Dead Rising is absolutely a game I didn't expect to enjoy as much as I did. I grew up as a Nintendo boy, with a few minor exceptions here and there. I almost never strayed away from the bright, cartoony worlds exclusive to Nintendo consoles. This didn't change until a couple years ago when I started getting into fighting games. This is actually how I first found out about Frank West and Dead Rising as a whole. I've been playing lots and lots of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, where Frank West just so happens to be a playable character. Knowing nothing about him prior, I tried him out, and he quickly became a favorite, so naturally, I wanted to know more about him. One thing leads to another, and Dead Rising is one of my favorite games ever.

I was immediately hooked the instant the game started. I've seen my fair share of zombie outbreak games, but this one is less about simply surviving the outbreak. This game has a fairly deep story as to why the outbreak started in the first place, and it's the job of freelance photojournalist Frank West to figure it out. After arriving on helicopter, Frank has 3 days to figure out what the hell is happening before his ride comes back to pick him up. A 72 hour countdown starts then and there. This timer is not only brutal, but is essential to this game's genius, but I'll have to talk more about it once I go over a few other things first.

Frank is free to explore the mall of Willamette to his heart's content, but while he's doing so, he'll run into his fair share of scoops. These are missions assigned to Frank when he gets a call on his transceiver from Otis. These missions can range from saving someone in need of help, fighting off someone who's gone insane, meeting up with someone, etc. These missions can pop up at any time when you're outside of the safe house, and they each have their own time limit assigned to them. Some of these scoops are essential to getting the game's best ending, but most of them can be ignored. The ones that aren't required are simply there to help the player: more on that later.

Frank has very basic movement options. He's slow and clunky, doesn't do much damage, has low health, etc. This was intentional due to the RPG-like leveling up system. By completing specific tasks, like killing a certain amount of zombies, saving survivors by guiding them back to the safe house, and playing through various activities around the mall, Frank gets Prestige Points, abbreviated into PP. Frank can go all the way from level 1 to level 50, with each level up having a random chance to give Frank a stat boost and a new skill. These stats range from more health, more speed, more attack damage, more inventory space, and more ranged damage. The new skills are mostly barehanded attacks that can only be done while holding nothing in your hand. These are fun to mess around with, offer a lot of variety, and are essential to master to ensure you can beat the game.

This leveling system surprisingly works incredibly well, and it's strengthened by what I think is this game's biggest strength: the reliance on player knowledge. Throughout your first playthrough, you know absolutely nothing. To go along with that, Frank is at his lowest strength level. As you learn more about the game, Frank levels up as a result. Frank becoming stronger is literally a consequence of the player having more knowledge and making the most of what they know.

On my first playthrough, I started out just fumbling around, but just by exploring did I learn how much there was to exploit to your advantage. The hidden items like the submachine guns and katana, the different juice formulas, the PP stickers, the skateboard, literally everything. Once I finished the game, only around level 33, I immediately wanted to go back in and play again, so that's what I did. Not only does everything you learn throughout the game encourage multiple playthroughs, but you can transfer Frank's current PP data over to a new save so you don't have to start at the bottom of the barrel every time. I quickly got to level 50 and was able to fully test what I learned from my first playthrough at Frank's strongest point.

The knowledge you gain isn't only useful just for killing everything in sight, but also for saving survivors. The aforementioned scoops that usually require you to escort someone back to the safe house can be pretty difficult, especially when you're fighting the incompetent AI more than the zombies. After scouring through the mall for hours on end, you'll know every nook and cranny by heart. You'll have little trouble planning a route for your rescued survivors, and will even be able to take bigger risks by escorting more at once. This isn't even mentioning the brutal 72 hour timer that's always counting down. Learning to work around the clock, both in the sense of constantly doing things and you developed a game plan to deal with it effectively, is the cornerstone of succeeding in this game, and by simply playing, you learn all you need to know. This reinforces the notion that player knowledge reigns above anything else and encourages you to get to know the game like it's your future spouse, and it works perfectly.


One of the selling points of the game is that you can use literally anything as a weapon. Any object that can be interacted with can also be picked up, used as a melee weapon, and thrown. This highly encourages experimentation with the tools that surround you. Although I never used random objects as weapons much, it is plenty useful knowing that there's always a weapon nearby. This is especially useful when you're trying to escort survivors out of a store and you're surrounded. I specifically remember this being useful during the barricade scoop, where two guys fortify themselves in a store. There were plenty of benches, plants, metal plates, and other objects that were incredibly useful for clearing the way. The versatility of the entire environment around you makes every inch of the map a new, engaging ground for zombie killing.

