ending F: If you fail to collect all of Carlito's bombs during Case 7-2 the bombs will destroy the mall just as Carlito planned. The explosion sends the infectious parasites into the stratosphere, causing a nationwide pandemic.
 * 21) *Overtime failure ending: If Frank fails to gather the ingredients for a temporary cure for his infection, he will begin to turn into a zombie and a message will be displayed.
 * 22) The player can find books that can boost the amount of health you acquire from food, boost the amount of PP you get, increase the durability of certain objects, etc. There are a total of 24 books in the game.
 * 23) As stated previously, you can find books that really help the player that has various effects, but some books have the same effect, which is actually fine because when you have two books with the same effect in your inventory, they will combine those effects together.
 * 24) *For example, if you have a book that boost 50% of regenerative health from food and another book that does the same in your inventory, you'll get a 100% boost in regenerative health.
 * 25) Upon completing all the case files in the game and achieving Ending A, Overtime (or 72 Hour Mode) is unlocked and upon completing that will be Infinity Mode.
 * 26) *Overtime or 72 Hour Mode will allow the player to see how Frank and Isabela escaped Willamette.
 * 27) *Infinity Mode, on the other hand, has no ending. It is instead a survival sandbox mode, where Frank is now pitted against psychopaths as well as survivors. The player must last as long as they can before they are killed or starve to death.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The survivor AI is so bad that they sometimes don't go where you tell them to and they don't shove zombies out of the way, which can easily get them killed.
 * 2) When you kill 53,594 zombies in one game, you unlock the real mega buster, which kills zombies in one shot and kills psychopaths in 2-3, removing any challenge from the game. This is only bad because you can do this whenever you want.
 * 3) Most of the character models look ugly.
 * 4) Every time you get interrupted while talking to Otis, he will keep calling back saying how rude it was for you to cut him off, which, for some people, can be annoying.
 * 5) Very horrible difficulty curve where the game flips back and forth between being super-easy and mega-hard without warning
 * 6) The trophy/achievement called 7 Day Survivor is considered one the hardest achievements/trophies to get mainly because it's incredibly time-consuming as you have to go through Infinity mode for 7 (in-game) days, which in real life is 14 hours. The only thing you get is the laser sword, which is in fact rewarding, but this is rewarded for completing 5 days; for 7 days all you get is a piece of clothing and it's just Arthur's boxer shorts from the Ghosts n' Goblins franchise.
 * 7) The ending is pretty poor as it has Frank finally defeat Brock Mason with Frank yelling to the skies only for it to cut to black with white text mentioning how he and Isabella somehow made it out despite being surrounded by zombies.

Reception
Dead Rising received "generally positive" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic, with most reviewers commending the "sandbox"-style of gameplay, the amount to explore within the mall, and the sheer number of ways to kill the thousands of zombies, with GameSpot stating it was "a great piece of entertainment", while two reviewers on Australian video game talk show Good Game gave the title a 6-7/10 score. However, general consensus amongst reviews was towards criticizing the game's save system mechanic and the AI of the survivors; while IGN considered the game to be "one of the more unique and entertaining titles on the Xbox 360", its review notably indicated that improvements were needed with both the save system and NPCs, along with offering "a more forgiving story progression, and tighter controls". Capcom reported around 500,000 copies had been shipped out in the first month after its release, and one million copies worldwide by the end of 2006. It received a "Gold" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 200,000 copies in the United Kingdom.