This review contains spoilers
For personal reference more than anything else. Still have done spoiler warning just in case though.
First time doing a complete playthrough after playing it a lot for around ten years mainly messing around with it and attempting but then abandoning a full playthrough last year. Finished 72 Hour Mode and Overtime Mode.
This game used to be a source of mindless fun for me to begin with, I wouldn't even bother attempting the story and would instead just go around the mall putting on silly outfits and using random objects to kill the zombies. Then it became a more mixed experience as I tried to play this game properly in recent years and I discovered (or finally realised) just how bad the survivor A.I was, rendering it no longer fun and something to avoid and just play either Dead Rising 2 or Off The Record if I needed a Dead Rising fix. But in the last year I've found out that going into every game with a mindset of I need to take this seriously and not have any games that can just be for fun isn't really the best idea. I think I'm really beginning to understand just what I want from games, what can stop me playing them or that some games are really only good for one or two things and that's ok. Even with this I still wanted to play through the main story of this game because for whatever reason I keep coming back to it despite getting what I believe to be better experiences from the next two (DR2 & OTR).
To start off with, the story is this game was genuinely good I thought and I'm slightly surprised knowing this game's penchant for doing silly things. When I was younger I'd always skip the cutscenes and this meant skipping the section at the beginning where you fly over the town of Willamette taking pictures of what's happening there, even when I started to do that section I didn't really see it as anything over then a chance to get free PP before the game really starts. This time I still took pictures, but the sights of the people in danger noticing the helicopter and trying to get Ed and/or Frank's attention while Ed sets up the perfect position for Frank to take a shot and capitalize on their misfortune felt really unpleasant. Later on learning about the incident in Santa Cabeza and hearing Isabela pour her heart out to the camera, wanting people to know what she and the people from that place had been through felt upsetting, even if its undercut by the prior explanation from Dr Barnaby and some of the details he gave concerning the how and why of the creation of the zombie parasite feeling quite stupid.
Frank West feels like one of the better examples of a complex protagonist I've seen, he seems to have a good heart and he really does seem to care for the people around him but he's a bit of a scumbag, the first half of the game is him trying his hardest to get the scoop through any means necessary and acting like a complete prick. He's unnecessarily hostile with the other main characters, he's a total pervert and there are moments in the game where he seems perfectly content not helping someone out and instead just filming them like the helicopter scene mentioned prior. He does help out with some things though and eventually seems to come from a place where he shares Isabela and Carlito's sentiments about wanting to get the truth out there, not just for a shiny medal or a pay rise but because its whats right.
The other characters are also quite good for the most part, Isabela was probably my favourite with me also liking Brad and Carlito quite a bit, each character brought something to the story, felt quite complex and made me care if something happend to them (more for Isabela and Brad here though). Jessie, Brock and Dr Barnaby were ok but each have at least one interesting moment (Jessie being clearly wracked with guilt after calling her superiors who then decided to kill everyone in the mall, Brock's kind of fucked up way of viewing the cover ups he tasked with doing and Dr Barnaby when he realises that he's going to turn).
Now onto the gameplay, being able to mess about in the mall can be really good fun, its interesting to explore, theres quite a lot of potential weapons and outfits to try out and try on and you also get skill moves which can be quite fun to use in killing a lot of zombies or killing one in kinda strange ways. The mall itself is one of those iconic locations in gaming to me as I spent so much time with this game when I was younger, even if most of that time was spent in Paradise Plaza.
The boss fights are another big aspect to the gameplay as not only are there the typical main bosses in the story but also the Psychopaths who are people who usually went through something with their minds when the outbreak happened and are now usually killing people or protecting a certain area. Due to the timed nature of this game I wasn't able to do all of them but I managed to do some and I felt that they were kind of a mixed bag. Adam and Sean felt like genuinely good boss fights with recognisable attack patterns with clear moments where you can safely attack. Isabela's fight where she is on a motorbike was one of the funniest boss fights I've ever had to do as she went so incredibly fast and had what seemed like the most perfect control of a motorbike I've ever seen with it moving in ways I don't think it should've been able to. Jo and Steven's fights were just kind of bad with not much thought feeling like it was needed in either of them. I also wasn't really keen on Larry's fight but thats because the dodge roll seemed necessary to block the bits of meat he throws and I find it to be weirdly hard to pull off with the timing also being not consistent when I i could pull it off but that may just be me being shit.
