http://wii.ign.com/articles/954/954833p1.html
Frank West, the ugliest videogame hero ever, is back to take down zombies any way he can on the Wii. Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop is set to ship next week and we've been putting the port of the Xbox 360 game through the motions. This is almost the same game 360 owners played, with a few features, erm, chopped off and at least one major component added. And as always, Wii owners get a truly incredible feature that no other console can provide: waggle!
Playing as a photojournalist trapped in a shopping mall overrun with the undead, gamers are free to use just about anything they can get their hands on to beat, slice, shoot, and bludgeon their way to safety. While non-projectile weapons are still used with a press of the A button, your remote's pointer functionality is used to aim guns. While pointing, the nunchuk's analog stick will allow you to look around and players have the option to invert the vertical axis (although we don't seem to be able to invert the camera, for some reason). Some weapons have a secondary functionality that can be enabled by giving your remote a shake. After bringing a zombie to its knees with the baseball bat, for instance, you can swing to launch them out of the park.
Using whatever we can find lying around the mall as a weapon is still a blast. Some of our favorites include the chainsaw, saw blades, and fire extinguisher. Traveling from location to location with a load of lumbering zombies in your way can be a chore, though, which is why methods of transportation have been dropped here and there. Hop on a bicycle or a skateboard and you can zoom through the mall, knocking over any zombie that lurches in your way.
A lot of effort was spent bringing the Willamette mall to life. Any type of store you would expect to see in a real world shopping center you'll find here in Dead Rising. Players can stop by the food court to grab nourishment or create new concoctions in a blender. Clothing stores will provide a change of duds. Pesky kiosks will get in your way as you navigate the facility. And all the while elevator music will provide a sterile, lifeless shopping experience.
Dead Rising includes some light RPG elements, as Frank earns experience points (sorry, "PP points") by killing zombies and rescuing survivors in the mall. Each level increase will boost stats like the amount of items you can carry and your attack power.
The story unfolds in cut scenes that are lower-res versions of what was seen on the 360. Visuals during gameplay are quite jaggy, but overall this doesn't look too bad for a Wii game. The menus are very basic and dated, though. And where Capcom really outdid itself was in the writing -- this is some of the most ridiculous dialogue we've ever heard. And characters are dressed in absolutely absurd getups. From the moment you land on the mall roof (overrun with zombies, mind you) and there's this European male model casually leaning up against a wall with his shirt unbuttoned, you know there's no reason to take this premise seriously. People probably don't expect Shakespeare from a game that literally lets you mow down zombie poodles with a lawnmower, though, and if you approach Dead Rising as you would a gory B-movie you'll find the writing to be so bad it's good.
As for those features that had to be removed, zombies were one of them. There are noticeably fewer undead onscreen than in the 360 game, and they magically "pop in" from nowhere as you run around the mall. Where this is most noticeable is in the transition from cut scenes to gameplay – immediately after seeing rendered video filled with zombies, you're dropped back into the game with just a handful of the ghouls. To be honest, though, the zombie reduction hasn't bothered us too much and even in the early stages of the game there have been plenty moments where we found ourselves surrounded.
One feature that has been completely removed is Frank's camera, which players could previously use to earn experience points by snapping shots of interesting scenes. This is kind of an odd feature to get rid of since we play as, you know, a photojournalist. Frank still carries his camera in hand wherever he goes, seemingly unable to part with the tool of his profession even though he isn't allowed to use it. While the 360 game opened with a helicopter scene where players had to snap photos of the zombie outbreak below, the Wii game skips over that and dumps players right onto the roof of the Willamette mall.
On the other hand, something that was missing from the 360 game has been added here: multiple save slots. While players were limited to one save before, now you're free to create as many slots as you like without fear that you will make a mistake or miss out on something in the game.
Chop Till You Drop lets you customize your blood settings, much like the recent Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers. Players can make zombie juice red or green and choose an amount they'd like to see (hi, mid, low, or off).
We're already enjoying ourselves in the Wii version of this Dawn of the Dead ripoff. As is to be expected, it's not as visually impressive as the 360 game was. But the gameplay is still here, featuring a greater variety of anti-zombie tools than any other game around. Look for IGN's review next week.
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As someone who's still holding out a modicum of hope for this title, I have to say that I'm pleased about much of this preview. But then previews have the nasty habit of being...more forgiving...than final reviews, let alone actual gameplay, so we'll wait and see. Only for another week, though.
