What makes Dead Rising so cool is its unique mix of action and fun gameplay in a GTA styled sandboxed world set inside a huge shopping mall. Maybe it is also due to fact that our favorite movie Dawn of the Dead has a similar setting with a group of survivors trapped inside this huge building with tons of different items suitable as improvised weapons at their disposal.
As a player you take control of the photo journalist Frank who is investigating a town which has been sealed off and infested with thousands of Zombies. Within 72 hours you are given the task of gathering vital information about the outbreak. As the clock keeps ticking down you are assigned new quests , some related to the storyline, other as optional, and as you will soon experience you don't have time for both it makes the game repayable.
Your character can level up providing more health and item slots, but soon come very handy as the hordes of zombies increase.
Another thing we really like is that weapons are breakable meaning that your baseball bat will eventually need to be replaced forcing you to stockpile a selection of weapons from the stores you can loot. This adds a certain element of “rotation” in your use of weapons increasing the gameplay experience greatly.
The fact that combat animations are rich in detail combined with the ability to put novel hats on the head of zombies and beat them up with umbrellas etc. is the corner stone of the humorous style of the game which to western European like us may seem a bit Japanese, but of course in a really good way.
The missions often involve boss fights with "psychos", that is non-infected people who have simply gone nuts in the post-apocalyptic world and need to be defeated with various tactics.This is another aspect we enjoyed very much as it allowed interesting boss fights without introducing "fast zombies" but keeping the "slow zombies" like in the classic zombie mythology known from the Romero movies and the author Max brooks to name some of the most important in our opinion. And then again that’s not entirely true either as there are some mythical issues with zombies being controlled by drones and presenting an even greater danger at midnight werewolf style. Anyways that is a forgivable circumstance for us (being Max Brook fan boys) as the rest of the game is highly addictive.
One thing we really missed about the first game was the ability to play the storyline co-op. Fortunately that is exactly what the sequel Dead Rising 2 offers and it doesn't take away the fact this game is probably the zombie game our game producer has played the most on Xbox 360.