Dead Rising

I grew up watching George A. Romero films and became a huge fan of his work, whether it’s: Night of the living dead, Dawn of the dead, Day of the dead or Land of the dead, I loved them all. With time the craving for a zombie apocalypse grew in me, and with it my mind drifted in fantasies and started coming up with creative ways to kill zombies.

The number of zombies on screen was, and still, impassive 

Gaming, sometimes, transform my fantasies into interactive entertainment, and with Dead Rising I got to play, Dawn of the dead, to a certain level that. You play as an investigative reporter, Frank West, on a journey to report the virus outbreak that brought the zombie apocalypse.

Just like Dawn of the dead the game starts, and takes place fully, in a shopping mall. As, Frank West, your mission to cover the story by taking pictures and reporting the outbreak, but during it you will help people, fight psychopaths and of course kill hordes and hordes of zombies.

The whole game is set on a time limit, and if you miss key missions during the time limit you will have to restart the whole thing again. But since there is a level up system your level will carries over with every new play through. There is also a save system that you can find in every bathroom, but the clock will also resume from the saved time. So, the design of the game is made around replaying and exploring. The game also builds more on that by offering more than one objective at the time so you can chose only one.

The weapons in the game is mostly whatever you expect to find in a shopping mall so the list pretty fun. The list ranges from chairs, trashcans, baseball bats, Katanas, pistols, axes...and many more that i don't want to spoil. More to that, you arsenal also includes, Frank West’s, fascination with wrestling and as you level up you unlock more hand to hand attacks like: bicycle kick, Suplex,..etc. Now, some may find the movement a bit restrained or even clunky, but it was made by design to make the player calculate every attack with high risk. The game's mechanics overall has many roots from old-school Japanese school-of-thought. What's also notable is how they use those insane characters (psychopaths) by making them the game bosses. You will be fighting an insane chainsaw duel wielding clown, a Vietnam war veteran, a butcher, and that just to name a few. The boss-fights are mostly seamless within the game's open world parts, but they are mostly restricted to a small area.

The story is what you usually expect from a zombie outbreak story: a virus spreading, people turned to psychopaths, survival of the fittest, try to escape from a place to another...etc. But what really made the narrative unique, or the overall feel of the it, is how comical it can be by not taking it self seriously. You will be using the oddest of weapons and wear the craziest clothes and fight insanest of characters.

Moreover, the game offers huge amounts of freedom--for its time--and awards exploration. Most players will probably feel pressured under the time limit, but my advice: make the first couple of playthroughs just for exploration. bare in mind that the design of the game is made for the player to repeat it. 

In closing, Dead rising really fits the genre "Sandbox", just add zombies, crazy characters and weapons to test your survival skills and creative ways to kill.