Sunday 29 March 2009

Play Diary: Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop

Session 1: Player 1

Intro movie was surprisingly long for an action comedy game. Also quite lame, bad lip syncing, melodramatic acting, strange, dead or shiny lighting on the characters.

Speaking to Carlito: Why both Z & A to talk? Also, you have to press them in that order - if you press and hold Z, then press A the game won't acknowledge it.
What's up with the lo-fi speech mode anyway? Where the action stops, and you have to read just a couple of lines on the screen before pressing A to get to the next screen.

OMG, I'm going to go nuts if there's a loading screen every time I go through a door...!
Why are there pieces of fruit laying around on the floor?
Without any kind of goal, what am I supposed to do here? I know the avatar's a journalist of some sort, but surely I'm supposed to have some kind of idea what to do?

Feel like I'm inconsequentially driving an empty avatar between small cutscenes. Why can't we just start in the action?

I don't like the combat training - static, instructional images with text and screenshots. Would prefer to learn in an embodied rather than cognitive manner.

Text like this keeps appearing on the screen, "So-and-so is Dead!"
So what? Why should I care? Seriously, does this have any effect on my game, and if so then why wasn't I told about it in advance?!
I hate the gun shot sound, it's far too weak. Sounds like a pea-shooter. Also I don't seem to be able to do any significant damage to the zombies (though sometimes they fall down, but they get straight back up again), nor they to me (I just shake them off - nothing to be scared of really.) Also, I've run out of ammo surprisingly quickly for a game called "chop till you drop"...

"Head for the stairs - I did, but there was a sign at the top which blocked my way.
Died pretty quickly. Guess I respawn and the story keeps going. So there's never any real threat of death? Strange, I wonder why I'm supposed to care.
Why is my gun now broken...?!

Man, I hate this starting area. I go through doors and there's nothing in the room on the other side! Annoyingly I have the loading screen each time I go through.

First mission to save a guy and his wife through the air ducts. Even after I get to the guy the arrow keeps pointing at him. Is there something more I need to do with this guy? He only says one thing over and over again, "Hey, anyone around?" It's really annoying. So I run round the other side of the rooftop and find his wife, still within earshot - why didn't he look over there for her?!
Getting them both into the lift was tricky - for some reason Natalie just stood outside, so I had to go right inside for her to come in a little way. Then I press the button and it tells me this isn't the right way to go. Ok, so I follow the arrow again.

To take the shotgun you must reorganise your inventory. Ok. Takes me to the inventory screen, so now what, how do I "reorganise it"? I picked and used and apple, then quit the inventory. It told me I now had the shotgun (and some money.)

After completing second mission (28 mins play time) I got bored and tried another game.

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