Dead Rising

[toblix]

Holy fucking fucking shit!

With the exception that dying seems to easy, and save points seem to far apart, this game seems to be totally awesome!

When I got Zombie Ride, I thought it would be a great way to pass congested hallways and such, but so far it seems it's just a great way to jump into a zombie and be eaten to death. Is there "trick" here, or what?

[Noyb]

Well, the trick in Dead Rising in general is to not expect to beat the story on your first playthrough. Your level and skills carry over to your next game, so you should try and get through as much of the story as possible, but spend the rest of the three days on subquests (escort missions and psychopath fights) to get powerful enough to actually beat the story.

Also, there's a pretty useful shortcut:

if you beat the chainsaw-juggling clown early in the game, and escort the worker on the roller coaster back, it unlocks a path between the west and east sides of the mall through the women's bathroom

[toblix]

if you beat the chainsaw-juggling clown--

Holy shit. Thanks.

Also, I think I may be approaching this game the wrong way. Usually I try to do it perfect. I want to rescue everyone, do all the quests, find all the stuff, whatever. But here it's like the clock is ticking and quest timers are running out, and the guys I'm rescuing are dying as flies.

So, the main point of the game is to do the "story quests", right? As I understand it there are two ways to finish the game:

• Be rescued after 72 hours
  
• Be rescued after 72 hours, having done all the story quests and found out what's going on.

The other stuff, rescuing people, killing zombies... this is just for prestige points, right? So basically, if a guy dies it's not like I've broken the game or anything. I mean, I can't be expected to save everyone.

Right?

[toblix]

My problem is that I keep getting into fights with zombies, hitting them with cool shit like cash registers or dumbbells. And then they close in and suddenly I'm on the ground fighting one off. And the wrestling stuff isn't clearly explained. There's a difference between getting caught by one and many zombies, right? Sometimes we're standing and sometimes we're on the ground. Sometimes the wiggling icons appear (with two numbers... the number of wiggles?) and sometimes I just desperately hit everything. When do I do what? And how do you use Zombie Ride?

[miffy495]

Zombie ride is used to get on top of a large crowd of zombies. Once on top, don't hit jump again or you will spring off of your current zombie into pretty much certain death. If you just start trying to walk as normal when on top of the zombies, you'll start to awkwardly crawl over them, making it far easier to get to the other side of said large crowd.

I did all the story goals my first time through, but only managed to rescue about 15 hostages. Still haven't actually seen the endgame though, as I can't seem to beat all those fucking commandos that come 'round after your helicopter gets shot down.

And the number on the wiggling is how many seconds you have until you take a whole crapload of damage. I think. ?

[toblix]

I sorta like the RPG-ish leveling up and keeping your guy when restarting. I'm not sure how fun it'll be replaying the game from the start after putting in a lot of hours, though. Of course, the game isn't that many hours total... do the first parts get totally easy if you restart from late in the game, or will it always be a hassle? Don't tell me the difficulty scales or some shit like that. I'd like to think I'll one day be able to just kick ass my way through the zombies in the entrance area in the beginning of the game after restarting as a level 10 whatever. How many levels are there, anyway?

And Jesus is this game pretty. I just met the clown and he looks awesome in HD.

[miffy495]

Frank maxes out his levels when he hits 50. If I recall correctly, the order that you get certain abilities in changes from game to game, so it's kind of difficult to say how easy it'll be for one person at level 20 when someone else at level 20 could have a very different skill set.

[toblix]

Level 50? Jesus, I'm at level 5 or something. Can't wait to get home and play some more.

[n0wak]

Level 50? Jesus, I'm at level 5 or something. Can't wait to get home and play some more.

It's pretty easy to level up if you

drive a car down through the tunnels and mow down a thousand zombies in one go through

[toblix]

Yeah, I did that. I'm not into cheating, though.

At least not yet. I had some trouble with the clown, since I read that only melee did the trick. Having failed four times, once with four sledgehammers and two OJ's, I killed him with only two handguns. His death sequence? Delicious.

***

So, what's up with the two Japanese guys, climbing on bookcases and duying without saying a word?

[eljay]

You need to find a way to communicate with them...

Magazines and books have various effects in game if you have them in your inventory.

Conveniently they are in a book shop

[toblix]

That was pretty cool. Now I have to try to get both of these guys some guns, and then we can save the limping dude in the North plaza and get them back home just in time.

I think. It's at times like this I really hate the saving system. I guess the real problem is my always trying to complete everything.

[toblix]

Is it even possible to rescue everyone?

