There is a lot of commotion in the small town of Willamette, Colorado. Nobody on the outside is aware of what transpired, and military barricades impede anyone from going in or out. Freelance photojournalist Frank West notices the commotion inside the town, luring him to investigate the events of what is currently happening inside the town in order to obtain “the scoop of the century”. Little does West know that he has now entangled himself with a widespread zombie outbreak that has infected the entire town of Willamette, and soon threatens to take over the entire mall, which he has found himself trapped in. He has 72 hours to find out the truth. He must take action, or die.
Soon after the start of the 7th generation of consoles, Capcom released a game that almost completely defined “next-gen” and survival horror. This game was Dead Rising, a new breed of zombie survival horror that took advantage of the developments of the new generation. Taking place entirely within a mall, Dead Rising gave an unprecedented amount of freedom to the player while still maintaining the fears and thrills of traditional survival horror. It’s a very unconventional example of its genre that still manages to evolve the scope and gameplay while still maintaining that feeling of fear, oppression and stress that is at the core of survival horror.
Dead Rising is not the first zombie centric survival horror franchise from Capcom, since it succeeds the Resident Evil series of games and shares many elements of its core design, such as its attention to item management and use of zombies as a main threat. The scope of Dead Rising is much larger than that of Resident Evil however, greatly increasing the playing field, the amount of weapons and most importantly, the sheer density of zombies that the player has to deal with and survive from.
One might think that without the deliberate pacing, tone or greatly limiting mechanics and controls of Resident Evil, the horror element of Dead Rising wouldn’t work nearly as well. Dead Rising makes the fundamentals of survival horror work in its own way however, maintaining the feeling of stress and fear that is associated with the genre, mostly through its gameplay design. The horror of Dead Rising is broken down by its three fundamental qualities: obstacles and challenge, limits and a lack of control. These three fundamental values are present in almost any survival horror game and are the ones that translate horror into the experience of playing through the game. Even if Dead Rising is more of a sandbox game than it’s more traditional counterparts, it still manages to work as survival horror because it stays true to these elements.
The ultimate source of stress from Dead Rising comes from the game’s countdown timer, which is front and center within its own premise. The player has only a set amount of time to do important events in the game before they disappear forever and moments of reprieve are few and far between, meaning that the player is always working against the clock to meet their own objective. The game never ceases to remind the player of the time that they have left, whether through the game’s UI or in bold announcements made each time the player changes location.
This timer is what plays into the player’s own fears within Dead Rising as well as what compliments the rest of the game’s mechanics. Every decision the player makes matters, any wrong decision will lead to a game over or an undesirable outcome and the player only has a handful of time to decide their approach to a situation. The game’s timer is just long enough to not be frustrating or impossible, but also rigid enough to be a great challenge to the unsuspecting player. It is entirely up to the player’s own skill, strategy and quick decision making ability to come out on top. As a result of the challenge, the player comes to fear the unexpected and the unknown challenge of each series of objectives, since they test the extent of the player’s own capabilities up to their limit.
Of course, the timer by itself is not what makes the game challenging or scary. Dead Rising’s use of zombies is what makes the experience so much more stressful. Zombies move slowly, die easily and their attacks are not that much of a threat to the player’s own life, meaning that their objective is not to be a direct enemy to the player, but an overwhelming obstacle to the player’s progression from objective to objective. When devising a strategy, the player not only has to think of the best possible way to complete their route, but also survive the impending barrage of zombies that will cross their path.
The fear of zombies further settles in with the incredibly large amount of them that are rendered in any given area of the game, which is by far one of the most impressive things about the game. The zombies’ large numbers, which can reach as high up as eight hundred zombies at a time, become a source of fear for the player, especially in the cramped environments of the Willamette mall which the player has to traverse time and time again to meet their objectives. This fear only intensifies during the night, where zombies become more aggressive and a larger density of them will appear in any given area of the game.
Much like the Spencer Mansion of the first Resident Evil, the Willamette Mall of Dead Rising is designed under very simulationist principles, where its layout and architecture are built to simulate a real life location first and obstacles, puzzles and enemies are placed later. The Willamette mall may not have the deliberate pacing of the Spencer Mansion, but it makes up for it with a larger size and an open ended sandbox nature, retaining that simulationist design while also increasing the amount of things the player can do within it. This aspect fits Dead Rising’s mechanics a lot better, which challenge the player to find their way around a large mall within a certain timeframe as opposed to Resident Evil’s more deliberate, slow and puzzle oriented progression.
