(Originally published to Glitchwave on 10/12/2025)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Dead Rising
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre(s): Survival Horror
Platforms: Xbox 360
Release Date: August 8, 2006
If any developer had the credentials to take on the task of translating Dawn of the Dead to the gaming medium, I see no better choice than Capcom, considering that their catalog suggests that they already know a thing or two about zombies. Besides having Resident Evil in bold print on their resumes, I would’ve fully trusted Capcom to deliver on the full potential of a “Dawn of the Dead video game” because of how they choose to direct their horror output. I wouldn’t say that Dawn of the Dead verged into the realm of campy, B-movie horror, but it was certainly brighter and more buoyant in tone than the oppressively monochromatic Night of the Living Dead that was working off the budget of George Romero’s loose pocket change. If subtle silliness is the only way to evoke Dawn of the Dead’s effervescence, then accept no other substitutes for Capcom treating it to their patented camp. The first component of Capcom’s camp value in Dead Rising that initially struck me was witnessing the game’s protagonist in the opening sequence, where he’s being escorted across a city skyline via a helicopter. Frank West is the man’s name, and he’s an ambitious photojournalist who’s covered wars, ya know. Because his experience in cataloguing times of violent turmoil suggests that he’s not afraid to risk his biscuit in the name of getting the scoop, the utter chaos of a zombie outbreak does not deter him in the slightest. Of course, I’d probably be less hesitant to dip my toes in the proverbial shark-infested waters if I looked like I could sucker punch one if it got dangerously close to me. What I’m alluding to is that Frank West looks less like he jots down notes from the sidelines of battle and rather that he’s the soldier in the front of the battalion, firing rounds of machine gun ammo. There’s no solid guideline that says journalists can’t look like they live at the gym, but there’s a logical reason why Superman and Spiderman have both chosen that exact vocation to divert the scent trail to their superhuman capabilities. Upon meeting Dead Rising’s secondary characters, they seem equally miscast. I suppose that Jessie is appropriately dressed as a formal female DHS agent, but all the glasses and modest colors in the world can’t cover up her buxom, Marilyn Monroe figure. Her government bureau peer, Brad, is so gung-ho that I can’t believe he doesn’t get exasperated and say, “I’m getting too old for this shit.” Their targets, Carlito and Isabela, look like two models on the set for the music video of “Despacito” rather than terrorists. If these characters are indicative of Japan’s perception of Americans, I’ll take it as a compliment. Still, the fact that we aren’t all gorgeous no matter our occupations strikes us as daft when we are depicted as such.
Despite the pilot’s incredulity, he still follows Frank’s orders to drop him down on the roof of the Willamette Parkville Mall located in Willamette, Colorado. Why they’ve chosen the landlocked mountain region state as their setting is unknown, but if I had to hazard a guess, the Japanese also believe that every mall in America is of the scale and architectural proportions to the grand poobah of malls in Minnesota. Then again, only a monolith mall equal to the Mall of America is suitably vast enough to serve as a non-linear gaming sandbox. The Willamette Mall can be accessibly charted to memory, but the odd construct of its general design kept nagging me. The spacious center of this megaplex is dedicated to the enclosed outdoor courtyard of “Leisure Park,” which evokes the naturalistic area left untouched by industrialization, like Central Park in Manhattan. The shops and other commercial attractions that surround Leisure Park are located all around it in a circular barrier like the wall of a plant cell, and it’s rather strange that the outdoor area encompasses the majority of the land in this establishment. Still, the districts that surround the astroturf run the gamut of every conceivable commercial indoor attraction. The districts that depict the more traditional mall environments are the entrance and the northern section, with narrow halls with shops running parallel on both sides. “Paradise Plaza” broadens the typical mall structure with a cafe as the focal piece of its upstairs region. The “Alfresca Plaza” compromises between cramped walking spaces and its infinite ceiling of the sky, with its faux Euro-chic outdoor environment complete with a ritzy fountain at every other square inch. The core of “Wonderland Plaza” is dedicated to a play area with giant foam blocks and an indoor rollercoaster above it, so on typical occasions, the child patrons of the former can enjoy getting splashed with the vomit of the latter. All the while, there are still strips of shopping that the adults can attend to, biding their time while the kiddies scream with delight. A food court is located in the bottom left corner, and the various edible attractions are all cartoonishly themed like the eateries at Disney World. If you’re seeking some practical, long-term eating, Seon’s supermarket features rows upon columns of food libraries to transfer back home. “Seon’s Food and Stuff” is also one of the few locations in the mall that is sizable enough to be its own isolated sub-establishment, along with “Colby’s Theater,” that also disrupts the circular interconnectivity of the mall. Given its well-rounded capital and entertainment convenience, the Willamette Parkville Mall seems like the only viable commercial enterprise in the Centennial State.