The other main aspect of gameplay is finding people around the mall and bringing them to the security room which rewards you with a survivor checked off a list that can go towards trophies or achievements or whatever and PP which levels Frank up. So much has been said surrounding these survivors and for good reason, as a couple of rules for myself this playthrough I had decided to let a survivor stay dead this time around and not try to reload and come back for them if any of them did die and i also made sure to try and use checkpoints rather than the follow command. I think this slightly helped but it still sucked for the most part.
But something I noticed this time around was how this affects the game and I don't mean in a "oh it just kinda makes the game worse because this one aspect is bad and it brings down the overall view of the game" but in a way that that kind of spreads and proves to be a much bigger problem. Trying to move survivors along takes time and this being a game that literally runs on a time limit with you needing to be in exact places at exact times with not much leniency (and also that if you don't have enough time you may not be able to finish a mission and will have to reload) doesn't really work with that. I tried saving Ross and Tonya like three different times but Tonya would keep stopping to fight zombies making what should have been a pretty simple and quick journey take much longer and leading me to not be able to do the next story mission, this was not the only instance this happened. I had survivors get stuck on things, constantly stopping, running directly into zombies, there are far too many things that could and did go wrong.
So this then leads to having to make a decision, do you continue as you were and hope that the A.I plays ball? Do you try to pick and choose what survivors to take as some seem to be better than others even though chances are you'll have no idea which ones those are and even then they'll probably have another one with them that is awful? Or do you just not bother and do something else instead cutting off one of the only ways to get a high level of PP at a kind of regular rate? Unless you're really good at the game, PP is pretty much needed to ensure you have more health and be able to carry more items as you run into harder enemies as you go on, making these things vital to be at a high level. But as mentioned before, this is also how you get skill moves that, when it comes to getting kidnapped by the True Eye cult and the final boss fight against Brock you will also need as you don't have any items at all against Brock and only a couple of items against the cultists.
The game seems to be at odds with itself, asking you to try and adhere to its time limit but making it so that that's an incredibly difficult thing to actually achieve. I got by but it meant having to try out helping various survivors and then seeing if I could make it in time only for something to go wrong and then have to reload and try helping someone else or just not bother because I genuinely had no idea how long things would take and didn't want to spend my time doing something that would be rendered useless in the end. Another problem with the time management in this game is Otis, when Otis calls, you can only run around, you can't jump or fight and if you go to a different room (or get grabbed by a zombie) it cuts the call off and then you have to answer it again. If you try to ignore him he'll just keep trying again after like 20 seconds. The game doesn't have moments outside of cutscenes where he can't call so i pretty regularly had him calling during boss fights in the game or just as I was about to leave a room once again wasting precious time that could be used elsewhere.
To try and talk about something positive before I finish, a small thing is that I really like some of the songs in this game, specifically 'Mall Music 3', 'Arrival' and Frank's theme, they're some of the most recognisable songs to me in gaming as I usually don't notice soundtracks unless I really like them or if they get used a lot.
One of the biggest things I had to think about this game though was what it brought to the table, I honestly love the concept of this game and there are so many things that give the game its personality and help it stand out or are just really fun game things. Rescuing the survivors, time limit with the mission structure is great, the pick up and use anything as a weapon mechanic is great, having not only the Psychopath boss fights but area bosses like the cult or sniper family that add to the atmosphere and make you think twice about a area you've probably come to quite a bit by this point (don't think the convicts should respawn though and I have no idea why they do). The only problem with these is that some just aren't handled well, like the time limit which I think is maybe a little too strict in this game in all honesty or the survivors being really bad.
Overall this is a difficult game for me to judge as I really do like it a fair bit but I just came out of this annoyed and slightly confused as to whether I'd even been playing it right when I was just engaging with the games main mechanics. I think despite all my problems with it I am really grateful that this game led to DR2 and OTR which I think just did things much better and really made me realise how special these games are. I think I'll probably continue to mess about in the mall like I used to but in terms of completing it again, I think the only way would be if it ever got a remake which fixed my issues with it. It feels kind of broken but I think its a good game.
