Up in the posh Capcom suite at Planet Hollywood, we were handed a Wii remote and placed in front of a new preview build of Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop. Now, it is no secret that those of us at Destructoid who have had the opportunity to play various demos of the Wii port up to this point have had less than favorable impressions of it.
Never one to outright dismiss a game, particularly one with zombies, I was willing to give Chop Till You Drop a fair shake. Read on for my impressions of this most recent build to see if I disagree with my compatriots (here's a hint: that's an ellipsis in the title, not an equal sign).
As the demo opened up, Frank was in the security room with Otis, the highly annoying maintenance worker from the original Xbox 360 game. While Otis' role remains largely the same as it was prior, giving information to Frank over radio and alerting the player to missions, the mechanics have changed quite a bit.
As some players found that managing Dead Rising's time-sensitive missions was too difficult (or just discouraging), Chop Till You Drop's missions are handed out directly from Otis. Talking to him opens up a menu with available missions to select from, and you only have to tackle one at a time -- instead of running the risk of killing survivors because you had to drag them along to a dangerous area to get in under a time limit for other endangered citizens.
The mission which was available for us to play is one that I was already quite familiar with from the original game. Twin sisters were being attacked near the toy store, with one outside and surrounded by zombies, while the other hid in the store. While this mission does not take us further than the nearby Paradise Plaza section, the layout of the Willamette Mall looked to be retained. All the shops are exactly where they were previously, though the plaza itself felt a bit more barren and lifeless, with fewer planters and other incidental environmental niceties.
When I say "lifeless," that is no suggestion that we have more zombie action going on than in previous demos and videos. I still never saw more than a dozen zombies at any given time, and zombie corpses melt away upon death to keep as much of the Wii's limited resources available as possible. Now, provided the timeline of Chop Till You Drop remains the same as its predecessor, the mission we played is very early in the game and before the mall becomes truly overrun. Still, it was rather unimpressive and I've never seen anything anywhere to suggest that this is not the standard throughout.
So few zombies might seem easy to deal with, allowing the player to take out immediate threats to the survivors who need rescuing and then either avoid any between the exit or just mow them down to clear a path. If you thought the frustration of getting survivors out would be proportional to the number of undead roaming about, you will be in for a surprise. Hard as it may be to imagine, survivor AI actually seems less competent and the Thompson twins kept running directly into zombies and just standing there while being pummeled to death.
Motion controls are a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, they are managed well by never feeling like they unnecessarily replace button input. Attacking with melee weapons is still handled by pressing a button. Finishing moves make use of waggle and you can do some special attacks with certain weapons by shaking the remote. The problem is that the motions do not feel responsive and attempts to use it met with failure as often as success.
I wanted Chop Till You Drop to be successful in translating the fun of Dead Rising to a new platform. And there are some aspects, such as selectable missions, which will make the game more accessible and comfortable to play. In a way, it's tragic, because they've managed to take a great game for the hardcore and turn it into something clearly intended for the Wii's casual audience. At the same time, if what I've seen today is truly indicative of the final product, there really isn't anyone that I can see actually enjoying this.
Contest:
11:00 PM on 01.10.2009
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Agreed.
The one thing about the wii, out of all the things, that pisses me off the most is that it has no fucking horse power. theres a serious lack of art in there games, simply because the graphics are last gen instead of current gen.
This looks like Dead Rising for the N64
It makes sense, and by makes sense I mean is totally fucking stupid.
Don't blame Wii owners if this game doesn't sell ... or better yet, don' blame Wii owners if they do buy this game. The last thing we need are more gamers supporting crappy titles which will only encourage developers to make more of them.
Nice going Capcom. Try not to disappoint us for the rest of the year. Thanks.
And I agree that the graphics are absolute mediocre crap. The Wii can have good looking games, but not when you're striving for realistic setting and color like in this game. Then you need a powerful system capable of at least 720p and high res textures. Otherwise everything will just look like mud.
The whole point of dead rising for me was its my playground the infinite amount of zombies are there for me to slaughter...