Of course, the Willamette Parkville Mall’s expanse and eclecticism are ultimately irrelevant because the majority of the megaplex’s patrons have been transformed into savage, brain-thirsty zombies. However, the factors that once made the mall appealing still translate into the context of an undead apocalypse. When the lawful flow of economic commerce has been eradicated due to the overwhelming situation at hand, the human survivors are free to use any of the store’s supplies without exchanging any currency. When thousands of different objects are at the player’s disposal in the scenario of combating a deadly zombie plague, this prospect should ideally spark a sense of excitement within the player. If it doesn’t, I’m certain that a highlight reel will convince anyone of its allure. Where does one even begin in detailing the various wares of the mall that the player can reconfigure into weapons? Across the hall from the security room are some standard melee weapons that are commonly used as tools in most zombie media: your wooden baseball bats, sledgehammers, and lead pipes, for instance. Once the player enters the mall’s perimeters, the world is their oyster in terms of what they could cram into Frank’s arsenal. Is there a musical instrument store close by to the movie theater? Channel your inner Pete Townshend (Bluto if it’s an acoustic) and smash that guitar over a zombie’s skull! Think that the zombie population in Leisure Park is akin to an infestation of weeds? Take a lawnmower and shave them down to their stubs! Electrocute them with a stun gun! Chop their limbs off with hedge trimmers! Kick soccer balls at them! Bludgeon them with dumbbells! Chuck valuable jewels at them and watch them slip and fall on their decayed asses! Actually, while the humor in using the last item mentioned is worth seeking out, the ineffectiveness in dispatching the zombie target leads to discussing a class of items where their novelty does not supersede their practicality. It might be fun to wing CDs at zombies like Shaun of the Dead and blind them by sticking a mascot-sized Servbot helmet over their heads, but all of the items usually not used as weapons in regular circumstances will prove to grow tiresome when the zombies refuse to be incapacitated by them. This is why, ultimately, weapons of logical potency like knives, swords, chainsaws, and firearms like handguns, shotguns, and machine guns should take higher precedence in the player’s limited item roster. Still, the remnants of the mall offer enough variation of the effective kinds of weapons so the player will remain stimulated while they make mincemeat out of the hordes.
The curiosity that compels the players to pillage the abandoned stores will be quelled once they bear the brunt of the unfathomably massive zombie scourge infesting the mall. Am I about to complain that a zombie game has too many zombies in it? Before you ask what kind of crack I’m smoking, trust me, realizing Dead Rising’s true colors was quite a sobering moment. Despite fostering the mismatched silliness of using non-lethal items to combat zombies, Dead Rising is not a festive romp where the player can gallivant around covering themselves in the acrid blood of the undead. In reality, Dead Rising is another interpretation of the survival horror subgenre that Capcom had trailblazed with Resident Evil a decade prior. This naturally comes with the connotations typically associated with the tense, dread-inducing survival horror genre. The weapon selection is vast, but they’ll quickly disintegrate after what I’d consider conservative usage. Similar to Resident Evil’s survival horror stipulations, the player will likely desire to preserve the employment of their strongest weapons for formidable occasions, but the player can’t simply zoom past one lumbering zombie with swift precision. Doing so in Dead Rising will almost guarantee that a square of Frank’s flesh will be chewed off his health bar. Not only are the zombies always densely squeezed together like a pack of African wild dogs, but the individual zombies in those flocks are alert enough to viciously gnash their teeth into Frank upon any close contact. The relationship between being inclined to use weapons and their lack of durable utility often puts the player in many frantic scenarios where they’re rendered defenseless and, soon, dead. Sure, Frank’s defense and physical formidability increase with every level in the game’s PP leveling mechanic, but it takes a whopping number of zombies or completing other tasks to increase a single level. Save points are also scattered parsimoniously throughout the mall, so treks between them and or retracing one's steps to them is an ordeal where sweat will spill from the player’s brow like bullets. I suggest becoming acquainted with the unlimited orange juice display in the Colombian Roastmasters and the wine stand in the food court, because you’ll be chugging both beverages so often to restore your health that it’s a wonder that it doesn’t make Frank have to piss like a goddamn racehorse.