First time doing a complete playthrough after playing it a lot for around ten years mainly messing around with it and attempting but then abandoning a full playthrough last year. Finished 72 Hour Mode and Overtime Mode.
This game used to be a source of mindless fun for me to begin with, I wouldn't even bother attempting the story and would instead just go around the mall putting on silly outfits and using random objects to kill the zombies. Then it became a more mixed experience as I tried to play this game properly in recent years and I discovered (or finally realised) just how bad the survivor A.I was, rendering it no longer fun and something to avoid and just play either Dead Rising 2 or Off The Record if I needed a Dead Rising fix. But in the last year I've found out that going into every game with a mindset of I need to take this seriously and not have any games that can just be for fun isn't really the best idea. I think I'm really beginning to understand just what I want from games, what can stop me playing them or that some games are really only good for one or two things and that's ok. Even with this I still wanted to play through the main story of this game because for whatever reason I keep coming back to it despite getting what I believe to be better experiences from the next two (DR2 & OTR).
To start off with, the story is this game was genuinely good I thought and I'm slightly surprised knowing this game's penchant for doing silly things. When I was younger I'd always skip the cutscenes and this meant skipping the section at the beginning where you fly over the town of Willamette taking pictures of what's happening there, even when I started to do that section I didn't really see it as anything over then a chance to get free PP before the game really starts. This time I still took pictures, but the sights of the people in danger noticing the helicopter and trying to get Ed and/or Frank's attention while Ed sets up the perfect position for Frank to take a shot and capitalize on their misfortune felt really unpleasant. Later on learning about the incident in Santa Cabeza and hearing Isabela pour her heart out to the camera, wanting people to know what she and the people from that place had been through felt upsetting, even if its undercut by the prior explanation from Dr Barnaby and some of the details he gave concerning the how and why of the creation of the zombie parasite feeling quite stupid.
Frank West feels like one of the better examples of a complex protagonist I've seen, he seems to have a good heart and he really does seem to care for the people around him but he's a bit of a scumbag, the first half of the game is him trying his hardest to get the scoop through any means necessary and acting like a complete prick. He's unnecessarily hostile with the other main characters, he's a total pervert and there are moments in the game where he seems perfectly content not helping someone out and instead just filming them like the helicopter scene mentioned prior. He does help out with some things though and eventually seems to come from a place where he shares Isabela and Carlito's sentiments about wanting to get the truth out there, not just for a shiny medal or a pay rise but because its whats right.
The other characters are also quite good for the most part, Isabela was probably my favourite with me also liking Brad and Carlito quite a bit, each character brought something to the story, felt quite complex and made me care if something happend to them (more for Isabela and Brad here though). Jessie, Brock and Dr Barnaby were ok but each have at least one interesting moment (Jessie being clearly wracked with guilt after calling her superiors who then decided to kill everyone in the mall, Brock's kind of fucked up way of viewing the cover ups he tasked with doing and Dr Barnaby when he realises that he's going to turn).
Now onto the gameplay, being able to mess about in the mall can be really good fun, its interesting to explore, theres quite a lot of potential weapons and outfits to try out and try on and you also get skill moves which can be quite fun to use in killing a lot of zombies or killing one in kinda strange ways. The mall itself is one of those iconic locations in gaming to me as I spent so much time with this game when I was younger, even if most of that time was spent in Paradise Plaza.
The boss fights are another big aspect to the gameplay as not only are there the typical main bosses in the story but also the Psychopaths who are people who usually went through something with their minds when the outbreak happened and are now usually killing people or protecting a certain area. Due to the timed nature of this game I wasn't able to do all of them but I managed to do some and I felt that they were kind of a mixed bag. Adam and Sean felt like genuinely good boss fights with recognisable attack patterns with clear moments where you can safely attack. Isabela's fight where she is on a motorbike was one of the funniest boss fights I've ever had to do as she went so incredibly fast and had what seemed like the most perfect control of a motorbike I've ever seen with it moving in ways I don't think it should've been able to. Jo and Steven's fights were just kind of bad with not much thought feeling like it was needed in either of them. I also wasn't really keen on Larry's fight but thats because the dodge roll seemed necessary to block the bits of meat he throws and I find it to be weirdly hard to pull off with the timing also being not consistent when I i could pull it off but that may just be me being shit.
