Dead Rising

[Wonderboy]

How can this game not rock? I've always wanted a Dawn Of The Dead game, and in just a few weeks it'll be here. From what I hear you can interact with nearly everything, and the video on the XBL Marketplace shows a ton of cool shit you can do. So is anyone else excited?

[blueguy]

I'm excited, so is a friend of mine. But quite a few think it'll be kind of boring because "you're just killing zombies." I can kind of see their point, but I think there's more to it. Regardless, even if we are just killing zombies, I'll enjoy it.

[SubSane]

Yeh, it's a tough call. Reminds me of State of Emergency with the crowds of people to fight off and nothing else to do.

[Zertam]

Achtung!!

[box elder]

george romero should sue these bastards.

[Veryjammy]

Demo is up. It must be being downloaded by the whole planet cos I've been downloading it for 2 hours and I'm only at 87%. Can't wait to play this, this is one of the games that persuaded me to get a 360. So long as it doesn't get too repetitive I can't see it being anything other than enormous fun.

[blueguy]

Downloads have been getting slower and slower for me over the last month or so.

[Veryjammy]

Got the demo, been playing it for a couple of hours. Love it, so much fun. Somehow throwing bowling balls at a crowd of zombies never gets old

[gravymaster]

Ok, I gotta download this demo...

[Wonderboy]

I'm having a lot of fun with the demo. It just sucks that the demo restarts when I accidentally stumble into a new area. Can't wait for next week.

[gravymaster]

I downloaded the demo in just under 20 min. Not bad for a file that is over a gig. I don't have time to play right now, but I am really looking forward to it.

[blueguy]

After 5 minutes, I'm at 2%. Good god it's getting worse.

[Veryjammy]

I'm having a lot of fun with the demo. It just sucks that the demo restarts when I accidentally stumble into a new area. Can't wait for next week.

Yeah it's a bit annoying when you accidently go into a new area and a cutscene plays and then the demo is over. The cutscenes are really interesting though; they show a lot of new things that suggest the game isn't just attacking zombies with random stuff.

For anyone who hasn't played it yet, going into the cinema, going back through the entrance, going outside, or going into the warehouse triggers story advancing cutscenes, but which end the demo. They're worth seeing, but you might want to leave them til after you've played the demo properly a few times.

[blueguy]

Took almost 2 hours to download. Spent a little time playing it. Didn't find a whole lot. I did the cooking oil and making zombies fall down thing. Burned their face with the heated frying pan (and snapped a pic). Found the glowing sword, bowling ball, boomerang, and that's about it. Unless I'm missing a wing, I didn't find much.

[gravymaster]

God DAMN this demo is fun to play. This game is right up my alley. I'm gonna have to pick this up.

Anyone else find the Katana on top of the sports store? The thing does some major, major damage.

[Stackhouse]

yeah the katana is really fun to use, shame it breaks so easily

definitely considering getting this game, but i heard it lasts only around 7 hours, which makes it seem like a rental. but the prospect of firing it up whenever i want to kill zombies is almost enough to buy it

[Veryjammy]

According to the reviews though, it will take 2-3 playthroughs to do everything in the game due to the mission structure; it seems to have been expressly designed to be replayed. Plus there are 2 unlockable modes once the main game is finished.

Of course we have to wait til September 8th here in the UK :(

Been trying to not overdo the demo but it's so much fun even considering that there are no missions or anything to do in it. Throwing the cooking oil on the floor and watching them slip on it, crashing through a crowd of zombies with a shopping trolley, throwing cream pies in their faces and watching them stumble around blindly.

Also I LOVE the little dance and noise he does when he puts on the teddy/horse/servbot masks or kids clothes. So gay. It's so good to play a game that actually has a sense of humour.

[conor.]

picked it up today, the first 30 mins of the game is boring, now im getting to the good stuff though

[Wonderboy]

I got it today too. There's a lot wrong with the game, but little enough it's forgivable just because of the fun you have. I'm only as far as Case 1, and I've got some time to kill before Case 2 starts (having to be on time for shit is stupid) so I'll do some side missions or explore. Hopefully I'll beat it tomorrow, then I can try the other modes and restart the story to get some stuff I missed.

[Kiyosuki]

http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/5619/xboxhs3.md.jpg

XBOX!!!!1

[blueguy]

unfunny at it's finest.

