Reviews// Dead Rising (360)

If you could stop time - if you were in possession of Bernard's Watch and could halt all life with a click of a button - what would you do? This was the broad question thrust towards this writer last night down the pub, proving that an excessive multitude of drinks really doesn't do much to spur intelligent conversation. SPOnG contests that one of the more innocent and clean-minded uses of such a gift would be a quick trip to the local shopping centre and nab off with all the games we wanted.

Then, by a pure drunken process of connection, our thoughts turned to Frank West, the photojournalist you play in Dead Rising. He's not quite got time-stopping powers, but he gets the next best thing, stuck in a shopping centre (sorry, mall) all alone, with everything his for the taking. He has a bit of a complication that perhaps our watch-clicking antics wouldn't factor into though - the mall's creeping with zombies.

While investigating a potential scoop, Frank sees a deserted, closed off city that is infested with flesh-eating undead. As he lands on the shopping mall's rooftop, his helicopter ride sods off for a couple of days, leaving Frank stranded. It all goes a bit George A. Romero from then on in, as our news hound struggles to survive the zombies whilst trying to figure out just what's going on.

And while we're not exactly sure how realistic a zombie should look like, we'd like to say that we rather like the graphics in Dead Rising. Although it's a game primarily about survival, there's an air of light-hearted comedy to it all, from the moment you realise just how absurd the situation is that you're thrown into. It's evident in the animation of the characters, particularly the shuffling zombies - some of them may follow you up stairs, pratfall off a ledge and land flat on their arse.

What's most impressive in the visuals (besides from it all looking very pretty) is the sheer number of undead creeps that can litter any given area. In running from one mission to another, we thought we would be safe outside the mall doors. Boy, were we wrong - with hordes of the buggers loitering outside doors, in ponds, behind burger stalls and hiding behind all sorts of objects, simply trying to avoid all the zombies is not going to work.

Which is why you can use a huge array of items as weapons to fight the undead flesh-munchers. Being in a mall, there's the potential to throw everything you have at the evil dead - knives, guitars, baseball bats, benches, lead piping and even diamonds are at your disposal to keep zombies at bay. Hell, you can even grab lawnmowers, shopping trolleys and propane canisters on wheels and leg it around the area ramming into as many as you can. Which never failed to bring a big-old, shit-eating grin to our face.

Dead Rising is truly an arcade game by nature, providing instant satisfaction as you clout another zombie in the back of the head with a wrench. It releases a lot of tension, you see. You just have to make sure you have enough inventory to get where you want to go - all weapons and items have a disposable value to them, so as soon as guns run out of bullets they're discarded, and cracking enemies with a baseball bat too much will cause it to split.