In Memoriam: a Dead Rising retrospective – Part 1

This blog is a tribute to the original Dead Rising, the game that helped usher back into mainstream consciousness the lovable appeal and popularity of the Zombie Apocalypse, a genre now near-oversaturated and encompassing almost all forms of media. Whether it be the hilarious Undead Nightmare expansion to Red Dead Redemption or real-life "Zombie Walk" social-event-meets-cosplay events, would any of these tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating moments truly have been possible were it not for the fun people had photographing female zombie knickers for high 'Erotica' scores through the camera lens of the game's everyman main character, Frank West, himself clothed in a tight-fitting red rose dress direct from Willamette Mall's high-end fashion section? Wait, what? That wasn't how you played the game? No way.

And so it begins...

Esteemed origins

Japanese developers Capcom had previously frightened a generation of players in the mid-90's with its original entry to the Biohazard/Resident Evil series, simultaneously coining a new term for the experience as we came to grips with the jump up in quality of the 32-bit generation. "Survival Horror" made its debut on the original Playstation and took gamers on a horrific expedition through a sprawling mansion and secret underground laboratories populated by nightmarish creatures, forcing them to salvage scarce healing and ammunition resources - knowing full well that the more the player explored the game setting, the more risk they'd encounter. The need to conserve bullets wherever possible, accompanied by both a harsh difficulty level and limited amount of in-game ink ribbons to simply even save one’s progress, ensured that the 'survival' aspect of the title was alive and well, even if that meant that the selectable player characters, Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, often weren't. Add to that a 'horror' attribute stemming from classic moments such as the infamous dog-jumping-through-the-window trick, the unsettlingly gorgeous but deliberately claustrophobic pre-rendered backgrounds and just as limiting "tank-like" control scheme which always kept players within the grasp of the game's multiple and grotesque enemies, Resident Evil was an instant, terrifying success.


Despite spawning countless imitators in the Survival Horror subgenre (including the memorably bizarre 'Survival Panic' title Dino Crisis: essentially Resident Evil-meets-Jurassic Park), it wasn't until the release of Dead Rising in 2006 on the Xbox 360 that a video game had seriously attempted to approach the interpretation of zombies offered by the "Godfather" himself, filmmaker George A. Romero, nor his satirical takes and social commentaries seen in Night of the Living Dead and - especially - Dawn of the Dead. Forget creepy mansions with giant snake and Venus Fly Trap bosses or ominously-named Hunter creatures ready to decapitate you with one swipe out in the moonlit gardens; in order for the zombie genre to have its truly representative game equivalent, it needed to be set in the most recognisable and classic setting of them all: the American Shopping Mall.

Spot the difference

Setting the scene: Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The Master of Unlocking

Humourous violence via ordinary retail items notwithstanding, the true achievement of Dead Rising was that unlike anything before it, it nailed (probably with a nail gun, too) one of the key principles of Romero's Dead series in making human survivors - not the zombies - the main threat to the protagonists. Whether it be the crazed Psychopath boss characters featuring a supermarket manager wheeling a Carmageddon-style trolley down the fruit and vegetable aisles or the especially memorable dual-chainsaw wielding and poisonous gas balloon-popping clown known simply as 'Adam', through to the more docile survivors with frustrating AI (purposely programmed that way for effect, too, I would argue) helplessly littered around the complex and in need of rescue, the game was brimming with personality and madness in equal measure. Add to the mix an overall story arc involving the gathering of these survivors for a dramatic helicopter rescue, all their internal squabblings and betrayals, and with an ever-present theme of the pointlessness and fickle nature of consumerism as Frank tested every item he found as a viable weapon, snack, or outfit, the long-awaited and faithful homage to Romero was perhaps too successful. Sure enough, despite the disclaimer "THIS GAME WAS NOT DEVELOPED, APPROVED OR LICENSED BY THE OWNERS OR CREATORS OF GEORGE A. ROMERO'S DAWN OF THE DEAD™" being placed prominently on the game's packaging, the copyright infringement lawsuit duly arrived soon after the game's release, ultimately ending in Capcom's favour.


It is perhaps a further testament to the enduring influence and impact of Dead Rising that, among others, Valve's Left 4 Dead 2 then paid homage back with a graffiti reference to Frank West sprawled on a safehouse wall within the popular co-op shooter, which itself took the zombie game into the first person perspective and borrowed elements from the film 28 Days Later where the traditional model of a slow, lumbering zombie had now been transformed into sprinting, hellishly ferocious threats. Dead Rising, though, had been the first video game yardstick to gauge the genre's potential appeal, giving rise to the popularity of not only the living dead as enemies for players to face once again, but also the variety of methods and tools with which one could use to vanquish them. Sick of shotguns and Uzis? Left 4 Dead 2 let players vary up the slaughter with cricket bats, frying pans, and of course - the chainsaw - the trademark weapon which essentially channeled the spirit of both Inafune and Romero. The trend spread like an airbourne virus and the tradition continues today in other games such as Dead Island and even a 'Nazi Zombie' mode in the Call of Duty series, not to mention film and TV shows where the essential components of humour and cheekiness still feature prominently. 

Yet despite its success and key role in re-igniting the zombie craze, people definitely weren't laughing about the game's overall design; the general consensus seeming to be that Dead Rising fell short of perfection due to its gameplay's major, even completely off-putting, shortcomings.

Players would get see this quite often

Back to being a Jill Sandwich

Right when it looked as if Inafune had brought the pure fun back into killing zombies by forever changing the way players looked at objects in a hardware store and relaxing the stringent, survival demands and difficulty levels seen in the early Resident Evils, many players were gobsmacked by the features he'd instead replaced them with: an unavoidable, time-governed system emphasising - or rather, enforcing - consequence-learning gameplay over multiple playthroughs where it was virtually impossible to complete the game the first time round. Even those tank-controls were back when Frank entered into aiming mode, unable to move while pointing a gun, throwing an object or even spitting at the approaching hordes. But the most dreaded, resurrected monstrosity of them all? Rearing its ugly head and slowly forming a sick, deadly smile not unlike the first cutscene which set the tone in the original Resident Evil: a solitary save slot.


In an age where short single player story modes, autosaves, and incremental checkpoint progression had become the norm, fans of the game appreciated and loathed these design choices in equal measure, the latter of whom feeling as if they'd been foolishly lead into a false sense of security akin to those first victims to die in your typical cheesy horror flick. So never mind searching desperately for ink ribbons, Dead Rising made you constantly overwrite that one single, vital,  save you had, forcing you to live with all the consequences that followed. To make matters worse, still, even the manner in which the game made you do so was quite literally a piss-take, manifesting in the form of Frank urgently and constantly needing to relieve himself in the bathroom, the audio quality of his unzipping captured in high fidelity to boot. Cue that same generation of Resident Evil fans, bemused smiles slowly fading from their faces as they realised they'd bunged their save files and denied themselves any further progression, letting out those all-too-familiar groans of frustration long since forgotten.


~ Stay tuned for Part 2 of this In Memoriam retrospective, where we'll assess further the game mechanics that made, but also very nearly broke, Dead Rising.  ~

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Originally posted on personal blog, and Galaxy Next Door