Dead Rising also goes to great lengths to dissuade the player from engaging in indiscriminate zombie carnage because there is a strict itinerary that the player must follow. Dead Rising’s narrative is divided into “cases,” small-scale missions that will incrementally reveal more context behind the zombie outbreak that Frank wishes to gather information on and earn that coveted Pulitzer prize upon exposing his findings to the public. Because these cases progress the story, neglecting to attend the scene where they take place will result in complete, game-ending failure. Dead Rising emphasizing punctuality should come as no surprise, as the three-day timer is an overarching condition that should regenerate the weary feeling that Majora’s Mask impressed on the player with its crooked-toothed harbinger moon. The timeliness for the cases is indicated with colors, blue being the freshest, which the player can procrastinate on, yellow as the warning that its availability is fading, and red suggesting that Frank light a fire under his ass lest he suffers dire consequences. Inherently, a regimented mission schedule doesn’t suppress the player’s autonomy too drastically. However, one supreme issue regarding this continual condition is that some main missions only became available when their threshold was in the red. If I had unknowingly positioned myself at the opposite end of the map, how could I possibly correct my situational inobservance? Dead Rising’s time-oriented mechanics can be comically austere, and the total erasure of one’s progress if they don’t meet the demanding, abrupt conditions is a real fieldkick to the testicles.
Surprisingly, even with the threat of starting Frank’s quest for the truth at square one as a potential demerit that is always at play if the player doesn’t promptly comply with the time conditions, Dead Rising still encourages players to bide their time with optional objectives. One optional avenue that is continually offered as an opportunity to raise Frank’s stats exponentially, if killing and or photographing zombies wasn’t substantial enough, is saving survivors. These poor saps have certainly found themselves in a sticky situation, but Frank West can act as their knight in shining armor (or whatever drag or silly, unfitting outfit I’ve put him in for shits and giggles), so they won’t have to despair and become another brick in the immense zombie wall. Even though the survivor count is completely unbalanced compared to the undead masses that surround them, there are still plenty of people to lead to the safety of the security room that exhibit a myriad of different personalities. Frank will lend a helping hand to crippled, middle-aged men, drunks, couples, siblings, strippers, teenagers, the elderly, etc. Forgive me if I prioritized the younger women over everyone else: I swear that my decision was based on the likely scenario of post-apocalyptic reproduction and not securing future carnal pleasures. However, no matter if the survivor is young, old, or able-bodied, every one of them is an aloof idiot of equal measure. Escorting a survivor to the security room is a task of teeth-pulling aggravation. Each of them is as unresponsive to sticking by Frank’s side and following his lead as a limp baby turtle swimming out to sea upon being hatched, which often results in them getting eviscerated by zombies as a result. Frank can extend one of his weapons to a survivor to sufficiently defend themselves, but this will just compel the survivor to dispatch EVERY zombie in their vicinity. Frank can also offer his literal hand, arm, and even a piggyback ride to a survivor to better ensure their survival. Still, this tactic can only be executed with a single survivor and is only available to certain survivors based on physical status and gender. It quickly dawned on me that I was more invested in staving off the survivor’s demise than they were, a teacher who fights tooth and nail to keep their underperforming student from tanking their grades and can’t seem to inspire any morale or invigoration on their part. To make matters worse, three escaped convicts roam Leisure Park with a jeep and a mounted machine gun in the back, and they immediately revive even if they are vanquished by Frank. Have fun carrying the survivors through those conditions, sucker! As callous as it sounds, some survivors are better off as zombie chow because of their incompetence and the circumstances at play, and trying to be Oskar Schindler in an attempt to bring them to safety will only drive Frank West insane. I would be their guardian angel if I could, but I’d rather throw the sole automatic survivor to the hungry hordes of zombies like a bride does to a bouquet at her wedding. Otis, an elderly Willamette Parkville employee, takes the onus of radioing intel on survivors’ whereabouts and other quests so Frank can stay on top of his obligations. As essential a service as it is, I wish it weren’t being conducted by the most cloying person in Colorado. Not only does he insist on phoning Frank at what feels like every twenty seconds, even about tasks that have already been detailed to him, but the man has the fucking GALL to give Frank lip about “being rude” if the call is interrupted for any reason. Does he know that being on the phone with him makes me as vulnerable as a bleating baby lamb? Otis, from the bottom of my heart, you are an absolute pissant, and I’d be more concerned about Frank ending your pathetic life over all of the zombies below if I were you.
