Dead Rising is a zombie game for the xbox 360 where you are a photographer named Frank who is trapped in a mall with humans and zombies.
What is the game like? I'll just borrow the overview that was made at the somethingawful.com forums since there's really a lot of stuff to do.
* Over 800 zombies can be on-screen with no slowdown.
* Over 100 NPC's that Frank can aid and rescue, each with their own unique story.
* Over 120 stores in the mall including sporting goods, toys, guns, hardware, music, automotive, food courts, men and women's clothing, a supermarket, and even a movie theater. Each store is unique and the developers have taken great pains to create the over 2000 different mall furnishings and bits of merchandise that are on display.
* Over 50,000 possible outfit variations including Capcom in-jokes like Servbot masks, Megaman's armor, and Arthur's heart-patterned boxers from Ghosts n' Goblins.
* You can use anything in the mall as a weapon including baseball bats, swords, CDs, 2x4's, showerheads, chairs, plates, bowling balls, knives, tennis rackets, chainsaws, hockey sticks, plastic light sabers, safety cones, pies, plasma screen TVs, potted plants, fully deployed beach umbrellas, a battle axe, vehicles and more.
* Some weapons can be "upgraded", such as heating a frying pan on a stove until it turns red to cause more damage when hitting zombies.
* The game operates on a quest system, with story missions being referred to as "cases" and optional missions called "scoops" coming in over the phone from your offsite ally, Otis [the mall janitor]. Every quest has a color; blue, yellow and red, with red meaning you have less time to do that quest. Your watch lets you choose which quest you want to do and put a directional cursor on the screen to guide you to that quest.
* Frank will be armed with his trusty camera, and when you take a picture of the environment, you'll earn points based on how busy and how interesting that photo is. The more zombies that are in your picture, the more points you get. Are those zombies attacking a helpless bystander? Even better. You even see the points itemized and tallied up in the corner of the screen when you view the photo after taking it.
* After enough Prestige Points you earn new skills, of which there are over 20, as well as points to spend on statistical augmentation for better attack, speed, and throw distance, among others. You can even read books lying around the mall to gain new skills, or combine different ingredients to make food (such as smoothies at a juice bar) that will give you temporary abilities.
* The camera can hold 60 pictures, you can save your favorites.
* You have three days (translating to about 3 hours in real time) to explore the town, kill zombies, save people (or not!) and take great pictures. You're entirely left to your own devices as to what you want to do.
* An unlockable game mode called "Infinity Mode" will let you hang out in the Willamette Parkview Mall for as long as you can survive. The normal time limit is now replaced with "starvation". If you get hungry, your life meter will decrease. Eating is the only way to recover health in Infinity Mode. Other human survivors also need food, and will fight against Frank with no hesitation. You have to fight to survive! The number of days you survive will then be uploaded to online leaderboards via Live.
* There are 50 achievements, each are worth 20 points a piece.
* You save by resting on sofas or going to the restroom.
* Only 1 save file meaning it's re-written each time you save. However if you die you're given the option to save status and quit, thus when starting a new game you keep the skills you gained from your old save.
* The game has a 24 hour day and night system.
* At night the zombies change and become slightly faster.
Hey look, a map of the mall
http://imagesocket.com/view/deadrisingmap5iz768.jpg
So it took a few hours for me to download but it was well worth it and I'm glad I preordered so I could also get a shirt from ebgames.
I only went through the demo a few times so far. The first time I grabbed some books from a book store, which increases your skills like how long a weapon will last or let you do tricks if you ride a skateboard. I took it kinda slow, killing zombies that were around me or firing into a crowd off in the distance. Got bit a couple times but pushed them off before finally putting them to rest. Grabbed a few pictures but mostly just stayed in the area. Eventually time ran out and I had to start over.
The second time I got some camera pictures rated "erotica", killed some more zombies, and went to the toy store. The had a servbot head from Megaman so I put that on and killed zombies with my sledgehammer till it broke down. Ran back in the toy store where I grabbed a super soaker and some frisbees and went to town.
I managed to miss with my frisbees and the super soaker just made the zombies slip and fall down. Back to the toy store where I picked up a toy laser sword.
A toy laser sword does the same thing to zombies as it would do to a person in real life. Not that much. I hit a couple zombies over and over with that thing and it just wasn't killing them.
Time to run back in the toy store where my next weapon of choice was a large teddy bear. Yeah, that was good for knocking them down until I got grabbed from behind and killed.
The third time through I took my trusty sledgehammer to the children's clothing store where Frank dressed up in children's clothing. Being that Frank is an adult, the clothing doesn't fit too well.
That just meant that Frank needed to bash his was to an adult clothing store to wear a fedora.
So bash bash bash Frank went, killing zombies until he discovered that some had hunting knives that were a good weapon to use once the sledgehammer broke down.
Now Frank went slash slash stab until he got killed by the zombies but not before taking out about 250 of them.
I haven't made it to the food stores to make anything but that is one of my next goals in addition to getting the submachine gun that I have heard about. [/b]