The other main aspect of gameplay is finding people around the mall and bringing them to the security room which rewards you with a survivor checked off a list that can go towards trophies or achievements or whatever and PP which levels Frank up. So much has been said surrounding these survivors and for good reason, as a couple of rules for myself this playthrough I had decided to let a survivor stay dead this time around and not try to reload and come back for them if any of them did die and i also made sure to try and use checkpoints rather than the follow command. I think this slightly helped but it still sucked for the most part.
But something I noticed this time around was how this affects the game and I don't mean in a "oh it just kinda makes the game worse because this one aspect is bad and it brings down the overall view of the game" but in a way that that kind of spreads and proves to be a much bigger problem. Trying to move survivors along takes time and this being a game that literally runs on a time limit with you needing to be in exact places at exact times with not much leniency (and also that if you don't have enough time you may not be able to finish a mission and will have to reload) doesn't really work with that. I tried saving Ross and Tonya like three different times but Tonya would keep stopping to fight zombies making what should have been a pretty simple and quick journey take much longer and leading me to not be able to do the next story mission, this was not the only instance this happened. I had survivors get stuck on things, constantly stopping, running directly into zombies, there are far too many things that could and did go wrong.
So this then leads to having to make a decision, do you continue as you were and hope that the A.I plays ball? Do you try to pick and choose what survivors to take as some seem to be better than others even though chances are you'll have no idea which ones those are and even then they'll probably have another one with them that is awful? Or do you just not bother and do something else instead cutting off one of the only ways to get a high level of PP at a kind of regular rate? Unless you're really good at the game, PP is pretty much needed to ensure you have more health and be able to carry more items as you run into harder enemies as you go on, making these things vital to be at a high level. But as mentioned before, this is also how you get skill moves that, when it comes to getting kidnapped by the True Eye cult and the final boss fight against Brock you will also need as you don't have any items at all against Brock and only a couple of items against the cultists.
The game seems to be at odds with itself, asking you to try and adhere to its time limit but making it so that that's an incredibly difficult thing to actually achieve. I got by but it meant having to try out helping various survivors and then seeing if I could make it in time only for something to go wrong and then have to reload and try helping someone else or just not bother because I genuinely had no idea how long things would take and didn't want to spend my time doing something that would be rendered useless in the end. Another problem with the time management in this game is Otis, when Otis calls, you can only run around, you can't jump or fight and if you go to a different room (or get grabbed by a zombie) it cuts the call off and then you have to answer it again. If you try to ignore him he'll just keep trying again after like 20 seconds. The game doesn't have moments outside of cutscenes where he can't call so i pretty regularly had him calling during boss fights in the game or just as I was about to leave a room once again wasting precious time that could be used elsewhere.
To try and talk about something positive before I finish, a small thing is that I really like some of the songs in this game, specifically 'Mall Music 3', 'Arrival' and Frank's theme, they're some of the most recognisable songs to me in gaming as I usually don't notice soundtracks unless I really like them or if they get used a lot.
One of the biggest things I had to think about this game though was what it brought to the table, I honestly love the concept of this game and there are so many things that give the game its personality and help it stand out or are just really fun game things. Rescuing the survivors, time limit with the mission structure is great, the pick up and use anything as a weapon mechanic is great, having not only the Psychopath boss fights but area bosses like the cult or sniper family that add to the atmosphere and make you think twice about a area you've probably come to quite a bit by this point (don't think the convicts should respawn though and I have no idea why they do). The only problem with these is that some just aren't handled well, like the time limit which I think is maybe a little too strict in this game in all honesty or the survivors being really bad.
Overall this is a difficult game for me to judge as I really do like it a fair bit but I just came out of this annoyed and slightly confused as to whether I'd even been playing it right when I was just engaging with the games main mechanics. I think despite all my problems with it I am really grateful that this game led to DR2 and OTR which I think just did things much better and really made me realise how special these games are. I think I'll probably continue to mess about in the mall like I used to but in terms of completing it again, I think the only way would be if it ever got a remake which fixed my issues with it. It feels kind of broken but I think its a good game.