[Kiyosuki]

unfunny at it's finest.

lol. Well whatever the case, its good that 360 owners finally have something to talk about.

I've heard the biggest complaint is a lack of the free-roaming style that the demo showed, but I believe that its an unlockable.

There was a really big rumor for a while that Dante was a secret character in this, but if you hear about that its been confirmed to not be true.

Unless someone finds out something suddenly later, but I doubt it.

Look out for Jill's Sandwich.

EDIT:

http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/8062/1155078727600rc6.md.jpg

I'm sorry.

[blueguy]

Much better.

Yeah, it's been a while. Things are really picking up lately. We've been getting an arcade game every week for over a month now and some big name games are coming out. I really wish MS made a bigger push to stop X-Box development and get them going on 360 stuff sooner.

[kupomog]

Is it just me or is the text for this game unbearable tiny and smooshed for people who don't have HDTV? -_- It's a royal pain trying to play the demo and read the info that pops up at the same time. I hope that it's bigger in the retail version..

[Wonderboy]

Is it just me or is the text for this game unbearable tiny and smooshed for people who don't have HDTV? -_- It's a royal pain trying to play the demo and read the info that pops up at the same time. I hope that it's bigger in the retail version..
Nope, which really sucks. The text will appear bigger if you change your format in the settings to wide screen, but it will make the menu look funky.

[Wonderboy]

Alright, I've spent about a week with the game and have beaten 72 Hour Mode twice and Overtime once (the first run through I didn't unlock Overtime). I bought this game soley for the purpose of being able to kill zombies in a mall. I had no expectations for the story mode, or any hopes that it would be good.

Sadly, the story mode is very much a part of the game, and there's really no true free roam in the sense most people were thinking. Now, I have no problems going through a story mode or being forced to, but in this game they take it to such an extreme. The story mode is set so you have to be on time for cases. I get the fact that they're trying to really live up to the "72 hours till you leave thing", but the problem is if you happen to miss a case or die, you must start the entire story mode over. You can (and I have) avoid this by simply turning the game off after you die, but it does get annoying to not be able to continue the game without this. The save system is flawed, but only because of how the story mode works. The game isn't long, but it will be annoying to have to keep starting over and over.

Thankfully though, as you progress through the game and level up, the game becomes more enjoyable. In fact, the second time through is much more fun than the first. When you level up you gain new moves, weapon slots, and health bars (I gotta say, I don't like the health system in the game with the individual bars).

The boss fights in the game are hilarious, and suprisingly fun for the most part. The games controls were ment for just dealing with stupid and slow zombies, so at time having to face someone fast paced is a little awkward, but not too hard. Sadly most of the side missions are escort ones, and the NPCs are retarded. They'll get caught up in hoards of zombies, and giving them a weapon will only make them stop to shoot any chance they get, when you just really want them to keep up with you.

Overtime is cool, though I don't know why they even have this mode, since it's just a continuation of story mode. Minor spoilers: Having to deal with spec-ops is almost as fun as dealing with zombies

Infinite mode is the closest thing to free roaming, but you'll find it hard to do as you please. The point of this mode is to see how long you can survive in the mall, but every minute a bar of health drops, and not to mention all the food in the mall is only there for one use. This would be much more fun if they just kept the one time food thing instead of having you're health run out every minute and 20 seconds.

Overall, it's alright. A lot of wasted potential, but it's still fun. I'd give it a 7/10, and I'd recommend waiting for a price drop to pick it up.

[phil]

anyone play this yet?
i was going to buy it in target but they didn't have it, went to the gamestop and they had it but i had a weird moral urge not to buy it from them.

[kupomog]

So far Wonderboy has played the full game...I've only played the demo and I loved it aside from the whole thing where it's fuckin' imposible to read the in game text...but yeah, merging for cleanliness.

[conor.]

car= best zombie killer

lawn mower/drill saw = funniest zombie killer

[phil]

well i bought it. don't know if i really like this game a whole lot. just not getting into it. some aspects of it really annoy me in that the game seems slow moving, so many loading screens, miniscule text even though i have HDTV, cell phone going off all the time, and killing zombies isn't as fun as i thought it would be.

the game did however come with an exbox update which resolved the issue with the DVD player and now my home theatre is perfect.

