One of the most highly anticipated titles to flesh out the sadly lacking 360 library is Dead Rising. While it has been waiting in the wings since the last E3, it progressed dramatically. The basic storyline follows Frank West, a photographer who,s checking outeerie occurrences in Willamette, Colorado. What turns out to be eerie is that the entire city is infested with zombies, and you,re pretty much stuck with a camera, and anything you can grab to use for a weapon.
Oh, we do mean ANYTHING you can grab. Frank is apparently quite the athlete, as he can lift a huge variety of objects and wing them around as makeshift weapons. These items include bubblegum machines, park benches (really), chainsaws, weights, guns, katanas, stools, chairs, signs, and plants. Some of these weapons are obviously more effective than others. I particularly enjoyed slashing zombies into severed chunks with the katana, and then smashing them with a park bench.
There is a side quest to take photos, an internal engine ‘rates, your photos and can categorize them. The categories are automatically selected based on the situation you capture on camera, it,s really quite neat, although not always accurate. This earns you points, although I,m still not sure how to spend them or what they can be used for.
The plot is a little lacking and our hands on time was admittedly short, but this definitely had its own wacky style, with slick graphics and fun soundtrack. Of course, the tongue-in-cheek humor involved with beating a zombie to death with a bubblegum machine means I would recommend this for 360 players everywhere, come August.