The result of applying these principles to the layout of Dead Rising’s mall is a ring of connected shopping halls with a large open park in the center as well as some underground maintenance tunnels. What is so important about this layout is that it’s highly interconnected without giving the player too much ease of travel. As a result of this, the player must carefully think about the very specific path that they must take throughout the mall to arrive at their destination in the fastest way possible. This only becomes more dynamic and interesting when you consider the large amount of possibilities there are for distinct strategies and pathways to get through the mall, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.
The Willamette mall is also incredibly detailed, not only in terms of art design but also in regards to item placement and layout. Inside of the mall there can be many important findings that the player might not even become aware of in their first playthrough of the game. Thanks to this, Dead Rising rewards exploration and knowledge of the mall with shortcuts, items and environmental advantages that the player can use to overcome the hardships of zombies and the game’s 72 hour timer.
Although Dead Rising’s timer may be off-putting for new players, the game always rewards the player’s experience and knowledge of the game, thus easing them into the level of skill that the game requires. With each new shortcut, item or skill that the player discovers or unlocks, the player learns a wider range of strategies that they can use to save time on the game, which is crucial to overcoming the difficulty that the timer poses. Something that the game does to encourage this are lenient game resets, that allow the player to start the game over while also carrying over Frank’s current level and abilities, allowing them to apply all the things they’ve learned without losing much of their character’s progress.
Dead Rising is a game that embraces speed and perfection. The game’s timer is not just a limiting factor for the player, but also an encouragement to seek perfection and efficiency in their every move. This is further encouraged by the game’s high level challenge of rescuing all survivors while also trying to finish all of the game’s main story missions. Trying to traverse the environment with a large number of survivors under a strict timer is a nerve-racking but also highly fulfilling experience that truly tests the player’s ability and understanding of the game. And the rewards of saving survivors are great, since they give Prestige Points that the player needs to level up and either increase their base statistics or learn new abilities that will help them survive longer and more effectively.
The game doesn’t hold back when it comes to designing survivor placement and time limit. Every survivor, and any other type of mission by consequence, has their own timer within the game’s timer meaning that the player only has a set amount of time to engage on the mission before it’s lost forever. Survivors will spawn in different locations from each other, but they must all be taken to the same place. There are many times when the game will inform the player of a large number of missions at the same time, so it’s up to them to find out what order will they tackle them in and what path to take in order to have enough time to complete them. The challenge only ever seems to escalate from this point, keeping the player thoroughly invested on what new missions they will have to tackle in the future.
Saving survivors and fighting hordes of zombies are not the only things that the player must be worried about when playing the game. In special occasions, the player must come face to face with the human psychopaths around the mall who have turned hostile and will try to murder Frank and other survivors. These psychopaths serve as boss fights that further increase the challenge of the obstacles that the player must face along their path, while also rewarding them with Prestige Points and special weapons that will help them in the future. Often these psychopaths will hold other survivors hostage, adding to the count of Prestige Points that the player can earn by facing off against them.
Psychopaths challenge the player in a more thoroughly than anything else in the game, since they act as substantial and difficult obstacles that the player has to overcome and become highly accustomed to in order to fulfill their missions in an efficient and timely manner. Their fights are all very unique, each with their own individual movesets and strategies that challenge the player in their own specific way, adding more variety into the game as well as an element of unpredictability and dread to the game.
The intensity of these boss fights is properly conveyed by each of the psychopath’s highly energetic boss themes. These tracks are a big departure for the game’s tone with a prevalent rock and metal feel to them that highlights the insane and tense essence of the fights themselves. The lyrics and specific sensations of each track are also representative of each boss’ qualities, which makes them much more representative of the fight they convey.
It isn’t all perfect however, because despite its very deliberate design, Dead Rising fails in a key aspect of its execution that detracts from the design of the game in general. There is nothing to distract from Dead Rising’s awful AI, which affects not only survivors but psychopaths and enemies in general. Survivors will often have difficulty finding a path through the map and get stuck easily thanks to zombies and other objects. Besides that, survivors lack the ability to defend themselves properly, often stopping dead in their tracks when surrounded by zombies even when they hold a weapon. Psychopaths aren’t any better, as they will often get confused by terrain and become immobile, allowing cheap and easy kills from the player.
In any case, even with how complex the game sounds, it never becomes so complex that it’s impossible to wrap your head around all the things it throws at you within the timeframe of its own countdown timer. When you think about it, Dead Rising is actually a very mechanically simple game, but it’s also not shallow either. The timer gives the game a lot of levity when it comes to designing obstacles, since they don’t have to be too complex in fear of being overwhelming. Each of the game’s obstacles, roadblocks and missions must instead be simple enough to serve only as a means by which to interact with and complement the game’s main gameplay mechanic, which is the timer itself.
