Chopping spree

When Capcom released Dead Rising for the Xbox 360 back in 2007, zombie enthusiasts and horror game fans went nuts. The game was a showstopper. Thanks to Capcom’s use of the Havok engine, just about anything you could think of was a useable weapon against the untold hordes of zombies in the Willamette mall, which often filled the screen.
Well, now Capcom’s released Dead Rising again for the Wii as Chop Till You Drop. Is it an imperfect port of the game? Oh God yes.

But really, if you were actually expecting the comparatively impotent Wii hardware to muster the ability to render tons of on-screen zombies at a time, the inevitable result could only have been disappointing. And while this take on Dead Rising is decidedly lower tech, the spirit of the original remains and, more importantly, the game is still pretty fun.

 

If you haven’t picked up on it by now, Chop Till You Drop (like it’s predecessor) is essentially Capcom’s, or more specifically Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune’s, completely unaffiliated homage to George Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead—that’s the original, not Zack Snyder’s soulless, God-awful remake.

You play Frank West, a photojournalist who’s heard a hot tip about some kind of racket going down in the town of Willamette, Colo. The town and shopping mall have, as it turns out, been infested with the shambling undead. As part of a small band of special agents and security staff, Frank alternates between investigating the cause of the outbreak and rescuing survivors holed up in the mall.

That being said, there are a few differences between Chop Till You Drop and its high-powered older brother. The zombie count may have been noticeably reduced over the 360 version, but in order to help compensate, the zombies have low poly counts and new hordes will “materialize” quickly when the screen has been cleared of enemies.
It’s an imperfect solution, but considering the technical challenges faced by the development team, it’s probably the best thing they could have done, and in the game’s defense, it runs pretty smoothly.

The downside is that Chop Till You Drop does not use Havok, which means you don’t get nearly as many weapons to play with, although there are still some fun ones. My favorite is a giant electrical boring tool that a zombie can be impaled on, spinning their corpse and spraying blood everywhere.

And if you’re feeling extra silly, you can dress Frank up in a midriff shirt and booty shorts, among several other costumes available in the mall’s many stores. Chop Till You Drop is probably the goofier of the two iterations of the game.

Inevitable changes to the control scheme have been made as well. If Dead Rising controlled a little more like Grand Theft Auto, Chop Till You Drop feels a hell of a lot like Resident Evil 4—this shouldn’t be a huge surprise, considering the dev team last worked on RE4‘s Wii port.

Since Capcom also removed the camera-shooting aspect of the game (again, assumedly for performance reasons), just about all of your time is spent killin’ zombies, either as part of a rescue mission (timed challenges in which you must find a survivor or two hiding out somewhere and escort them to the security room) or just target practice.

Aside from standard attacks, you can usually swing the Wiimote for a stronger attack, or to power up special moves like clobbering a zombie with a baseball bat or golf club. Guns and explosives are handled just like in RE4, with a standard “hold down and shoot” configuration and Wiimote shaking to reload.

Although the game’s quasi-arcade-ish nature is fun, the real motivation to keep playing the game is to find out just what the hell happened. For its part, the game (mostly) shoves you along the narrative path, leaving little time to go exploring.

The narrative also tries to echo Romero’s social commentary on some level, which doesn’t entirely work due to overemphasis. In fact, the story really doesn’t make a lot of sense, with a subplot that goes nowhere and frequent non-sequiturs, but the mystery is still a good driving factor.

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about the game is your infrequent encounters with “psychopaths” wreaking havoc in the mall. (Well, that and the fact that the place is crawling with grenade dropping parrots and undead poodles, but I digress).

A dual-chainsaw-wielding clown stuffing patron corpses in the mall’s tiny rollercoaster, a grocery store manager using a modified cart to skewer survivors over perceived “vandalism,” escaped convicts (wtf?) that inexplicably appear with a Humvee (wtf?) in the mall’s center park … none of these freaks are explained in the slightest.

But they do lead to some pretty unexpected and ludicrous bouts of gore. Who would suspect that a crazy clown would die because his dual chainsaws somehow found their metal teeth tearing into the sides of his torso? I sure as hell didn’t.

Whether they’re supposed to be or not, the blindsiding, over-the-top effect of moments like these come off as somehow comical, which adds to the sort of tongue-in-cheek feel the game retains despite its didactic message.

Ultimately, Chop Till You Drop is a fun little diversionary game that’s more Dead Rising-lite than a straight-up port. It may not be as pretty or have as many zombies, but even what Capcom’s managed to do on the underpowered Wii is commendable. And hell, bashing and blasting zombies never gets old.

It’s no Dead Rising 2, (which is rumored to have up to 6000 zombies on-screen) but it’s still fun. If your trigger finger is still itching after RE4: Wii Edition, this might help satiate your bloodlust.