Did it really deserve a resurrection?
Frank West: Photojournalist, Zombie Genocidest and my personal hero of horror. Whereas others would feel the need to polish their axe every time they planted it into a brain or simply stammer in so much fear that they couldn’t warn others of a shuttling member of the undead traipsing just behind them, Frank stuck two fingers up at everyone else and showed them that breaking an old taboo and splitting up is sometimes the best option…as long as you’re resourceful. Stuck in a mall filled with swords, baseball bats and gumball machines, the kid in a candy store had enough time to kill on top of moulding corpses, Frank proved that if the human race was encumbered by a huge undead resistance, we wouldn’t all be as hopeless as the typical amateur actor Z-Lister.
It’s fair to say that the original Dead Rising for the Xbox 360 attempted to truly push the hardware to its limits and was made an instant classic for capturing the true ‘Oh bugger’ mentality of a zombie apocalypse. That, and the fact that the whole mall was a playground offering anything and everything within its walls to fend off all that is bitey. So when Capcom decides to resurrect the classic and combine the gameplay engine with that of Resident Evil 4’s, it should be a sure fire recipe for success. Unfortunately in this aspect Capcom plays the role of a very stupid child trying to bash together two jigsaw pieces from two completely different puzzles and attempts to stick them together with Play-Doh.
Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop feels and plays much like a demo, and yet feels like it’s never going to end. A taster of things never to come. Willamette Mall has been recreated and surprisingly well rendered for the Wii edition, yet half of it is cordoned off with crotch high rope. It can be forgiven that some of the shops are shut off, yet it’s just bizarre that most of the paths around the area are impassable, pigeon-holing you into pre-determined routes and coincidently into the arms of the undead.
The story remains fully intact and provides a bizarre, yet entertaining mix of political messaging and camp B-Movie vibe. The pacing however leaves a lot to be desired. Progress in the story is constantly halted by Otis the janitor’s ‘Civilian Rescue’ missions. Just as things begin to flow well, around five glorified ‘Fetch’ missions appear, each as repetitive as the last, attempting to appeal to your goodwill in mankind. This will happen every damn time you reach a definitive section in the storyline. With no ability to say ‘Stuff you’ to the innocent victims, constrained paths limiting you to getting to certain sections of the mall and all missions adding little to no variety, you begin to harbour a burning desire to form a group of freedom fighters to break off the shackles of pixelated repression.
Although there aren’t a lot of random items lying around to aid you on your zombie bashing journey, there’s still a good variety, ranging from the effective to the effectively hilarious. Driving a huge drill through someone and spiralling them around till all their limbs have flown off into the faces of shambling corpses remains one of my personal highs in gaming. Whether you’re sawing or lawnmowing your way through enemies, it feels great to paint the mall a new shade of red.
It’s the new definition of ‘Riding On Coattails’
Unfortunately these weapons have a habit of appearing rarely, forcing you to resort to less enigmatic ways of slaying zombies. Picking up one of these common weapons also serves the purpose of being a lot more frustrating. A simple press of A does the job of thwacking a brain-dead slump well, and walking up to a stunned zombie will encourage you to perform a special attack, initiated by a wiggle of the Wii remote. However, I was expecting more from the motion control in terms of melee combat. Attacking with the Wii Remote instead of A isn’t encouraged seeing as the motion controls are so unresponsive that you’ll find yourself frantically shaking the remote around, and don’t expect the situation to get any less awkward when someone walks in and your excuse is “I’m trying to swing my damn pole”…
DR.Chop fairly unashamedly brags about its use of the Resident Evil 4 in terms of gunplay, but what it can’t replicate is the tension, fun and general satisfaction that came from its original use. With some fairly unenergized enemies and the general laws of zombification being altered entirely, it can even be argued that firearms are completely pointless. It’s undeniably fun to clear a huge group of zombies with a quick blast of a shotgun, but it’s undeniably frustrating when said group respawn a few seconds later. With ammo supplies constantly being unloaded into deadly pop-up targets, there soon comes a point where the guns are left to gather dust in fear that there will be a boss battle just around the corner.
It seems unfair to compare aspects of this to the original Dead Rising, especially when it’s on a completely different console, yet Chop Till You Drop drags in cameos and in-jokes from the first that new players just will not understand. Zombiefied versions of the originals’ psychopaths shamble around the mall at random moments, and Frank constantly becomes berated by poodles and grenade chucking parrots. It’s at these points where the tongue in cheek suddenly bursts through the skin and rabidly attempts to suckle on your funny bone.
Half way through playing Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, you begin to enquire why it was even made. Looking at it from the aspect of a 360 player, the original excels in every way. Looking at it from the aspect of a Wii owner, it’s the new definition of ‘Riding On Coattails’, unashamedly trying to follow in the footsteps of Resident Evil 4. It’s an admirable attempt to boost the mature library of games for the Wii, and granted it has its moments of laughter, but it takes a strong will and buckets of patience to be willing to get from beginning to end. The highlights arrive too early, the gunplay is rendered useless and the controls are incredibly rigid. Then again, when has a horror remake ever been as good as the original?
The Bad: Scraps most of what made the original great, Loss of choice makes the whole game very linear, Civilian rescue missions have a habit of destroying the flow of the story