The story took me by surprise by being just as engaging as the rest of the game. It's not anything incredibly deep, but is interesting enough to keep you completely engaged. The story progresses as you complete story related scoops. These scoops are mandatory for getting the best ending, but if you want, you could just ignore them completely and mess around in the mall. By failing to complete a story related scoop, you lose the chance to get the best ending and cannot complete any other story related scoops, but the game doesn't just end. You can completely ignore the story if you like and just rescue survivors, but completing all the story scoops is how you get the true ending.

Freelance photojournalist Frank West arrives in Willamette, Colorado, after receiving a scoop about something big going down. Flying over the town, he tries to piece together what's happening as people are seemingly rioting while the entire town is blocked off by the military. Once he arrives at the shopping mall, he meets Carlito, the man who sent the scoop, but he's very vague about the whole situation and insists Frank enters the mall to see the situation for himself. A horde of zombies flood the mall while Frank tries to escape to the safe room. The door is welded shut, and we meet most of the main cast: Brad, Jessie, and Otis. They're very vague about what's actually happening, but Frank is able to convince them to help him get his story as long as he helps them find someone in the mall.

Carlito, the man from before, antagonizes Brad and Frank by kidnapping their person of interest: Dr. Barnaby. They're able to save Barnaby, but Carlito escapes. Once Barnaby is safe, Jessie interrogates him without allowing Frank to join her, so Frank sets out to find a girl he saw before who claims to know something about what's happening. Once he finds her, she introduces herself as Isabela Keyes; sister to Carlito Keyes. She claims that the zombie outbreak is "all of their faults" and "it's just like Santa Cabeza." Isabela sets up a time for Frank to interview Carlito, so they meet back up in a couple of hours.

Turns out, Carlito didn't come to the interview, and shot Isabela in the arm out of anger. You take Isabela to the safe room where she can be treated. Once she wakes up, the entire truth comes out. Dr. Barnaby confesses that he led a research team in Santa Cabeza, Mexico, where they tried to find an efficient way to reproduce cattle. They accidentally created the queen, which carries the zombie virus with it. A queen got out and went into the nearest village, where nearly everyone was turned into a zombie and horribly killed. The only known survivors were Carlito and Isabela. But, this entire operation was covered up, including the government clean up. Years later, Carlito unleashes a queen in Willamette with the intent to remind the world of what happened at Santa Cabeza. Once we're completely caught up, Barnaby gets infected and is killed.

Carlito's backup plan comes into play. He floods the underground tunnels with gas and plants explosives in various places. Through the fire, Frank is able to get the bombs out of the tunnels in time. Meanwhile, Brad confronts Carlito, both injuring themselves fatally. A bit of time passes, and Frank finds Carlito getting dragged into a butcher shop on the security monitors. Frank rescues Carlito from the clutches of the butcher, only for Carlito to be living his last moments. This moment is great; Frank being able to sympathize with Carlito and assuring him that the Santa Cabeza story will be told, but still being angry and demanding answers. You're right there along with Frank; mad at Carlito, but can at least understand what he was trying to do. The best villains out there are the ones you can sympathize with.

Frank meets back up with Isabela and gives her some reassuring words that, although Carlito was a scumbag, he put his love for his little sister first and was only trying to look out for her. The narrative slowly comes to a close here. The military arrives, all the survivors you rescued escape with help from Otis, and it's almost time for your ride to arrive. It's eerily quiet all around the mall. Thanks to the military, all zombies in immediate sight are now dead, so all that's filled in the halls are the leftover corpses. Upon arriving at the rooftop, the pilot sees Frank and attempts to land, but then, the worst possible outcome happens. A zombie that had snuck on board the helicopter kills the pilot, causing it to crash and leaving Frank with no way to escape this zombie-ridden, and now, military-ridden mall.

This starts one my favorite part of the game: Overtime Mode. Nobody is coming to rescue you. Frank's careless distraught when the helicopter crashes gets him infected. Now, he has to scour the mall, contending with military troops and zombies to create a makeshift cure with Isabela's help. This is a complete 180 from what the game promised before, but it absolutely works. I genuinely cannot describe how absolutely intense this felt on my first playthrough. Finding Queens for the cure can be a hassle, especially if you don't know the proper strats. Once you find them, though, you and Isabela fight for dear life through a zombie infested tunnel that leads outside. This all culminates in the final boss fight: Brock Mason.