Fucking AWFUL
exactly what i wanted to hear, something tells me that capcom decided to port the game because it has potential on a system that lacks violent titles, and that the new controls would help.
Im just thinking Okami here, never played it on PS2, can't get enough of it on my Wii at the moment.
So lets hope people WHO DO NOT OWN and HAVE NOT PLAYED the xbox360 version, do get get a chance to enjoy...
as for graphics, i agree with everyone here, they look like shit, also hoping for PS2 quality games on my wii (read: God of War), that would be enough to satisfy my graphic needs.
- Built From-The-Ground-Up
- Wii as lead SKU
- 1st tier development teams with AAA budget
I expect Capcom to switch over from the 360/Ps3 to Wii development pronto. The 360/PS3 are failed consoles, just liek the Xbox and Gamecube were lastgen.
The Wii is the marketleader, Capcom, so get on the ball!!!
Fucking lazy Publishers and Developers.
obvious troll is obvious.
And, er, bitter cause Dead Rising Wii clearly sucks rocks!
Not my fault 3rd parties don't like money and can't see the writing on the wall. Capcom, of all developers, should see this.
The Wii has over 50% marketshare right now!!! It will have over 60% marketshare by the time 2010 rolls around.
It's economic suicide to ignore the market leader.
Its that kind of thinking thats the reason why the game industry is being suffocated. Assholes like you who think that games should only be made to make money. Fuck you.
It's called innovation and I admire them for it.
If you ruled the world we would have "You Got Served 7", and "Step up 4 the Streets" out in theaters at the moment.
They may enjoy it on some level, but they could be enjoying a far better game if Capcom wasn't compromising the game for a weaker system and making concessions that didn't need to be made. To me, Dead Rising was the kind of game that made me want to buy a 360 one day. I would say that it's more worth it to buy a 360 just to play this game than it is to get such a hand-me-down Wii port.
you´re pathetic.
there, i said it!
Answer with your wallet, don´t like it, don´t buy it, get deadly creatures instead.
That said, at least Conrad has played it (unlike anyone else who's having a grand old time bashing and thrashing), so I will trust his judgment on it thus far. However, we can only assume that Capcom is trying to push the Wii to its limits. They might very well be taking the easy way out and coding what they can without scrutinizing every resource, unless one of you just so happens to be on the development team at Capcom and can tell us otherwise. Just sayin'.
Going back to Saints Row 2 on my PS3 now, before any of you start to call me a Wii fanboy. :P
The one thing that gives me hope is that Conrad didn't mention the zombie dogs, birds, or fat cops. They are one of the new aspects of the game that have me hoping that despite its reduced zombie count, it still might be challenging and fun.
But 12 zombies on screen at a time?
Jesus...
Also was that the Bionic Commando?
So it seems the only compromise in the game is the number of zombie on screen, to reiterate myself, enemies. In the xbox360 version was that the only fun factor derived from playing the game? If so then Jesus, Wii owners are being screwed. But something tells me that if the enemy AI is enhanced then each enemy killed becomes rewarding and instant kill of 12 enemies becomes ruthless.
Although i agree, it seems like a cheap and lazy port, capcom should have even made Zack and Wiki 2 instead, but again i must ask 360 owners, was the number of enemies killed on screen the only satisfaction you got from the game, especially since necros thinks it was a 360 system seller?
Where the Resident Evil games were all about being scared as hell that the zombies were going to kill you, Dead Rising was all about killing hundreds of practically defenseless zombies for hours on end.
What I was hoping for in this remake is a little more of that Resident Evil experience, which means more of a sense of threat from the zombies and less of just an endless zombie massacre. Sure it's fun to kill zombies, but like a pizza with 200 lbs of cheese on it, it was a little too much of a good thing. More importantly, to make up for the game having less zombies, the zombies in Dead Rising Wii were supposed to be tougher to kill, which could have led to making the game actually harder (and more "hardcore").
But twelve zombies on screen? That's less that Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles can do. Hell, I think it's even less than Resident Evil 3 can do.
It's hard to imagine how a zombies game with that few zombies could offer any challenge or scares.