Dead Rising

If you play Dead Rising with the intent to accomplish something - e.g. advancing the story and/or saving survivors - it ceases being an open-world zombie slaying game. Instead, it becomes a survival horror comedy game. And the methods it uses of creating am-I-gonna-die tension are much like the pre-4 Resident Evil series: frustrating control issues at critical times, propensity to run out of items (both offensive and healing), an unclear map, and fuck-you-in-the-ass design quirks.

Some highlights:

• As I last mentioned, if you get stuck in a crowd and mash your way to victory, there's a high likelihood of breaking your weapon and accidentally using up a heal when you may or may not need it.
• ...but healing items don't actually heal you until you're done with the eating/drinking animation, so if you're at low health and something shoots you during that ~3 second time, you're probably going to die.
• When you level up, a certain aspect of your character improves, be it item inventory, physical strength, max health, or learning a new combat skill. These are random. If your early level-ups happen to give you nothing but useless skills, well, whoops.
• I would not have gotten to the end of 72-hour mode if I hadn't already reached level 10 from previous failed attempts. I thoroughly believe that this game is impossible - or at least ridiculously unreasonable - to complete from level 1.
• I also would never have made it that far if not for guidance from the Internet. There is an in-game map, but it does not divulge the locations of specific weapons and other items, which are, by all accounts, necessary for specific moments in the story progression.
• Getting shot knocks you back, and all the bosses who have guns also have superpowerful melee attacks, and know that if you get close, all they have to do is knock you down and get some range. Fighting these enemies is usually (not "sometimes") unfeasible unless you exploit a dead-zone in the environment where you can hit them but they cannot fire back.
• Your friend Otis back at the security room frequently calls you on a walky-talky to tell you about security camera footage, e.g. of survivors you can rescue. When you are answering this message, you cannot attack (and he has an uncanny ability to call you right in the middle of a zombie horde). You can leave it unanswered, but then it rings, constantly. And if the message is interrupted by you bringing out a weapon - or getting attacked - he calls back, and has the nerve to tell you not to hang up on him.
• The (very) few occasions that I had spare time to rescue survivors, they were an enormous hindrance upon themselves. If there is even one zombie in their way, they will get stuck. They often get stuck on each other. And there is always that one survivor who cannot keep up, burdens the rest of the group, and ultimately gets eaten purely because he/she walks 10% slower than everyone else.
• The center of the mall is a park, that spawns a group of escaped convicts in a buggy with a chain gun on the back. As with most guns, this is easily able to utterly destroy you, and being attached to a vehicle doesn't help, either. Killing them is not the hardest part of the game, but they respawn at certain times of the day, making some rescue missions all that much more unbearable.
• Sometimes when certain enemies kill or capture you, instead of being given the chance to load your last save, you're tied up in a room. And you can escape, but then you're left outside in the middle of zombie territory, and all your items are gone! All this really means is that instead of being able to load your save straightaway, you need to restart the game and go all the way back to the title screen to start again.
• Toward the end of the 72 hours, special forces come to clean up the mall. What could be more irritating than a mall full of zombies? A mall full of soldiers with machine guns. Ridiculous.

This isn't counting numerous other "little" things, like the time that the game told me I had several hours to complete a survivor follow-up mission, but when I got back to the security room, the survivor was gone for the rest of the game.

The zombie-slashing game is not just fun, it's extremely fun; which is why it's such a shame that the story-based game is so flawed and frustrating. If I hadn't received extensive help from the Internet, I would have been extremely disappointed with this game, rather than somewhat disappointed as I am now. And even then, the frustrations of that last bullet point have me throwing down the controller trying to do the "Overtime" mode, and as such I may never see the game's "real" ending.

The fixes are straightforward:

• Checkpoints at every room transition, and the option to retry these (rather than retrying the entire game)
• A pause-screen option to load a save
• An on-screen minimap, with clear indicators of nearby items
• Clearer indicators of the utility of particular items (which foods heal for 4, and which for 1? which weapons work, and which are complete wastes of time?)
• Some indestructible items, or at least better physical abilities, so you aren't left completely helpless when respawning hordes break all of your items
• Less knockback attacks
• Damage from zombies should be taken after you have a chance to repel them, not before
• Superpowerful enemies should not respawn
• A lock-on for aiming firearms, since clearly the enemy AI has it
• Different buttons for using weapons and healing items (and healing items should heal faster)
• A level-up skill/stat progression that actually makes you able to meet the game's challenges as they progress

I feel the same way about Dead Rising as I did about Sly Cooper. There is an amazing game here, that is being held back by design decisions that are, in a word, retarded. The difference between Sly and Dead Rising is that Sly Cooper's sequels are already out, and I know they've fixed those flaws (albeit I haven't played them for myself yet). As for whether Dead Rising 2 will fix what's wrong here, well, I can only hope.

Progress: Finished 72-hour mode