This is about as crowded as things get.
For those who have never played the original Dead Rising, then allow us to explain. That game was a third person action game which paid homage to (or ripped off, if you're among the cynical) Romero's Dawn of the Dead by positing Frank West, a photographic journalist, in the midst of a shopping mall overrun with the living dead. Cut off from the outside world and awaiting an eventual rescue, Frank had to fight to survive and outlast both the living dead and a cavalcade of unhinged human psychopaths while attempting to uncover the cause of the undead outbreak. The title allowed players to run riot in the mall, pillaging makeshift weapons from store shelves, running over zombies with trolleys, and causing general disarray. Missions took on the form of surviving while traveling from A to B, to escorting a myriad of survivors around the mall and battling bosses. One of the chief charms of Dead Rising was its staggering ability to fill the screen with zombies. At any given moment Frank could, and nearly always would, be beset on all sides by dozens of zombies clawing for his brain, and this was integral to the flow of the game and its mechanics. Mowing down six zombies with one swing of a chainsaw was exhilarating, tense, and hilarious, and having to somehow traverse an area where you could scarcely make out the floor was an anxiety-inducing, entertaining challenge.
Now, all of the above applies to the Wii version which is the subject of this review, except for one aspect. If you haven't guessed yet, the Wii version retains the exact same premise, storyline, and core design of its forerunner, but has been pruned and compressed and tweaked to cope with the Wii's relative lack of horsepower, while being modified to take advantage of the unique capabilities of the system's controller. Frank can now aim with precision courtesy of the Wii sensor bar, and the various melee weapons have functions which are mapped to gesture-based motion controls; these Wii-centric additions to the core mechanics are actually quite proficient and sensible, if not a barnstorming improvement over those of the original. In essence, the core gameplay of that title remains relatively unchanged in this port, and that is a good thing. Shooting zombies and breaking television sets over their faces is still fun and visceral, which makes it a sad shame that the feel of the game is altogether different from the original by virtue of the limited number of enemies on-screen. Gone is any sense of panic when faced with overwhelming odds, and the ability to run dozens of zombies over while on a skateboard is replaced with knocking down one individual zombie every ten seconds until you realise they're all dead and there aren't any left. You wouldn't really refer to an undead horde when speaking of Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop; it's more of an undead smattering, and the game is inferior for it.
Feeling nostalgic for 90s-esque fire effects? Neither are we.
Another strange omission is that Frank, the photo-journalist, can no longer take photographs. In the Xbox 360 original, Frank could and would frequently have to snap shots of the living dead in order to earn points with which he could upgrade his abilities. In Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, the camera is completely absent as a gameplay mechanic, which leaves the title feeling a little blander and less varied than its predecessor. Considering that 2004’s Beyond Good and Evil had a heroine capable of snapping more photos than a tourist at the zoo, this omission is glaring and lends credence to the dawning suspicion that this port is motivated by profit rather than any genuine creative passion or desire to improve the experience.
However, it is unlikely that any proud photo-journalist would like to take pictures of anything on display, seeing as the mall and its inhabitants are so jarringly basic and unattractive. Dead Rising was not a particularly amazing game in a visual sense, but its high definition character models and the sheer number of objects rendered onscreen made it nonetheless impressive. Here, zombies appear fuzzy and blocky, and the textures are little more than perfunctory. Cut scenes are creaky, blood effects are laughable, and overall this is a game which languishes behind other Wii titles like Super Mario Galaxy or MadWorld. The sloppiness of the graphics is surprising given that the title runs on the dated but solid Resident Evil 4 engine, and this is a disappointing effort by the usually-reliable Capcom. The aural experience is much the same, with the same awkward voice-acting and corny soundtrack proving altogether mediocre.
We can't think of a caption that does this justice.
Should you take the plunge with Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, the experience lasts a respectable ten hours, with a respectable scope for replay. A fortunate improvement over the original is the inclusion of multiple save slots; while Dead Rising limited players to a single file which discouraged experimentation, the Wii iteration is more relaxed and allows players to avail themselves of the opportunity to explore, tinker, make different decisions and enact alternate strategies. The title represents decent value, and players should not feel ripped off if the core gameplay is to their satisfaction.
To return to the question posed in this review's introduction, the answer is unfortunately no. When the central appeal of a title's gameplay is derived from its engaging use of technology, a gutted port simply cannot compete. This is Dead Rising-lite: a medicore and watery port of a fairly good game, devoid of spectacle and reeking of a rushed development induced by the desire to cash in on the popularity of the Wii. This is moderate fun on its own terms, but for anyone who knows what they are missing, Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop is a tired, weary sigh of a game.
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