I let Neil borrow my copy of Burnout Revenge whilst I decided to work through Dead Rising.

So far, it’s been an above average playing experience. The novelty of using different items to waste zombies wears off after a little while when you discover the bulk of the gameplay involves ferrying people from one end of the map to the other while evading psychopaths and hordes of the undead. But the whole package is a unique one.

It’s not a bad game, though. It’s cinematic, the voice acting is excellent, the presentation is fluid, and the weapons vary enough so that they don’t all feel like the same thing. The use of the camera (as in, photo taking camera, not gameplay perspective camera) is a bit of a novelty in itself, reminding the player of the character’s journalistic roots by rewarding them with experience points every time they take a good shot.

But underneath the seemingly serious shell is a parody of the survival horror genre, and possibly even of zombie horror flicks. Frank West (photojournalist) takes pride in sticking hunks of meat and condiments in zombie’s mouths, pulling buckets onto their heads and watching them stagger around blindly, and using hedge trimmers to cut off zombie legs and watching them topple over. Even when a horde of zombies is mere inches from his face and about to strike, he is rewarded with a slew of experience points if he gets a clear camera shot off in time, to which he replies "Fantastic!" before being lynched.

As I said, it’s an above average playing experience, but I could see where the designers were coming from when they realised that there’s only so much you can do in a mall full of zombies and a variety of tools at your disposal - you can’t expect players to just kill zombies for 10 hours. I can see this getting a bit drawn out by the time I reach the halfway mark, but I’ll keep at it when I have the chance.