There has been a lot of fuss over Capcom's decision to bring Dead Rising to the Wii. Many have called foul, deciding that Chop 'Til You Drop is "another lazy Wii port." The one issue that first and foremost discounts this claim is that DR:CtYD is not really a port so much as a technically downgraded remix. The gameplay is entirely different in many aspects, which makes calling it a port a bit uneducated. This review will attempt to compare the Wii version to its 360 counterpart and also analyze Chop 'Til You Drop on its own merits for someone who's never played the original. The short version is this: if you've played the 360 game, the Wii version probably isn't worth your time, but if you haven't, then it merits a look-see.
Dead Rising places players in the shoes of Frank West, a freelance photojournalist who gets a big scoop on something going down in a quaint, made-up town in Colorado. He gets flown in by helicopter on the roof of the town's shopping mall and tells his pilot to pick him up in three days. Immediately thereafter, he discovers that the town's military barricades are due to a zombie infestation. Over the course of the next three days, Frank's mission becomes to uncover the source of the zombie threat and take efforts to neutralize it, all the way looking after his hide as well as saving survivors. This is handled by giving the players missions to accomplish, making it much more linear but also a lot less frustrating. While he may not utilize his camera in-game, this feature really isn't anything to be missed.
The setup is exactly the same, with the story and environments pretty much equal to the original but in lower resolution. However, this version drops many of the frustrations inherent in the 360 title. For starters, there are multiple save slots (Dead Rising originally only had one), and secondly, there is no physical time limit constantly ticking down. Dead Rising originally gave players a very strict time limit and they had to be at certain places withing certain time frames or people would die or the story wouldn't be progressed. If you managed to save in a place where you physically couldn't get to the next story point in time (such as I did while playing through) you'd have to start the whole game over again. While you COULD carry your stats over, this was still entirely annoying. Dead Rising on the Wii takes away these tensions: you are perfectly capable of taking out zombies at the game's outset (as opposed to needing to level up and replay the early section of the game multiple times before you could progress quick enough to move the story forward on time), you don't need to worry about rushing against the clock (meaning you can chill out and take out zombies at your leisure most of the time), and saving people is not near as much a hassle as it was before overall.
Now, naturally, this lack of a time limit takes away a lot of the original game's sense of urgency and tension, but frankly, I think that's a good thing overall, given that said tension could lead to having to restart the game. As a whole, at least when playing the game on normal, Dead Rising: Chop 'Til You Drop is easier than the original game, especially when it comes to boss fights. This is due largely to two main facts: shooting has a much greater emphasis in this game, and there is plenty of space to save up healing items. I didn't die a single time, nor did any of my survivors die. Whether you consider that a bad thing or not is up to you, but I certainly enjoyed my experience for what it was.
This is where we get to the main meat of what sets CtYD apart from the original: its gameplay uses the Resident Evil 4 engine. This means it generally controls the same way as that game did, that shooting is conducted in the same manner, and that maneuverability is equally limited to running and jumping only at context-sensitive areas. This worked fine in RE4 because the whole game had that design in mind. In Chop 'Til You Drop, the Willamette Mall that 360 fans remember will feel like a paled version if only because Frank can no longer jump freely, making a lot of areas inaccessible. Another puzzling element is the various barricades that now litter the mall, making it feel a lot more constrained.
The biggest disappointment in Chop 'Til You Drop to old fans will be the zombie combat, of course. It's not even so much that there are less zombies at once (though this becomes a lot more obvious in the latter portion of the game), as this is generally tackled with pop-in, meaning that zombies continually spawn. It's not the prettiest thing, but it does kind of maintain a sense that their numbers never seem to really decrease. Given the Wii's tech, it was probably a good choice -- if we weren't already spoiled by the 360 version's copious amount of corpses I think we'd be OK with the number of zombies around, especially later on in the game when they become more aggressive. On the other hand, it was the overabundance of zombies that made the latter portions so intimidating. In either case, the zombie levels are adequate, and measures are taken to try and keep things interesting with new zombie types. All of this aside, the focus on melee combat is distinctly toned down. Frank's physical attacks are less varied and are all context-based, which makes them inherently less useful. The emphasis on gunplay generally makes killing zombies quicker but also less aesthetically pleasing.
For starters, you can only really carry one melee weapon at a time. Combine this with the RE4 controls and it can become kind of hard to use said weapons (though the game will often auto-target the nearest zombie for convenience). Lastly, there's simply less of them to use. There's little incentive to actually explore stores this time around because there's rarely anything fun or useful in them anymore. Players are highly encouraged to use their guns, with ammo aplenty and money being earned to upgrade to better weapons. There are some extra modes to help add some replay value, but they're generally shallow. Still, you could tell he developers tried really hard to convert the game's concept to a technically inferior machin with the tools they had.
Despite all of these shortcomings and alterations that may disappoint fans of the original, some of the decisions make the game flow better, getting rid of the glaring flaws inherent in the 360 version. While it also loses the greatest parts of the original game, the package we're left with is still enjoyable and a good game overall.
