By the time Dead Rising: Chop Till
You Drop arrived, it had been over a year since I played the Xbox 360 original.
The memory of that game was so vivid: dark, creepy and heavily inspired by Night
of the Living Dead, this zombie-packed horror game was addictive, frustrating
and wholly engrossing.
After experiencing Chop Till You
Drop, the Wii port and upgrade/downgrade concoction, it was time to re-examine
the first version. Could my memory have been wrong? Could my vision have been
distorted? The game before me wasn’t the classic I remembered. But after going
back to Xbox, it became clear that the memory was in fact correct – and that
these two versions are two very different games.
Here’s The Scoop
Chop Till You Drop replaces the
72-hour mode of the first game with a narrower mission-based quest. The original
cases play out as usual but with the addition of several required scoops
(civilians in need of rescue). Thus, you can’t merely kill time to advance to
the next phase, you must slowly move forward by completing whatever mission is
introduced.
This setup is much easier than it
would have been in the first game (where most scoops were optional), thanks to
the use of three difficulty settings and more than 10 save slots. For those of
you who haven’t played the 360 version, that game was limited to just one save
slot. No continue options were provided at death, leaving two lousy choices:
start over or load the game from the last save point.
Using a Resident Evil 4-style
shooting scheme (hold the B button to draw your weapon and aim with the Wii
remote), Chop Till You Drop’s controls are slightly improved over the analog
stick aiming of the original.
But with less realistic graphics and
fewer zombies to overwhelm the player, Chop Till You Drop isn’t scary. It isn’t
intense. It doesn’t create any of the survival/horror feelings produced by the
original Dead Rising – or the Resident Evil series, whose Wii graphics are
vastly superior to Chop Till You Drop.
The lack of scares isn’t too
noticeable at first, likely due to the initial wonder of having more ammo than
you’ll ever use. Forget the 360 experience of running for your life; this
version is more about hunting the flesh-eating creatures that threaten to
destroy the world.
And if you do want to run, well…go
right ahead. There aren’t enough zombies to stop a player with nimble thumbs,
which are all you’ll need to outmaneuver and outrun most of the zombies. Some
will need to be slaughtered to ensure your scoops survive. You will also want to
kill several of them just for fun. But many can be left alone and you’ll never
know the difference.
Once you realize that this is
strictly an arcade-style hack-n-slash without any scary moments, Chop Till You
Drop must rely solely on the action – and maybe a little unintentional humor –
to keep players from walking away. If all you want to do is cut up a few
thousand zombies and don’t mind playing through missions that require lots of
unnecessary backtracking, Chop Till You Drop isn’t a horrible choice for gamers
who don’t have an Xbox 360. It’s certainly better than not playing Dead Rising
at all. The terrible, can’t-believe-what-I’m-seeing death animations will surely
make players laugh, especially those who have witnessed the more realistic
effects of the Resident Evil series (even the PSone original!).
But if you want a game that does
more than say, “Go here, save this person, watch a cinematic, and hack up a
bunch of zombies while you’re at it,” Chop Till You Drop leaves a lot to be
desired. Most significantly, the chopping action is far from seamless. The
standard third-person view is tolerable, but when aiming in the first person,
don’t be surprised if rabid poodles or crawling zombies are hard to see. Despite
the aim improvements, the view change feature (the Wii remote only controls your
weapon’s cursor; the camera is controlled with the thumbstick) is still way too
slow.
Frank, the main character and
photojournalist from the Dead Rising series, can no longer jump or take
pictures. The former is tolerable, though certainly raises a few eyebrows since
it prevents you from crossing medians. Not being able to take pictures, however,
is very strange, especially when the developers didn’t bother to remove the
camera from Frank’s hands. When he’s not holding a weapon, you can see his giant
camera. Given the history photography has with Nintendo systems (Pokemon Snap is
just one example), and considering how cool it’d be to snap pictures with the
Wii remote, this omission has to be one of the strangest I’ve ever seen.
Though you will find more food, ammo
and a revised inventory system that’s similar to Resident Evil, Chop Till You
Drop lacks the “anything is a weapon” thrill of the Xbox original. If an item is
there, you can still pick it up, swing it around or throw it toward the enemy.
But there aren’t nearly as many to find. The weaker animations take away from
the horrific sensation of bashing several zombies with something heavy, only to
have to turn around and run because you are severely outnumbered. Not that being
outnumbered is something to worry about on Wii. But it’s yet another feeling you
won’t experience in this version.
Inevitably, that leads us to a place
much darker than Chop Till You Drop’s goofy story (the same as before but even
less believable now that the graphics stink). This is not a hugely gripping
game. It could have been and certainly was on Xbox 360. But too many sacrifices
were made, and too many elements were altered, to let the dead rise gracefully
on Wii.
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Gameplay: 6.2
A rough and unpolished, hack-n-slash-heavy version of a popular
survival/horror game released in 2006.
Graphics: 2.0
It’s not easy to port an Xbox 360 game to Wii, especially when Wii’s
hardware is no better than GameCube. However, you would think that Chop Till You
Drop – released four years after Resident Evil 4 hit GameCube – would be at
least as good-looking as the hardware allows. Not true.
Sound: 3.0
No excuses can be made for the lack of high-quality sound. We’ve all heard
the amazing (and scary) sounds of RE4 on Wii and countless titles on GameCube,
PSone and PS2. No one would expect this game to sound as good as the 360
version. But why couldn’t it sound almost as good? The music is several
times less intense, the sound effects are cheesy, and the atmospheric tunes are
devoid of horror.
Difficulty: Easy/Medium
But mostly easy. Whereas the original was tough and often frustrating, this
Wii port is fairly easy, thanks in part to the reduced zombie population (a
consequence of Wii’s inferior hardware).
Concept: 5.0
The new save system and default difficulty settings are welcome additions.
But they’re hardly game changers. If you consider the basics that most games
offer, including Capcom’s other series (RE, Devil May Cry, Onimusha, Dino Crisis
and others), these features should have been a part of Dead Rising three years
ago.
Overall: 6.0
Very hard to recommend. It’s certainly better than not playing Dead Rising
at all but should not be considered for purchase. A rental at best, Chop Till
You Drop isn’t a game you’ll play till you drop.
