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Been playing a bit of Dead Rising on and off recently, and I feel like, as with so many other games from that period, I'm appreciating it a lot more than I did back when it first came out. I think it's testament to how much I've learned about game design, mechanics and whatnot that I can go back to these games that, for one reason or another, I bounced off a bit "back in the day" and have a lot more fun with them.
As with most stuff along these lines, I'll write more about Dead Rising on MoeGamer when I've spent a bit more time with it, but so far I'm very much appreciating its curious take on New Game Plus. This was actually a common point of contention when it originally came out, and I don't recall any game handling its saving in quite the same way since. I guess there's an argument for roguelikes with persistent progression having an element of what Dead Rising did, but I certainly can't think of many games with fixed content that encourage you to New Game Plus it before you've even finished it once.
On the offchance you're unfamiliar, here's how it works. In Dead Rising, you earn "PP" (hehe) or "Prestige Points" for all sorts of things — small quantities through combat and much larger quantities for major achievements such as defeating bosses, discovering and rescuing survivors and reaching particular milestones in your kill count. PP is just another term for experience points; as you gain PP, you fill a meter, and when this fills, protagonist Frank goes up a level. Unlike an RPG, however, there isn't a flat increase to his stats with every level up; instead, with each level up you get a random improvement to one thing: attack power, run speed, throw distance, inventory space, maximum health or the skills you're able to use.
The intention behind the system is for you to see how far you can get through the game until you either fuck up the main story (which you can do by taking too long over its various objectives) or die, at which point you can either load your most recent (and only) save, or you can save Frank's current status — level, stats, available skills — and delete your progress through the story. At this point, you start the game again, only more powerful than first time around. And in theory, it gradually gets easier, both as Frank grows in power with each "reset", and as you learn important things about the game and its world.
For example, after my most recent fuck-up, I learned where the maintenance tunnels key is, which allows you to use a variety of shortcuts around the game's mall setting. Next time I start over (with my now level 20 Frank) I can make a beeline straight for that key as soon as I have the free time to do so, and start using those shortcuts right away. It's an interesting twist on the memorisation required for certain arcade-style games — and in fact, there's a fair bit of arcade DNA of various descriptions throughout Dead Rising. This shouldn't be surprising, given that it's from Capcom, but it's one of those things that I wouldn't have spotted back in 2006, but am very aware of now. Besides my own work, I have my conversations with Chris on the podcast to thank for my keen awareness of this sort of thing these days.
Anyway, I have plenty more playthroughs to do before I make it through the whole game, I suspect, so it'll be a little while before I write this one up. I'm certainly finding it to be an intriguing, experimental game, though, and am looking forward to picking it apart further.
Hope you're all having a good weekend so far. I'm going to get some recording done tomorrow, even though I still have a couple of episodes still ready to go from my week off a while back. Have a pleasant evening!
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