This kind of design makes it so that the main gameplay of Dead Rising is based around resource management in relation to remaining time, having to make choices based on how well you can tackle each objective and in what order depending on their complexity, challenge and long lasting consequences. Each objective puts strain on the player and the timer, making the player fear the timer itself and the consequences it may have on their playthrough, turning it into the main horror of Dead Rising’s survival horror gameplay.
The only annoying thing about the way the game’s objectives are designed is that they must be learned about entirely through a transceiver that the player receives early in the game. What makes this a problem is that the player cannot attack or move to another location while listening to the transceiver, not only wasting time from the player but also leaving them vulnerable from attacks by zombies. Each time the player interrupts the transceiver, they must listen to the entire call from the beginning, making it a particularly tedious process that completely stops the flow of gameplay when it could’ve easily been avoided.
The difficulty of Dead Rising is part of what makes it such a thrilling game. By giving the player an objective and obstacles to overcome under a strict timer, the game creates challenge and engagement, which in combination with the other elements of the game, leads to an experience that still feels true to the survival horror genre while also straying as far as possible from its conventions. Trying to meet the game’s objectives despite the overwhelming odds is what makes the horror of Dead Rising work so well and why the game is such an engaging experience regardless.
Other than the timer however, the player is also limited by their character’s own capabilities. At the start of the game the player is weak, having only a small amount of health and item stock. Because of this, they can very easily succumb to enemy attacks, making them a vulnerable and easy target for enemies. Even as the game progresses however, they will still have to deal with many of the game’s own limitations that will keep the situation tense and never give the player too much of an upper hand, thus keeping the horror element of its mechanics.
One of the ways the game rewards good play and player investment is the aforementioned level ups, which ease some of these restrictions from the player, like giving them more life or item slots to use. This system is great, as it makes the player challenge themselves early on for the sake of lessening the difficulty of later stages. It also unlocks a large amount of skills that the player can use strategically to counteract attacks from zombies as well as other devastating attacks that do not require a weapon to perform and can be effective for crowd control.
Even with these upgrades however, the player is always going to be limited in some way by factors such as speed, health and item stock. It is because of these limitations that the player never feels overpowered or fully in control of the situation, which leads them to make choices based on overcoming these limitations, adding to the engagement with the game’s systems and to the stress of the other mechanics in the game.
Although combat itself is very direct, with none of the conventional cumbersome controls of survival horror, the player never feels truly in control of other variables that may affect their outcome during combat. For once, every weapon in the game will shatter eventually, putting the player in a position where they must constantly fear the eventual loss of their weapon. However, the mall’s design and detail makes it so that the player can make due with whatever they find, leading to gameplay that is both strategic and improvisational due to the variables that the player has no control over as well as the dread of these eventual hardships.
Every weapon in the game is unique and has its own advantages and disadvantages. For instance, guns are good for ranged and precise attacks, but aren’t very good at dealing with close combat and large crowds of zombies being mostly useful for psychopath fights. On the other hand, knives are good for attacking enemies quickly and can be found very easily, yet they are also quick to break. It is because of this variety between weapons that the player must decide what to use and where to find it in order to make their strategies successful, further compounding on the strategic and improvisational pressure that the game puts on their experience.
The player also has to keep a close eye on their health bar, which much like in other survival horror games is an abstract means by which to gauge how much damage the player can take before they die. The player never feels truly in control of their own health, since there is not a strict or clear way in which their character loses health. Any attack can take down a block of health as much as it can’t; meaning that the player is not certain how much damage is represented by a single block of health. This makes it so that the player is always in doubt and fear of when their health will go down unexpectedly, even if they learn new ways to counteract it.
As a result of this, healing will become an important constraint for the player and their inventory. Being overwhelmed by zombies or attacked by a psychopath is sometimes
unavoidable and taking damage is a guaranteed necessity in order for the player to complete their objectives. Because of this, the player must adequately overcome their losses and make important decisions as to which and how many healing items they must carry around with them at all times. Influencing decisions like these takes advantage of the player character’s limitations in order to create an environment that is oppressive for the player and never too forgiving or relenting.
The horror of Dead Rising comes from the stress that gameplay mechanics like these inflict on the player. In very subtle ways, these mechanics layer on top of themselves and intersect with each other to create an experience that is more than highly satisfying, open ended and even downright hardcore. Overcoming the difficulty of the game is the charm that makes it such an involving game. However, even if the player chooses not to get involved in the main challenge of finishing the game, there are still more than enough things to enjoy from its gameplay mechanics and sandbox nature.