[DAntae]

finally downloaded the demo...it was pretty fun. however it seemed just to repettive for a purchase. plan to rent/borrow sometime soon.

also the cases are impossible to read. I kind of figured out where to go but make it big enough to read.

[kupomog]

Yeah the company received TONS of complaints on the small text. They said they're working on it but who knows.. Even people with HDTVs (like phil mentioned) have a hard time reading the text. It's just retarded. And when there's a lot of reading to do...oy. I odn't wanna stretch out the image in widescreen mode either just to read text...

But yeah I got kind of turned off when I heard about the gameplay and how much of a huge hassle it is when you have to start over from the beginning if you mess up. But...I do still want the game even if the demo is kind of misleading.

[blueguy]

You don't have to start over. Just like damn near any other game you can reload from your last save. Hell, it's actually a good idea to restart a few times you can build your level up a bit for the later parts of the game.

ssD, don't let the demo fool you. There was nothing to do in the demo but kill zombies. In the full game, you practically never have time to do that. I believe it's impossible to accomplish everything there is in one game because sometimes you need to be in more places then one.

[kupomog]

Yeah I know you can reload. But the save system is something that I always hear people complain about in the first place, which is what I hear makes it a hassle to begin with. I'm sure it's not any worse that getting wasted/busted in GTA.

[phil]

the saving is a hassle because you can only save in two points which are pretty close to one another. and a lot of the objectives are a fair distance away from these points so even if you complete an objective you still have to make your way back to the save point.

and killing zombies over and over gets old fast.

i'm trying to sell it on craigslist, no takers so far. may end up going on ebay.

[blueguy]

You can save in any of the bathrooms. There's one in every section of the game except the maintenence tunnels and outside. So there's like at least 8 places to save, and usually not that far away.

[phil]

eh, i just don't like the game

[DAntae]

like most gameboards on gamefaqs...the population is divided on this game. based on what I have finally read, and played so far, it is fun in small doses. not a game I could put a couple of hours in per play.

[Veryjammy]

This is the shittiest good game you will ever play. Or the best crap game. One minute you'll love it, the next you'll want to smash your controller into little pieces.

To be honest, the demo really isn't representative of the full game. The full game is overflowing with missions which forces you to adhere to a fairly strict time limit, at least if you want to keep the story thread going. If you just want to mess about then you've got a massive playground to mess about in.

There are so so many good moments and set pieces in the game, but some bits are hopelessly flawed. Like the fucking radio which rings all the fucking time. And when you answer it you can't attack zombies or jump, which is artificially restrictive. And if a zombie attacks you and the radio call gets interrupted, you have to listen to the whole thing ALL OVER AGAIN. Terrible design choice.

The escort AI will have you slitting your wrists at some point. I was hoping it would be as good as Ashley's in RE4 but they're totally clueless. And it's so annoying when you've battled your way through a tough case and then die on the way back to the security room and you have to do the whole thing again.

But then there's great moments like when you have to kill an obese lesbian policewoman before she fucks her girl hostages to death with her police stick thing. :-O Ok that sounds weird but it's funny in the game, honest. Or when you dress Frank up in a flowery dress and he does a hilarious dance in the mirror, and you bash zombies around with a big prop lipstick which leaves pink smudges on the zombies clothes.

It's wonderful and shit at the same time. For a few hours after I bought it I was really unsure about it, but now I'm used to the flaws and the odd game structure I'm loving it.

[blueguy]

Or how about tossing some cooking oil on the ground and watching zombies slip and fall or using a heated frying pan to burn their face off?

[kupomog]

God damn it.

No Solution Forthcoming Re: Dead Rising in SD (http://blog.wired.com/games/index.blog?entry_id=1554647)

Game publisher Capcom indicated this morning (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3153521) that there is no solution forthcoming to the issues that cause their latest hit game, Dead Rising for Xbox 360, to be nearly unplayable on standard definition TV sets.

A representative of the publisher told 1up.com that a patch "is not possible" due to the scope of the problem, which causes the in-game text messages to be unreadably small on non-HD displays.

The statement comes right on the heels of the company's announcement that it will double its advertising budget for Dead Rising, pumping an additional $3 million into television ad buys.

The game, a campy zombie-killing adventure set in a shopping mall, became a surprise hit for the company when it was released last month, shipping over half a million copies in its first two weeks.

