Hack’em, and stack’em, damn these things are worse than cockroaches and seem to come out of everywhere. Dead Rising: Chop Till Your Drop was my latest conquest. Personally, I believe the zombie games should be in a genre all by themselves. There is the Resident Evil series, House of the Dead series, the zombie killing Onechanbara girls, and now we have Frank West of Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, to add to the list of licensed zombie hackers. Sometimes you are just in the mood for a bash and smash zombie game, and Chop Till You Drop definitely will scratch that itch.
The premise is Frank West, an overzealous photo journalist is investigating why the town of Willamette has been quarantined and the media is all but blacked out to what is going on. He hires a helicopter to take him in where he is dropped on the top of the Willamette Parkview Mall. He worms his way through corridors to meet up with an unlikely crew of survivors who must rely on each other’s talents and knowledge to make it through this thing alive. The first missions you are tasked in are search and rescue efforts. This allows you to learn the ropes and find effective implements in disabling the zombies, such as baseball bats, guns, and other dismembering tools. When it comes to finding things remember you are at the mall and it is at your disposal.
Luckily Chop Till You Drop sticks to some hard rules when it comes to zombies. One, zombies are stupid. They cannot problem solve mechanical fixtures, open doors, or even negotiate stairs. Forget about having them considering abstract thought. These zombies are mindless as they come and seriously pissed, like all the time. Also they are relentless. They will never stop until they are ingesting some fatty brain goodness. Next, they move oh so slow, so you have time to think and even when they are hording you, there is a chance for you to come out swinging. Dislodging a jaw, splitting a skull and amputating a leg is relatively easy. But they feel no pain, so unless you can really dismember them, they keep coming. Spawning is a maximum so be on guard.
One thing I really enjoyed about this game was the creative cut scenes. The following is not a spoiler as it is part of the intro cut scene. I love this part. An elderly woman is looking for her dog where she finds it trapped in the foyer with like a hundred zombies! At odds with everyone’s advice she fights to free her little ankle biter to just unleash the horde of zombies waiting for an opening. They pour through into the main floor of the mall, and needless to say to the demise of the old woman her dog survives. Ahh, irony in zombieville. Chop Till You Drop actually follows a storyline that is not at all that terrible. We have come a long way from “Night of the Living Dead”, a classic nonetheless, but nothing to the plot other than zombies, zombies, and more zombies.
Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop is developed and published by Capcom Entertainment. It utilizes the same engine as Resident Evil 4 for the Wii. It is rated M +17 for mature audiences only for blood and gore, intense violence, and language. This version was based on the XBOX 360 version of the game, then later developed for the Wii. At first it admittedly was a bit cumbersome in moving the wand and bat swinging. Be sure to give yourself plenty of room as it will get intense. Later it became as natural as Wii Sports Bowling or Tennis. Chop Till You Drop is labeled in the Survival Horror genre, but as I mentioned previously, zombie games should be in a class all to themselves.
Graphics and sound design were done well for the Wii platform. This game delivers more than what I expected. In cut scenes the camera views were chaotic and enticing for the scene, drawing you into the scene, and making you wonder what is going on. It leaves you wanting to get closer even though it presents danger. The lure and attraction despite the danger makes your heart race. Sure you can outrun one or two zombies, but what about ten, twenty? Capcom developed this well with respect to the Wii. Though not as fluid or eye-popping as the XBOX 360 graphics, it is better than expected for the Wii.
Final Verdict
It was only a matter of time before the marriage of the Wii and a zombie-style hack and slash game came to fruition. I am glad it happened in my lifetime. As I mentioned previously, sometimes you are just in the mood to mindlessly stack festered rotting bodies while free looting a mall for your means of survival. Solid for its genre and you get your money’s worth for an atypical zombie thriller. Capcom spared no expense on their website for the game as well. The site, as well as the game, is eye candy for those mouths that water at the site of festering wounds and rotting flesh. Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop is a mindless pleaser of the animated dead if I have ever played one.
Score
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