Hot Pixels

Dead Rising is a video game from 2006, published exclusively for Xbox 360 game console published for XBOX 360, produced by the Japanese company Capcom. In July 2008 Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu announced a Nintendo Wii port of the game, which is supposed to be published in late 2008.

Main character of Dead Rising is Frank West, a photojournalist who is looking for a major story and gets stuck in the town of Willamette, inside a zombie-infested shopping mall (just like Romero’s Dawn of the Dead). Frank has to fend off zombie attacks, save the survivors, fight raging psychopats, all in an attempt to find out who or what turned the people into zombies.

Dear Rising is classified as a 3rd person action adventure with sandbox elements – you command Frank, investigate the shopping mall, do various tasks, solve obligatory and optional missions. Through all that, Frank has to fight huge groups of zombies, using any means or weapons available in the mall and the shops – baseball bats, flower pots, benches, but also all types of hunting, fishing and other equipment.

The authors have put in a lot of work into designing the mall, so Frank can enter each store and use whatever is on offer – dress up into various types of men’s, women’s or children’s clothing, change his hairstyle or hair colour, choose the right sunglasses, shoes or novelty costumes.

And now, since I’ve told you what it’s all about, let’s move on to the main feature and explains why the “hot pixels” subtitle, an essay on the topic “Why I bought an Xbox 360 over a zombie game.”

Keiji Inafune, Dead Rising producer, wanted to make Frank West different from your regular, run-of-the-mill JRPG character (i.e. and androgenous-looking person with anime hair), he wanted to give Frank an “average” look. How well he succeeded in this, from our western point of view, remains open to debate, since Frank is sort of ‘average’, but I just wish I’d been at a meeting where developers discussed whether to allow gamers to undress Frank, whether he should be buff or not, or if he should have a hairy chest. And I also wonder if the developers had the broader target audience in mind (the gayer target audience) in mind, since they readily accepted a well-designed hunk such as Frank West.

So, if you decide to play the game because of the piece of male totty serving as the main character (like I did), you will probably want to know how you can a) undress Frank or b) if it’s even worth trying. These are easy questions to answer. Firstly, you can partially undress Frank by chosing the right clothes – feel free to experiment here.

You can get your Frank in boxer-shorts by intentionally allowing some mad cultists to kidnap him, tie him down and strip him, or you can do the same with special forces soldier boys who come to clean up the mall from zombies (it makes sense for them to take your weapons away – why they leave you in shorts, I have no idea, but whatever makes them happy).

This is what it looks like when the naughty special forces guys strip you down into your undies and tie you to their chopper.

Now that we’ve mentioned the good sides, a few words on the bad ones.

The game is extremely difficult and you have to accept the fact that you’ll do a lot of parts over and over again, mostly because of a sadistic save system – in order to save your game, you have to fight hundreds of zombies and go to the bathroom; there are only few of those, and not in all parts of the mall. If you get killed, you can choose between loading the last saved position (which may have been hours ago) or starting the game over (yes, from the beginning) whilst keeping your experience points and upgrades. This weird save system and tiny on-screen fonts which make the reading on a regular TV almost impossible, are the basic downsides of an otherwise good game.

The difficulty of the game also lies in its time limitation – Frank has to survive three days (six hours real time) because a chopper is picking him up, regardless if he managed to do all the missions or not, so you will often find yourself running from mission to mission in order to finish it all on time.

If you don’t have an Xbox 360, and really want to see Frank West in undies action, there is a solution for the PC or PlayStation3 in the form of Lost Planet: Colonies Edition, another game by Capcom, where you can play as Frank West in the multiplayer mode. On an ice-planet.

Hot Pixels

Dead Rising je video igra iz 2006. godine, objavljena isključivo za Xbox 360 igraću konzolu objavljena na XBOX 360 igraćoj konzoli, u produkciji japanske kompanije Capcom. U srpnju 2008. japanski je časopis Famitsu najavio Nintendo Wii port igre, ali bez datuma izlaska.

Glavni lik igre Dead Rising je fotoreporter Frank West, koji u svojoj potrazi za velikom pričom u gradiću Willametteu zaglavi u trgovačkom centru punom zombija (točno kao Romerova Zora živih mrtvaca). Frank se mora braniti od napada zombija, spašavati preživjele i izbjegavati poremećene psihopate sve u pokušaju da sazna što je ljude pretvorilo u zombije.