But players without high-definition television sets got a nasty surprise when they popped in the disc. They couldn't read the crucial messages that the game sent out telling them where to go and what to do next.

Without them, they were set adrift in the shopping mall, helpless against the advances of hordes of zombies.

As complaints piled up, Capcom offered users some suggestions (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3152924), but none were especially helpful. Today, after weeks of silence, the company divulged to 1up.com that although they had looked into creating a downloadable patch that would remedy the problem, "the amount of text and the size of the patch necessary to change the text" made it impossible to solve the problem.

Given that Capcom is a company that has never, historically, shied away from releasing "Director's Cut" editions of its games, it's likely that such a solution might be the only thing gamers without $1000 displays can hope for.

I'm still wondering how in the hell this got through Microsoft's quality control measures.

Posted by Chris Kohler at 11:59 AM PDT

http://blog.wired.com/games/drtxt.jpg

[Veryjammy]

You know, I'm wondering if the people who are having these problems are using the composite leads that come in the box, because composite results in shit, blurry picture quality anyway.

I have the official RGB scart socket and an SDTV and the text is perfectly legible. Sure it's on the small side, but I can read it fine when I'm sat back on the sofa.

[StrideR]

I'm with Phil on this one -- it's not that much fun to play. I gave up after the first gunfight and I haven't played the game since.

Maybe it's something about how the melee weapons have a limited amount of times you can use them.

[kupomog]

I have the official RGB scart socket and an SDTV and the text is perfectly legible. Sure it's on the small side, but I can read it fine when I'm sat back on the sofa.

I'm using the component HD AV cable that came with the system. I have zero TV hook up knowledge and the SCART thing is only sold in Europe/Australia so...any equivalent for the 360 I can use?

[phil]

he's in the UK so he's on PAL which has a higher resolution than NTSC

[kupomog]

So basically there's no real equivalent for this region? :(

*goes back to complaining about small text*

[jim]

Its a ridiculous situation. MS should be forcing these companies to optimise all games for SD. I bet at least half or more people are playing on them. Failing that, there should be a warning on the box that a game isnt really playable on SD. When the publishers lose half their sales, they'll start addressing the problem.

Im ok, I've got a nice new HDTV, but I started out playing on a 51cm SDTV, and while the majority of games were great on it, a couple were almost unplayable. The prime suspects being Gun and Tony Hawks American Wasteland. Both of these games would override the 360's 4:3 screen format setting and play the game in widescreen, thus you had to play in a letterbox. The words were impossible to read. Is it the same with Dead Rising? Is it letterboxed on a normal TV?

Definately sucks, but I have to say playing the 360 in HD widescreen is just incredible, and LCD's are getting amazingly cheap, they're like half the price they were a year ago. Definately worth the purchase.

[Drew]

Rented the game this week. Fun as hell. I'm not really into the missions as much as I am into going to random stores, getting weapons, and fucking Zombies up.

I never answer my walkie talkie/phone in the game because I can't fuckin read anything without getting 2 inches from the screen. It does piss me off they did this, but a fun game none the less.

[phil]

sold my copy on craigslist

[Tenrai]

This game looks well funny bowling the zombies over and using a lawnmower. lol

[jim]

Picked it up yesterday, great game!! I like the way that the objective is not to get through the game in the conventional sense like most games, you are dumped in a mall filled with zombies for 72 hours and you can play it any way you want, and then after you "finish" it, you keep all your character stats and score and everything and go through it all again doing completely different missions, or just going on a zombie killing rampage for the 72 hours. Nice one Capcom!

I do have one big problem with this game though, and thats aiming. Capcom, wtf? Every game known to man on uses the right thumbstick for aiming, but no, you had to be different and use the left thimbstick and make it feel as awkward as possible. What it needed was an auto aiming system like GTA or Evil Dead: A Fistful Of Boomstick. Now that game showed you how to shoot zombies!

[Veryjammy]

They used theleft thumbstick for aiming because you have to hold down the right trigger to go into aiming mode, so if you then used the right thumbstick to aim,you wouldn't be able to press the X button in order to attack.

[jim]

Yeah, the control system is still dumb though in that it goes against convention and feels awkward. Im sure they could have changed the layout a bit so you could aim with the right stick.

[blueguy]

All I wanted was the aim stick to be the same between camera and gun. That's what got me most confused.