One other thing that makes Dead Rising’s approach to horror interesting are its influences and roots on Western B-Movie Horror. It is definitely interesting to see a Japanese studio interpret the tropes and style of western horror. Although this is not a quality that is unique to Dead Rising, their specific interpretation of these tropes and influences make it stand out somewhat from other contemporary and even recently released titles. An example of this is the game’s tenuous connections to George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” series, more specifically “Dawn of the Dead”. The game’s setting and style of zombies are clearly inspired by a much more traditional view of the genre, one which games at the time had steadily moved away from.
However, much like those films, even when Dead Rising is so silly and ridiculous, it still manages to be downright unsettling and terrifying. This is of course because Dead Rising always maintains a grounded tone with very cynical undertones that make sure that the player never forgets the horror of the situation. This tone is definitely reinforced by the game’s soundtrack and sound design, which effectively sets up a certain mood during gameplay. Tracks such as the generic ambient themes of the mall and the exciting or scary cutscene tracks greatly contribute towards keeping the tone of Dead Rising believable and consistent.
Another thing that makes Dead Rising so believable in the face of absurdity is the high level of authenticity that the Willamette Mall has. The developers of the game spent effort researching and developing the look of what would be an authentic American mall. Their work pays off in the game’s environments, which have just the right amount of detail and authenticity to make the tone of Dead Rising believable. That’s not to say that the mall is completely realistic, but for the purposes of establishing a believable setting for the game it works excellently.
Most of all though, the horror of Dead Rising works thanks to its human element, which is shown through the empathetic nature of our protagonists. All of our characters are stuck in a terrible situation, and the stress of it takes a visible toll on their behavior. Characters respond to the situation just like you’d expect anyone else to respond. Even in their hysteria, desperation or stress though, they still retain the kind of sympathetic qualities that make the player care enough to follow them through to the end of their journey and see them survive the catastrophe.
The human core of the story and horror of Dead Rising lies within its protagonist Frank West. He is not a particularly conventional protagonist, but because of all the ways he differs from the mainstream, he is excellently unique and sympathetic on his own right. Frank is not exactly the kind of strong, attractive and charming protagonist that we’re used to, but this makes him a much more grounded and relatable figure in the face of all the absurdity of the plot. We find it easier to relate to the events of the game when its protagonist is a kind of everyday figure that we can all easily project ourselves into.
At the same time though, Frank West is also a clearly multifaceted character. Throughout the story, he displays a vast range of emotions and approaches to each situation, going from being ecstatic and smug, to distraught and compassionate. There are times when Frank shows annoyance with the situation, but he also remains steadfast and clever about his approach to the situation in favor of his story, choosing always to be persuasive and understanding, even when the situation is rough. Elements like these are what make Frank West the perfect character for this story, since he represents the most human side between a band of psychopaths, terrorists and zombies. His character could not have been better without TJ Rotolo’s excellent portrayal of the character, which carries just the appropriate range of emotions that he needed to bring the character to life.
Another aspect that makes Frank West such an interesting character for this story is the subtle way that he develops along the course of the story. Although his character remains consistent throughout the game, his outlook towards the situation becomes more and more pragmatic. Frank may start out caring only about the story and the success that it may bring him, yet as he finds out more and more about the nature of the outbreak he finds himself caring more about what happened from a moral and personal standpoint, wanting to share the story not for his own glory but for the good of everyone involved.
Other supporting characters like Brad and Jessie share many of these characteristics with Frank. They are simply normal and dedicated people who became entangled with a situation that was far beyond their reach. However, they still try their best to make the best out of the situation and react in similarly realistic manners. Even the characters who switch sides do so only because their understanding of the situation has changed, meaning that they do the best they can to ensure their own survival.
Similarly to the main cast, most if not every survivor in the game is enveloped in a story of their own, even if it is pretty minimal. No one survivor is the same, and they all have their own individual names and backdrops. These stories can be tragic, comedic, horrific and depressing; every survivor of the Willamette incident is affected in their own specific way, and responds to it according to their own personalities. Some survivors might not even want to be saved, and it is up to Frank to convince them otherwise.
Even the game’s psychopaths have a sense of tragedy lying behind their mask of insanity. After all, the psychopaths are just as much of a victim as everyone else. They only react violently to the catastrophe because it was too much for their psyches to handle. The game makes it clear that most of these psychopaths were once people with lives and families of their own, yet the loss of it all drove them to the very edge of madness. Despite the intensity and craziness of their fights, once it’s all over, one can’t help but lament the loss of their life.