After stealing a military jeep, you seem like you're home free, until a tank pops up to try and take you out. You both quickly come to a stalemate before Brock comes out of the top. Frank gets out to confront him, where Brock explains that his job is to cover up the entire zombie incident. Because of that, he can't leave Frank or Isabela alive, but just when he gets distracted, Frank gives him the biggest sucker punch known to man. You then engage in the boss fight, but this time, Frank has no items in his inventory. It's a battle based on the skills you earned throughout the game and tests your knowledge on how to use them most effectively. Once Frank is victorious, he lets out a scream and it fades…

I'd say I only have some minor gripes with this otherwise fantastic story. The first is something brought up in Overtime Mode. Isabela claims that Carlito attached a virus to 50 orphans who are now spread around the country that will turn them into zombies at a moment's notice. This is nothing more than speculation, but with how important they seemed to be, they actually ended up serving no purpose. I'm pretty sure it comes back in Dead Rising 3, but I haven't played that game as of the time I'm writing this. I would've preferred if this wasn't made to seem like a huge deal when it was brought up, because it's ever mentioned in this game again after it's initial introduction. The second thing is the VERY ending, after Frank screams and it fades to black. There's a bit of text that explains that Frank tried to expose the government for their crimes, but without enough evidence, the only thing he could get was them admitting to researching cattle. This is incredibly unsatisfying, and it's kinda just thrown in there. I wish there was some kind of epilogue that showed how Frank and Isabela ended up after escaping and failing to expose the government, because this is a really strange cliffhanger to end on.

One thing I love about the story is the morally gray aspect of everything and everyone. Frank isn't just some guy doing what he's doing for the good of the country, not at all. When we first meet him, he's just after a story. By the end of it, it's never really clear if he's still doing what he's doing for the sake of the story or to expose the truth for what it is because it's the right thing to do. Carlito, similarly, killed hundreds, if not, thousands of people by unleashing the infection into the public. But he's not just some hobo looking for destruction, he just wants the world to remember what happened to Santa Cabeza. Brad and Jessie want to help, but we don't know how much of that is just government orders. Even the initial outbreak only happened because American scientists were trying to do something to help the economy.

On that note, I really like Frank West. As I said before, he's only after a scoop, but he slowly grows to realize there's more than that (but we still don't get a definitive answer which is why I still consider him to be morally gray). I've seen many people say he's an asshole, when he absolutely isn't. He just knows how to use leverage effectively, since, again, he's after that big scoop. Honestly, the definitive proof that he isn't an asshole is also my favorite thing about him: he's a pacifist. Before every psychopath boss fight where he's not thrown into immediate danger, he tries to reason with the antagonist first, even going as far as sparing and saving some of them. He's never out for a fight, but will do whatever it takes to save his own life if push comes to shove.

While the previously mentioned boss fights are called "psychopaths," these characters are honestly really human. Every psychopath has fallen insane in some sort of way as a reaction to the zombie outbreak. So, although it may seem strange for a store owner to be anxious about vandalism or a clown to be laughing while he explains how his entire audience died, it's all, in a way, realistic. You can believe that these guys have simply gone mad due to the chaos around them. Not to mention, they're all memorable in some way. My favorites are Carlito and Cliff, mainly because they're the most sympathetic, but Adam, Kent, and the convicts are some of my favorites entertainment-wise. It's interesting how they're the game's toughest forms of enemies. In a zombie outbreak, the most dangerous thing isn't the zombies, but the people affected by it.

In a game I was hesitant to like at first, the last thing I expected to end up liking was the music. At first glance, it just seems like a hodgepodge of licensed music used just because, but every song included in this game is great. Although I don't actively remember every song, so many of them are ingrained into my brain simply because of when they play. Gone Guru playing whenever you enter the park while the convicts are alive is perfect; the start almost sounds like an alarm, alerting the convicts and warning you to get outta there. Slave, which plays during Cliff's fight, fits his constant struggle with PTSD perfectly. The original songs are great, too. Who couldn't love the classic Mall Music? All of it is great, but Mall Music 3 has definitely ascended above the rest. It's so catchy, and eerily plays as though everything is fine, covering up the dark truth of what hides beneath the surface; somehow fits the vibe extremely well. Justified, the end credits song, is one of my favorite OST tracks ever, and fits well with the theme of gray morality I spoke of earlier, as Isabela (I assume) still believes she and her brother were in the right for starting an outbreak, despite the horror it caused. Overall, a great blend of fitting, already existing songs, and new unique music that immerses you in the mall of Willamette.

I really didn't expect to like this game much, if at all. I was only even interested in Frank after playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3. But, now I owe that game a big thank you; for getting me interested in what is now one of my favorite game series' to date. Dead Rising has some of the most unique gameplay for what seems like a generic, zombie survival, FPS type game. The story is far more engaging than it has any right to be, with incredibly well written and interesting, yet simple characters. I'll never forget my first experience with this game, as I struggled to save almost any survivor, got caught by the military countless times, and clawed my way through Overtime Mode. This is one of the few games out there that I would say gets better on repeated playthroughs because of the reliance on player knowledge and leveling Frank up. It's unfortunate to see what's become of the series now, but this will always be remembered by me as one of the greatest gaming experiences out there.