I Love Dead Rising
We buy EDGE. We read EDGE. We are EDGE readers. Randy Smith writes for EDGE. We've previously wished that Randy Smith didn't write for EDGE. However, we may have to renege our wishes because he has written a nice article about Why Dead Rising Stands Out From The Horde.
As with all good game writing h e has perfectly enshrined my thoughts into words, thoughts I didn't realise I had until I read this.
I love Dead Rising (including the Wii port). Randy sums up why. It's that feeling of me against the Horde. The way I play the game changes from moment to moment. I might be trying to save survivors, I might without really noticing it, decide to eradicate all the zombies from a particular area. I might just stroll about the casino/mall checking out the environment but always with one eye on the nearest group of goons. I know what I want to do and most of the times there's hundreds of zombies in between me and my own personal objective. Things go well I move on to the next thing. If things go badly, all of a sudden I'm deep in a crowd of zombies with no health and I end up playing like some hungry hobo, smashing stuff up and opening boxes in a desperate attempt to find food. I also love that the game doesn't end if you balls the story up. Playing through Legend of Zelda provides almost the opposite experience. There's very little choice in the order and how I go about doing things. The game has a very set route it wishes me to follow, I may wish to spend four hours fishing but in order to progress the game, I'm ultimately going to have to beat a boss and solve some environmental puzzles. As we saw yesterday, I couldn't really care for what happens to TP's Hyrule. In Dead Rising, although there aren't penalties (missing out on cheevos and unlockables aside) for not saving survivors or taking out psychos I feel compelled to do my bit for the lucky few who may survive through the zombie invasion. I've played through the first Dead Rising about a dozen times yet I always always have to do the Jo Slade mission because, well she's horrible
As with all good game writing h e has perfectly enshrined my thoughts into words, thoughts I didn't realise I had until I read this.
I love Dead Rising (including the Wii port). Randy sums up why. It's that feeling of me against the Horde. The way I play the game changes from moment to moment. I might be trying to save survivors, I might without really noticing it, decide to eradicate all the zombies from a particular area. I might just stroll about the casino/mall checking out the environment but always with one eye on the nearest group of goons. I know what I want to do and most of the times there's hundreds of zombies in between me and my own personal objective. Things go well I move on to the next thing. If things go badly, all of a sudden I'm deep in a crowd of zombies with no health and I end up playing like some hungry hobo, smashing stuff up and opening boxes in a desperate attempt to find food. I also love that the game doesn't end if you balls the story up. Playing through Legend of Zelda provides almost the opposite experience. There's very little choice in the order and how I go about doing things. The game has a very set route it wishes me to follow, I may wish to spend four hours fishing but in order to progress the game, I'm ultimately going to have to beat a boss and solve some environmental puzzles. As we saw yesterday, I couldn't really care for what happens to TP's Hyrule. In Dead Rising, although there aren't penalties (missing out on cheevos and unlockables aside) for not saving survivors or taking out psychos I feel compelled to do my bit for the lucky few who may survive through the zombie invasion. I've played through the first Dead Rising about a dozen times yet I always always have to do the Jo Slade mission because, well she's horrible
I know that I can suspend my Zelda game and nothing will happen to Hyrule, it will always be on the brink of disaster with the possibility of being saved in my absence. I can't bear to ignore Jo Slade's mission because even if I don't do the mission nothing happens (she and her victims will just disappear when the time limit for the mission runs out) but the thought of letting Jo abuse those survivors is enough to make sure I swing by to put Jo out of her misery every playthrough. And that's when games are great. When consciously or subconsciously they make you suspend your beliefs and immerse you in their worlds.
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