Dead Rising part 2

There is a survivor with a broken leg that requires you to lend a shoulder to move him to the security room. Interestingly you seem to move quicker with him holding on (though you can’t use weapons) and I find that if you both go into the dry fountain on the way, there will be no way to get him out, since you can’t jump whilst holding him up and he can’t be made to get out on his own. This resulted in him being eaten before I got killed and lost half an hour’s play. Again.

Dead Rising

I have been drawn to Dead Rising for a while now, it seems to me that the freeform, “sandbox” style of game is the way to make the truest “Survival Horror”.  In movies, survivors tend not to take up an impressive array of firearms, but desperatly seek shelter and the means to make it through another day.  I think it might actually be possible to ride out the whole game in the safe room at the start, perhaps never even finding yourself in danger.  Unfortunately, on booting for the first time I was reminded of something that means me and my SD TV might have to wait a little longer.  Nowadays making a game unsuited for an SD TV would just be silly, but two or so years ago it must have been crazy to assume everyone with a 360 played in HD already.  Most of the text is just about legible I suppose, but it’s a very big black mark against one of the early selling points of the system. Hopefully a move and a new job will allow me to get the spectacular (budget) HDTV I so deserve.

I like how inventory management is an important part of the game, Frank being able to carry a very limited number of items at a time, which can be increased with levels.  This representing the amount of extra strenth you can develop over a three day period and quickly stitching another pocket into your jacket I suppose.  That aside, it makes a lot more sense than Resident Evil’s invisible attaché case or the four-dimensional hammerspace that most games have, and presents the player with the dilemma of what they will carry around with them.  Starting with four slots, you may want to keep a healing item, a good baseball bat or other club to clear a path through the horde, and a gun in case you find yourself needing one when they are difficult to find.  That leaves one slot, and remember that the melee weapons tend to break when you are in the middle of a crowd, and guns don’t come with much ammo.  The situation means you are constantly on the lookout for things you can use.

The execution of the freeform aspect, having free reign over the mall, able to choose to complete the side quests you find and try to take a good picture, whilst at the same time providing the boundaries, both in where you can go physically and when you need to be in certain places to continue with the plot, provide a narrative structure that keeps you playing with goals in mind rather than the aimless screwing around that sessions of GTA4 often turn into. The mystery element to the story, making it more than simply a matter of if the characters can survive, helps pull the player in and value Frank’s life, which is good since the game is made to punish you severely if you are even a little careless about saving or what you do with him;

The game uses fixed save points that you need to visit if you want to put the game down and keep your progress. They tend not to be very close together, so you have to plan things with some care to ensure an accident doesn’t result in the loss of hours of gameplay. It’s not something I’m used to in this age of quicksaves and checkpoints, and I have lost progress to it, but I can understand why it’s like that. You shouldn’t be able to look at a cluster of zombies, quicksave and charge through repeatedly until you make it through. The immersion of this survival situation would take a hit if I had the option to play it safe.

I have been playing for about 5 in-game hours now, and whilst I like the premise and basic gameplay, I find myself having trouble progressing. It is now night-time, making it hard to see in most locations, and I won’t be able to continue the main story until 6am. In the meantime, besides randomly cutting up zombies, my options are to rescue people hiding in the mall, most of whom will ignore my instructions whilst following me and will need repeated saving from the zombies they wander needlessly close to, and fighting a boss that is much too difficult for me at my current level 6 with the weapons available. What’s worse, the survivors need to be lead across a field not only filled with zombies but patroled by some guys in a jeep that shoot me up, again with me not having a good enough weapon to deal with it. This all means I’m repeatedly loosing big chunks of play time to idiot AI and a situation that goes far beyond “enjoyably taxing” and into “infuriatingly unfair”. Maybe I will find a solution, and hopefully it will make up for all the lost time. The save system is all well and good if I know that when I lose my time it’s my fault, but that simply isn’t the case, I loose time because the game, for various reasons, stacks too much against me, I need followers that can look after themselves instead of trying to take on the horde alone.

So it seems thus far that the concept is sound but the execution is a bit lacking. I’ve not stopped playing yet though, maybe I will find something to get me back into it if I can just make it to the next morning.