Despised this when I originally played it, thought it was an underrated gem when I gave it another shot a couple of years ago, and now I’ve finally cooled on it- still a really admirable title, especially as one that was meant be Capcom’s leap into the 7th generation, but it’s decidedly frontloaded upon further inspection. So many of the offputting design choices, like the ever-present timer and weapon durability system, only really matter for the first couple of days when you’re still fumbling around, learning the layout of the mall, and dealing with the constant upsets the game throws at you just as think you’ve gotten a handle on everything.

Even coming back to it now, there’s an impressive streak of early-game roadblocks: the convicts, the gun-store owner, zombies that are deadlier and more numerous at night, and the infamous fight against Adam the Clown, each of which feels like catastrophe incarnate. But this also means these early hours necessitate, and are gratifyingly open to, experimentation. Was able to trivialize the Cletus fight by bringing in the LMG from the convict’s truck, and snowballed that into a much easier fight against Adam by handing out shotguns to a couple of survivors and having them stunlock him in place- a far cry from some of my initial attempts to tackle these fights while eating at away my time to complete objectives. If you value games for the little emergent stories they provide, the near misses and disastrous failures, then Dead Rising’s opening hours alone are well worth the price of admission. Could rattle on about the interesting moments borne out of the pressure to make the best use of your time, like a moment on this playthrough where I had to ferry two incapacitated survivors through the mall in the dead of night- anti-fun in practice, but a fantastically memorable challenge.

Once you get some of the busted boss weapons and deeper into the game, so much of that initial thrill is pared down, with little planning needed to prep for bosses and less overlapping case files to try and optimize. By its final unlockable section, the “Overtime” mode, the game has regressed into something out of the Simple Series: a threatless fetch quest through the mall carried only by the fact that you now have the opportunity to perform you newly-unlocked wrestling moves on hapless groups of Zombies. It’s a disappointing arc for a title that begins so well, definitely something where its most widely-criticized choices are really what brings the game together, and it's the deeper stuff, the scenario design and balancing, that needed further examination.

Would be much easier to let the campaign’s flaws slide if it coexisted with a mode that was totally centered on trying to save as many survivors as possible under a dramatically shortened timer- the game’s additional “Infinite Mode,” where you have to survive as long as possible in the mall while your health slowly drains also seems an inversion of what the real draw of the game is- just a total slog in practice- and even more of a shame given that Capcom normally excels at making supplemental modes that can highlight the best of a game’s mechanics. (Was an ardent RE6 defender for the longest time due to the relative strength of Mercenaries, for instance.)

At the same time, it’s got a million little cool details that are easy to latch onto, like it’s opening, where you learn the photography controls while doing a fly-by of Willamette’s main street, which handily beats Half-Life out as far as atmospheric intros are concerned- a great intro that offers you some early-game experience if you get the most lurid shots of the disaster unfolding on the ground, and crucially, is entirely optional. Or managing to run into the surprising number of optional scenes where Frank is stripped of gear and has to break out of captivity- tense moments I had completely missed on my first time through. And this to say nothing of the mall proper, which might rank as one of the best-realized locations in the medium, with a huge number of unique storefronts to explore. Easy to lose time just rummaging through and exploring the place, a mundane location given real life through sheer craft of world design.

I’m a couple of hours into Dead Rising 2 as of writing this, and it already seems like a more measured and evenly-paced experience, but the first is still worth a try- it’s a deeply flawed game, but it never seems half-hearted in its attempts to pull so many weird directions.