Shop 'Til You Drop

There is only one problem with Dead Rising - that it only gave Resident Evil 4 about a year to hold onto its title of best zombie game ever.

"Sucks to be that guy I am!"

Yes, Leon. Yes it does. I'm so sorry.

Dead Rising's roaming cadavers fill the screen at more-or-less every moment of play. The game's exceptional engine allows extremely detailed textures in close-up shots (cutscenes display, astonishingly, facial blemishes and pores), as well as hundreds of onscreen opponents without a moment's stuttering or slowdown, with the exception of one nonetheless impressive set-piece near the end of the game. So, then, to sum up, this is a game full to bursting with hundreds upon thousands of zombies. The best kind of zombies. Shuffling, angry, confused reanimated corpses with no passion other than for delicious human flesh.

Splendid.

Well, there's a little more to it. The plot, for example, is surprisingly strong. It checks all the boxes for a zombie movie: the knowledge that any major personage might die arbitrarily at any point; the uncanny sight of a zombified former accomplice; a thinly-veiled satirical message behind the visceral horror. What's more, the large number of search-and-rescue missions give you access to a hundred little survival stories, which make pursuing the extra tasks that much more rewarding, and give a real sense of a persistent world outside of your direct experience.

If you can see it, there are zombies there.

This direct experience is that of Frank West, wartime photojournalist and all-around ugly guy. He hires a chopper to get him into the small town of Willamette, which has been inexplicably sealed off by the military, with no explanation given. I'll just ruin that mystery, that bit of the game, for you - it's because of zombies.

SPOILERS!

So yeah. After a brief yet entertaining helicopter flyover of the rest of the town, you're dropped off at the mall, and from that point on, have 72 hours to explore the mall, rough up cadavers, rescue survivors and solve the mystery behind the plague before the chartered chopper comes back to get you. It sounds fun. And it is. But also - and here's where the game really shows ingenuity - it can be, at first, extremely stressful.

It could be the omnipresent walking dead, or the tension between your core group of uninfected pals, but most likely it's the fact that you're on the clock the whole time, you only have a couple of hours to complete most secondary objectives, and there's only one save slot. As such, a game that could just have been about shoving teddy bear masks on a crowd of zombies, slicing them in half with a samurai sword and taking a picture, becomes about time management.

Yes. Time management. Trying to meet deadlines, keep people safe, and make use of the hours of daylight can be daunting at first. Starting the game for the first time, you're weak, lost and lacking in extreme kung fu action skills like these:

WA-TAH!

In other words, a buffet with legs. Edible legs, that might well serve as a portion of the aforementioned buffet. However, before long you're surfing on zombie crowds, sniffing out hidden items and beating down psychopathic boss characters like you were the king. The King of the Mall. And that's when the time management factor becomes so compelling - you're under so much pressure to get things done that the game environment and its diverse mechanics don't have time to become dull. Due to ill-timed saves, I was forced to restart the game twice, and I still felt entertained at every turn - thanks, in part, to the fact that you retain your stats and skills on restarting, making the early segments of the game something of an easy ride on a second pass. There's just so much to do in this game. In different orders, in different ways, and with different amusing clothes on.

Of course, the game has its faults. Some elements of the gameplay - for example, being forced to escape kidnap if you slip up around some surprise visitors halfway through the game - seem somewhat arbitrary and irritating, but they serve their purpose, and there's always the option of reloading. Also, without grabbing the more powerful weapons early on in the game, fights with still-living enemies, or 'psychopaths', can seem somewhat unfairly difficult. Also, from what I hear, if you don't have a big TV, don't bother - you won't be able to read the text, and will just end up following anonymous arrows around to nondescript plot points. There's no option to enlarge the text on a lower-res TV, and in a high-budget game like this, that's a pretty poor show. Still, so much attention has been lavished on the rest of the game that it's hard to hold a technical fault against it. Especially if you have got an HDTV. Like me. Ahem.

The plot's even surprisingly good. The explanation for the plague, while as full of improbable babble (improbababble) as other zombie fiction (satellite radiation/hell being full of dead people/rage monkeys), rings somewhat true and checks the usual zombie movie box of serving some kind of satirical point. The characters' relationships work pretty well, with some chilling and even quite moving set-pieces. And what's more, you've gotta love Frank. Frank's an ugly, self-serving paparazzi twit.

"I'm a steamroller, baby!"

And as such, he's the kind of unconventional protagonist we don't see enough of in games. He's also a great example of successful character development over the course of a game's plot arc, but I won't give anything else away. Play it yourself.

Buy Dead Rising, and you'll be treated to some of the best open-plan environments, the best voice acting (in a Capcom game, at least, dubious praise though that is), and of course, the best zombies on offer in gaming today. If you've got a 360 (and a big telly, of course), this one's a no brainer. Join the undead fun today!

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'Beat' Nick murrrguuurgh muh BRAINS.