Unfortunately, I was at the mercy of Otis’s inane drivel because it could’ve revealed a chance to take down one of Dead Rising’s bosses. The aforementioned convict trio that makes the survivor escort process more of a nightmare falls under a category of characters known as “psychopaths,” antagonistic human beings whose hostility and fractured mental status can either be attributed to the severe conditions of a zombie pandemic or the chaos pronouncing some antisocial tendencies. Vandal-hating Seon manager Steve Chapman and the store’s resident obese Chinese butcher, Larry Chiang, are a few of the psychopaths Frank fights along the natural narrative trajectory. However, even with the strict time demands, I implore that the player seek out a few of these formidable foes if they can spare the journey. Sometime in the second day, cultists donning green masks and yellow raincoats will wander the mall and give Frank more grief with their daggers and blinding pocket sand. To permanently extinguish their presence, Frank must kill their grey-haired leader, Sean Keanan, inside a theater while he tries to slice and dice Frank with a sacrificial sword. Portly police officer Jo abuses her power of the badge to handcuff women perceived as fairer than her and beat them with her nightstick, while Frank must stop the endeavors of his cocky, shitstain photography rival, Kent Swanson, after he oversteps the ethical boundaries of art. Crazed clown Adam MacIntyre seems to be the unanimous fan favorite, probably due to his impressive juggling of revving chainsaws. The distinctiveness of each psychopath, plus how much personality is injected in each fight and both their introductory and concluding cutscenes, makes the psychopaths too intriguing to gloss over. However, facing off against these individuals in a game where combating groups of nondescript zombies is the norm reveals some unflattering aspects of its shooting and combat mechanics, especially when finding time to aim at redneck Cletus and the family of snipers at the mall’s entrance.
But perhaps the greatest psychopaths in Dead Rising are the ones responsible for the outbreak. I’ve neglected to discuss the game’s juggernaut tool to use against zombies thus far, but finding a wasp and smashing its glass containment in close proximity to groups of the undead will cause seizures that result in their heads exploding. The greater narrative context behind such a nifty crowd controller is that these particular insects are connected to the spread of the scourge. Experiments were conducted using wasps as a means to balance the food supply, but the biological interference resulted in infecting humans with a debilitating zombie virus. The first instance of zombie mania was in a Hispanic town called Santa Cabeza, which is how Carlito and his sister, Isabela, got involved with the ongoings in Willamette. Once Carlito dies and Isabella becomes Frank’s ally, the narrative shifts its focus towards fighting the military, who have pulled a Half-Life and decided to exterminate all traces of the zombie epidemic as a government cover-up. In this climactic swathe of downtime that the game finally grants the player, which I used to cathartically bulldoze the thousands of zombies clogging up the underground pathways, successfully eluding the beefy special forces and arriving back at the helipad at noon on the third and final day, will still result in an ending most grim for Frank West. That is, unless the player wishes to elongate their adventure with “overtime mode,” where Frank achieves the true ending by retrieving specific items for Isabela and giving the military leader, Brock Mason, a piece of his mind on top of his tank. While I’d rather Frank’s work not have been in vain, I found the qualifications for this “true ending” to be tedious and provide more evidence of the game’s combat shortcomings. When your zombie game has devolved into solely escaping the too-formidable military forces, it’s time to wrap things up.
Dead Rising was certainly more than I bargained for. I sought out this title on the impression that I’d be merrily decapitating zombies with Bed Bath & Beyond products and laughing my ass off at the absurdity of it. While the game granted me a fair amount of this, it seemed to punish me harshly whenever I partook in these frivolous activities. I now see that Dead Rising is a serious survival horror contender intended to take Resident Evil’s mantle, with all of the distressing elements of that series on full display, reinterpreted to craft its own identity. Evoking the tension of a survival horror game is one thing, but combine that with clunky, unintuitive combat scenarios and the most damning time conditions seen in gaming, and Dead Rising is liable to drive the player as mad as its psychopaths. If Dead Rising is an exercise meant to illustrate the severity of the zombie apocalypse, then congratulations: I’ll gladly opt for condemning the human race with a giant meteor impact or overexposure to chemicals that turn the male population gay, and therefore, make them uninterested in reproducing more people. I’VE LEARNED MY LESSON, CAPCOM!
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