[DanJW]

A zombie apocalypse where everyone survived would be dead boring if you ask me

[toblix]

Well, sure. I'm just wondering if there's like an achievement for doing it, if it's possible. It seems to me some of these scoops are tightly timed, and having more than two survivors to escort is impossible through densely zombulated areas, like the North Plaza. I had this idea of getting the two Japanese people to help me save the limping man, but they were both eaten just moments after entering the area, making me think maybe I'm not supposed to be able to do both, and that I have to choose. Which also sounds weird, since that'd mean choosing between two easy saves and one hard one. Unless there's time to save the two, and then come back... Hmm.

[DanJW]

zombulated

This word needs to be officially added to the English language right away!

[eljay]

There is an achievement for saving everyone in one playthrough. Also achievements for escorting 8 people at once and 8 women at once, so yeah..... it's possible

[brkl]

A zombie apocalypse where everyone survived would be dead boring if you ask me

Tell me that was intentional!

[toblix]

There is an achievement for saving everyone in one playthrough. Also achievements for escorting 8 people at once and 8 women at once, so yeah..... it's possible

Well, then there better be some skills later on that makes it easier. Eight at once? Not a chance.

[eljay]

Well if you beat the clown you must have his mini chainsaws right?

Most useful weapon in the game, so damaging!

They respawn at the spot where he died, and you can get 3 magazines that can each multiply the amount of hits it lasts by 3, and these stack. That equates to approximately 1620 uses per chainsaw

(note: you earn more inventory space with higher levels)

I'll leave it to you to find the right magazines

Also worth using is the katana, doesn't last very long though.

Don't forget you can give the escortees weapons to defend themselves also.

[toblix]

Yeah, actually it hit me earlier today... "Those chainsaws seemed to be respawning. Maybe I could give them to survivors?" <-That hit me.

[DanJW]

Tell me that was intentional!

Hahah I'm afraid so.

[toblix]

Damnit!

I had just hurried over to the second fight with the indian, mexican, whatever, and I hadn't saved because I thought I didn't have the time. And then my mission isn't even clear. I get the impression I'm to cut down the prof while the black dude takes care of the bad guy so I'm running around trying to find a switch, throw knifes and shoot at the rope until everyone dies.

Turns out I should've killed the mexican.

[toblix]

Turns out killing him was easy.

Anyway, the game really showed me its ugly side today, and I've decided I'm not going to bother with the survivors, and only focus on the main story. There's just too many problems and issues with the whole survivor saving mechanism which makes it too much of a hassle:

• They are fucking dumb and slow. Even if I set a waypoint for them to run to, even the smallest of groups of zombies in their way make them stop and think, only to be eaten moments later.
  
• Taking them between zones is easy. Except if one of the guys was outside the invisible fucking circle the guys have to be inside of to actually follow you into the next zone. So, if there are three or more survivors, you have to "flick" back and forth between zones, trying to get the dumb fucks to take just one single step towards you, so you can get them with you. But nooo.
  
• Even if you've spent twenty minutes painfully leading some of them through the mall, and you're getting close to the security room, suddenly there's a surprise event with a cut-scene and everything, and at the end of it you have to fight this group of crazy people, and hey, guess what: the people you had with you are back at the zone entrance being raped by zombie women, and there's nothing you can do.
  
• Even if you give them neat-o weapons like the katana or the mini-chainsaw, they prefer to just fucking stand in the middle of zombie groups doing nothing.

Oh, how I wish this game was made by western developers, and not those crazy Japanese who like to make all their shit too frustratingly difficult. It's typical: in the walkthroughs there are always sections like "I really hope you brought the katana" or "By now you should have this and this particular item". Fuck that, developer-san. Give the Dead Rising license to EA or something. I'm too old for this shit.

Also, Keiji:

If the player can bypass your fucking retarded saving system by purchasing overprised and otherwise useless memory cards and just swapping it out, it's a terrible system and you should have known that from the start. RELEASE A MULTIPLE SAVE POINTS PATCH ON XBOX LIVE YOU FUCKING TOOLS!

Regards,

Everyone with half a fucking brain.

There, now I can go back to play this otherwise excellent game.

[toblix]

Aah, now that I've come to accept that I'll miss half of what's going on in this game, it's much less stressful. I just fought the crazy store-owner, and I keep thinking how fucking awesome this game would have been to me if the whole timeline and scoop structure was more linear and/nor non-overlapping. I guess it adds the coveted "replay value", which is great for people who can actually be bothered to play games more than once.

Which prompts another question: With almost nobody even completing a game once (an assumption based on the statistics Valve released on Episode 1) why would any developers care about replay value? Wouldn't the best tactic be to stuff all the best parts into one experience and then just drop the rest?