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By Keith B (4th Apr 2007)

Have you ever wanted to run around a shopping mall, randomly slaughtering people every few metres without an annoying security guard coming along and kicking you out (I hate it when that happens)? For those of you who have answered yes, which I would assume is everyone, Deadrising is the closest thing you will get to the real thing without either being jailed, institutionalised, or (if you are unlucky enough to live in an area that allows capital punishment) winning a seat on the electric chair! But, don’t start drooling and planning your retail assaults too fast, the people you kill are in fact Zombies, which is kind of ok seeing they were once human!

Wait on a moment, I hear you say! Zombies, Shopping Mall, small group of survivors who have no place to go, sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it? Nope, it wasn’t an episode of friends, but it was a very good guess! The base story line is VERY similar to Dawn of the Dead, so similar that the creators felt they needed to put a disclaimer on the front cover stating that “This game was not developed, approved or licensed by the owners or creators of George A. Romeo’s Dawn of the Dead”. Hmmmmm.

I have to say, I did not have my hopes through the roof for this one, but I am a fan of senseless violence and belting people with baseball bats, so I was slightly intrigued! It really is quite a good game. Very Resident Evil/Silent Hill, except a lot more killing. The first 30 minutes is “hair-pull-out” boring, which is very dangerous considering the height of my hairline! However, after you have finished talking and taking some pretty piccy’s (the major character is a photo journalist) and hit the mall the zombies come thick and fast, and they just don’t stop. I stayed in roughly the same area for at least an hour and killed 200 zombies!

Allllllrighty then. What’s it all about? Pretty simple really! The Army has completely shut off a small town because of a “riot”. Obviously, being an intrepid photo journalist, you realise something is not right and you head off in a helicopter to find out the real story. When you are dropped off on the Helipad of the Local Shopping Mall (which on reflection is MASSIVE for a town of 50,000), you have 72 hours to find out the real story before you are picked up.

The game play is surprisingly not tedious! It is completely up to the player what he/she does for the time they are in the mall, however you had better not be a pacifist and try to negotiate a peaceful solution with the zombies…..THEY EAT YOUR BRAIN!!!! To progress in the game, you do have to do some of the missions that you are given, either by the janitor on you walkie-talkie (He is watching the security monitors in the safety of a locked room, the sissy girl!) or by running in to one of the ‘living’ people around the mall. Some of these people you have to save, others are playing the hero (like you) and others are part of a secret government plot (they are the ones of major interest).

As I mentioned, you are a photo journalist, so your number one priority is getting a story, and every story needs pictures! So through your escapades you will need to take pics of zombies taking chunks out of your arm, people falling to their death off of three story buildings and packs of the living dead feasting on the writhing body of a six year old girl! That’s a Kodak Moment!

Weapon wise, you can use a wide variety of bludgeoning apparatus that you pick up all over the mall. The catch is that they don’t last long. I am not sure how a baseball bat would ware out from beating zombies, but hey, I have never tried in real life so I can’t comment! But don’t worry too much, there is plenty to choose from and ample quantities. Knives, park benches, gum-ball machines, guns and the odd bottle of ketchup are among the arsenal you can stumble across. It is handy to remember where you found the most effecting weapons, as they do re-spawn. You also get to drive a car and motorbike, which works brilliantly! It really lifts your kill count!

The graphics are ok without being excellent, probably the games lowest point. Having said that I really didn’t notice it too much! It ran very smoothly, and animation didn’t seem to have too many jumps. Some of the weapons were a little slow, but I am pretty sure they were designed that way, after all a baseball bat is easier to swing than a full sheet of dry-wall! The text is very small, and very difficult to read unless you have a nice and big LCD or a HDTV. It is also often a bright green, which tends to glow into itself, which makes it very hard to follow the story when there is no audio dialogue to accompany.

The Sound is pretty good. The sound track is nothing to write home about, but you really don’t notice it in the game. The sound effects are good though. Screams, moans and shrills are all very accurate and run perfectly with the atmosphere and animation. The sound of the bashing and slashing weapons thumping into the dead flesh of the Zombies is very warming to the cockles!

One point that did give me the screaming poos was the save game situation. There are specific areas in the game where you can save (restrooms and in the janitors annex), which are generally out of the way and easy to forget. The game really needs an autosave to kick in whenever you have a sequence that requires loading. I found myself having to replay large areas quite often because I either forgot to save or the restroom was too far away. For these situations in real life I usually look for a tree!

The Scott’s Final Word.
Zombies, sledge-hammers, senseless violence, destroying public and private property, what’s not to like?! All in all Deadrising is a solid game, entertaining and has the distinct possibility of being a keeper! Certainly not the best game on the market, but not any where near the bottom of the pile either! If you are a vegan who drinks herbal tea and enjoy writing poetry, then this is not the game for you, in fact if you are ‘that way inclined’ please stop reading my articles, I don’t like you!