Dead Rising se klasificira kao akcijska avantura u trećem licu sa sandbox elementima, dakle upravljate Frankom, istražujete trgovački centar, obavljate zadatke, rješavate obavezne i izborne misije. Frank se putem mora boriti s mnoštvom zombija, koristeći bilo koje oružje ili oruđe koje mu je na raspolaganju u trgovačkom centru i prodavaonicama – baseball palice, žardinjere, klupe, ali i sve vrste vrtne, lovačke i ine opreme.

Autori su posebnu pažnju posvetili dizajniranju trgovačkog centra, tako da Frank može ući u svaki od njih i iskoristiti što se nudi – preodjenuti se u raznorazne komade muške, ženske ili dječje odjeće, promijeniti frizuru ili boju kose, odabrati sunčane naočale, cipele ili pak zabavne kostime.

I nakon što smo odradili tehnički dio recenzije, krenimo na main feature odnosno objašnjenje zašto “hot pixels” odnosno sastavak na temu “Zašto sam kupio Xbox 360 zbog igre o zombijima”.

Keiji Inafune, producent Dead Risinga htio je da glavni lik, Frank West, ne bude kao uobičajeni glavni likovi tipični za japanske igre (tj. androgene spodobe s anime-frizurama), htio je je da Frank izgleda “prosječno”. Sad, koliko je u tome uspio s našeg zapadnjačkog gledišta, ostaje predmet rasprave, jer Frank ima nekakav ‘prosječni’ štih, ali stvarno me zanima kako je izgledao sastanak na kojemu se raspravilo i hoće li se omogućiti Frankovo razodijevanje, koliko treba biti nabildan i smije li, ili mora, imati dlakava prsa. I naravno, jesu li developeri u tom slučaju imali na umu i proširenu ciljnu publiku, koja je vrlo rado prihvatila odlično dizajniranog komada kakav je Frank West.

Dakle, ukoliko se budete uhvatili igre zbog komada u naslovnoj ulozi (kao što sam ja učinio), vjerojatno će vas zanimati a) kako razodjenuti Franka i b) isplati li se to uopće pokušavati. Na ta pitanja je lako odgovoriti. Prvo, Franka možete djelomično razodjenuti pravim odabirom odjeće – to vam ostavljam na eksperimentiranje.

Franka u boksericama možete dobiti tako da namjerno pustite ludim članovima nekakvog kulta da vas otmu, skinu i svežu ili isto to učinite s vojnicima koji dođu očistiti trgovački centar od zombija (logično je da će vam vojnici oduzeti oružje; nešto je manje logično da će vas ostaviti u gaćama, ali svakome njegovo veselje).

I za kraj, kako to izgleda kada vas zločesti vojnici otmu, skinu do gaća i privežu na svoj helikopter.

Nakon što smo odradili dobre strane, riječ-dvije o lošima.

Igra nije laka i morate se pomiriti da ćete neke dijelove morati nekoliko puta ponavljati, ponajprije zbog načina snimanja igre koji je vrlo sadistički izveden – da biste snimili igru, morate se boriti s morem zombija i otići u WC, kojih ima tek nekoliko i ne u svim dijelovima trgovačkog centra. Ukoliko vas zombiji ubiju, što se često događa, možete birati između učitavanja zadnje usnimljene pozicije (koju ste možda napravili prije sat-dva) ili vraćanja igre na početak (da, POČETAK) uz zadržavanje zarađenih experience points i upgradeova. Ovaj način snimanja igre, tipičan za japansku produkciju, te presitan font za čitanje komunikacije s likovima koji vam zadaju zadatke ukoliko igru ne igrate na monitoru ili plazmi koja podržava rezoluciju 720p, osnovni su nedostatci inače izvrsne igre.

Težina igre se očituje i u vremenskom ograničenju – Frank mora preživjeti tri dana (6 sati u stvarnom vremenu), jer helikopter dolazi po njega, riješio on glavne zadatke ili ne, tako da ćete se često naći u situaciji da trčite od zadatka do zadatka kako bi sve stigli pozavršavati na vrijeme.

Ukoliko nemate pri ruci Xbox360, a ipak želite vidjeti Franka Westa u gaćama akciji, soluciju za PC ili PlayStation3 imate u igri Lost Planet: Colonies Edition, još jednom Capcomovom izdanju, koja vam među dostupnim likovima u multiplayeru nudi i Franka Westa. Na ledenom planetu.