In that regard, Dead Rising’s comedic tone is only a front to its deep and cynical take on society, culture and anything in-between. Make no mistake; Dead Rising is a game that is constantly trying to make us question our attachment to the material as well as the flimsy foundation of the society that we live in. It creates a situation where the foundation of a small society crumbles apart, leaving behind only the scattered and confused people to find their next best alternative to panic and commotion in order to deal with the tragedy they’ve been faced with.
Dead Rising brings in then a somewhat refreshing take on this kind of western horror, since it can view many of the elements that it’s trying to critique from the perspective of a foreigner. Being developed in Japan, a country with radically different and often opposite values than that of America, the studio responsible for Dead Rising had more than enough room to interpret, evaluate and criticize the kind of radicalized and widespread consumerism that is such an integral part of our society, especially in the past few decades.
The game seeks first to accurately portray its own American setting aesthetically and functionally, but in doing so, it also looks at it through the foreign critical lens that helps its commentary become a lot more effective. To a foreign developer, the values that we usually take for granted can appear quite alien to them. Because of this, the perspective and commentary that Dead Rising brought continues to be thoroughly fresh and holds up even a decade later.
In its own right, the game reinterprets and embraces its inspirations and relations with George Romero’s portrayal of the theme in Dawn of the Dead. After all, his film has been interpreted by many as a critical examination of the parallels between the predatory zombies and the mindlessly consumeristic masses. As a result of their influence, the same parallels can be drawn with Dead Rising, reinforcing the nature of its own plot.
Of course, references to George Romero are not really the only commentary and themes that Dead Rising sets up. It only uses these as a foundation to make a more subtle message about the influence that human beings and their consumption has on nature and the world around us. The game pits two unseen forces, the laws of nature and a system that perpetuates endless consumption, and then makes the disastrous consequences of their struggle a punishment to the humans that willingly cooperated with such a system. After all, the chain of events that led to the outbreak in Willamette was not orchestrated by one person, but by a situation that led to questionable decisions by morally questionable men.
Dead Rising also has a very sharp, subtle, nuanced and highly relevant anti-establishment message about how the government and society reacts to circumstances that challenge the status quo. The game spreads forth the idea that our own society and leadership perpetuates this self-fulfilling cycle of destruction and tragedy by covering up its own mistakes from the public eye, eventually forgetting about the tragedies that were forged by its own hand instead of seeking to remedy them. But at the same time, the game presents the idea that even if our society shows outrage at the exposure of tragedies like these, their lives will eventually continue to move forwards carelessly without ever addressing the habits that caused these situations. Thus, the people continue to embrace the system only for the sake of their own commodity.
What makes the plot of Dead Rising so effective is that it highlights the faults of radical consumerism in a way that is not blatant or direct, instead creating a situation that is logically born from the perpetuation of the act it’s trying to criticize. The root of the problem in Dead Rising is not the result of one individual, but the pressure that the radicalization of a system based on endless and mindless consumption creates, forcing many to adopt drastic measures to compensate for the ever increasing demand over a declining supply.
In a way, the specific situation of Dead Rising has no clear or specific villain. It is not only the most radical characters in the story that are complicit in the tragic situation, but also those who would normally be doing what they thought was right. Everyone had a justifiable motive to be driven to such extreme lengths, and every wrongdoing has a built in explanation as to why they did it. Although it may not forgive their actions, the player knows that the true enemy of the story is the situation that led to such a tragic chain of events to occur.
Because of that, it is worth mentioning just how subtle the commentary of Dead Rising is. It is not a game that relies on oversimplifying complex concepts, strawmen characters or even pinning the blame into anything or anyone in particular for a perfect understanding. Instead, Dead Rising reflects and criticizes on the ways in which we live our life, and makes us ponder about a situation in which these simple and seemingly inconsequential urges can lead to larger and more convoluted conflicts. In being all of those things, its commentary becomes much more effective, even to those that normally would not agree with its basic premise.
And it is because of this and more that Dead Rising is such a fantastic game. It is the kind of experience that is subtle, engaging, challenging, funny and even downright terrifying, all when and where it needs to be. It is a truly unique game that brought and continues to bring survival horror to a new and unexplored direction that holds up to the test of time. Even with a line of sequels being released, the original Dead Rising still hasn’t found a true successor that capitalizes on the groundwork that this first entry laid out. Dead Rising remains timeless and relevant, and there is no alternative survival horror game quite as fulfilling as this one is and continues to be.
Obbiesan
