When Dead Rising was released for the Xbox 360 last decade, it was the game that almost pushed me to buy the console sooner rather than later. But it wasn’t long before the user reviews began to hit the net…and I thought, screwdat! The game was painted as a huge frustration that no one wanted to finish (or couldn’t finish). Even so, being the zombie game lover that I am, I waited until the price dropped significantly on the game and purchased it so I’d have it once I bought a 360 (after that had a drastic price drop as well). Meanwhile, I lent the game to a friend, who gave it back to me rather quickly, saying he didn’t have the patience for it and gave up. Yeesh? Was it really as bad as they said?
In the meantime, the game was ported to the Wii as Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop. Reviews said that, aside from lesser graphics, less zombies on screen at one time, and some bosses and other game play features being removed, plus weird additions like annoying zombie poodles and birds that dropped bombs (huh?), the port fixed everything that was wrong with the 360 version. So I got me a copy of it and blasted through it on the Wii. It was fun and bone chilling: the kind of zombie mall experience the original 1978 Dawn of the Dead movie should have been (the game coming closer to the brilliance of the far superior remake. That’s right. I said it.). Whether you’re playing on the Wii or 360, this is the way you should feel if you were in a mall filled with zombies—and I’m not talking the blue faced kinds like in the Romero farce. Dead Rising shows you what Dawn of the Dead 1978 didn’t—that being trapped in a mall with zombies would be terrifying, not laughable pie throwing, carnival music absurdity.
So these past few weeks I decided to finally take on Dead Rising 360. And all the reviewers were RIGHT!!! I can see why people hated this game. Patience and a learning curve is one thing, but this game is structured so that you are basically required to replay the beginning parts over and over and over again before you can move on. Why? Because the game only offers ONE save slot and the game is conquered by accomplishing timed ‘cases.’ So if at any time you save because you’re low on health and don’t want to have to do a bunch of stuff over if you die, you could be saving yourself into a corner—a time frame that is too short to finish the time based case you’ve already begun. Fail this case and guess what? You have to begin the game over again. That’s the most glaring problem, but there are others.
Your character is Frank, a reporter determined to get his story. So as you run around the mall trying to solve the mystery of how the zombie outbreak began while beating down zombies with everything a mall has to offer—from purses to guns–you also have to take photos, fight occasional ‘psychopaths’ (aka: bosses), and rescue survivors then escort them back to the security room while fending off hundreds of zombies. You get constant calls from this dude watching the monitors in the security room suggesting you go take care of other situations in the mall, called ‘scoops.’ These scoops are not detrimental to finishing the game, but are so tempting (because they earn you level up points to give your character a fighting chance) that you end up getting sidetracked by them, and forget you have a timed case that needs taking care of. Add to this the fact that essentially there is no safe place from the hoards of zombies to heal yourself or switch your real time inventory, and you are talking major TV screen/flying game controller marriage… Of course, to make it all better, you can actually enter any of the clothes stores in the mall to change—and the cut scenes reflect your new threads. I squeezed Frank into a child’s size shorts and Tee with a baseball cap—he looked like he was wearing a cut off shirt and Daisy Dukes (like every guy in the 80s), which revealed his hairy legs and chest and bulging muscles. Frank’s hot and the eye candy gave me motivation to press on with the game despite the frustration.
You can’t really manage to level up your health bar, fighting abilities or inventory spaces simply by plowing through the game from start to finish, because it gets too hard too fast, leaving you at too much of a disadvantage. This was an obvious (and ridiculous) decision by the developers, because you are provided with an option when you die to either load your save OR save your current ‘stats’ and quit. What happens when you do this is, you carry over all the level ups you’ve earned so far into a new game. In other words, the game is structured so that you have to keep replaying the earliest part of the game to gain all your level ups to make you strong enough to continue into the hard part of the game. Dumbest…game play…ever (at least, until I review the next game that pisses me off).
So this is where the ‘patience’ comes in. Be prepared to intentionally replay a minimal part of the game continuously so that you can then move ahead and complete it once you’ve become more of a bad ass (and probably a hairy ass if Frank’s legs and chest are any indication…). It’s not as annoying as it sounds to repeat the beginning stages of the game, thanks to the fact that I pretty much read every fricking message board thread, walkthru, and hint I could find on the internet. I’ve never been required to do so much research before starting a VIDEO GAME in my life. So, with approximately five printouts of helpful hints and guides in hand, I began my quest to conquer Dead Rising 360, and here I share my techniques with you.
In short, these are the goals:
1) Level up your skills, items and health by playing early stages of the game over and over again by collecting easy to accomplish PP (explained below).
2) Get the mini-chainsaw as soon as possible and build it to maximum strength for the simplest way to defeat all enemies.
3) Open the shortcut in the bathrooms of Paradise Plaza and Wonderland Plaza
FOR STARTERS
Note that this guide of sorts is written with the assumption that you are playing the game, so you will understand everything I’m referencing and nothing will really come as a spoiler. Before you begin the game, print out a walkthru. It is an absolute necessity. I suggest this walkthru:
The creator of that thorough walkthru does a great job of separating the ‘cases’ from the ‘scoops.’ Since scoops aren’t essential to completing the game, what I did was create a Word document with the ‘cases’ portion of the walkthru and a separate document with the ‘scoops’ portion, and then printed them out. Scoops are also where you will find the majority of techniques for defeating psychopaths, because most of the time, a scoop IS a psychopath challenge. Anyway, keep your two cheat sheets close at hand (and separate), and when you need to jump from reading one to the other, simply pause the game. For the most part, the two separate guides are chronological to the way you will handle cases and scoops while playing, but since the game has a free-roaming aspect, the scoops can become a bit jumbled—you may trigger one before the other or have them open simultaneously and they will overlap with cases. Again, if scoops are getting thrown at you too fast and you see the timer bars quickly diminishing on screen, ignore them completely and just focus on your case. I don’t think it’s truly possible to experience every aspect of this game on the first play through, because time and your lack of leveling up will not permit it. You can also prolong the initiating of a scoop’s timer countdown by simply NOT answering the phone until you have a moment to consider taking on the scoop!
HOW AN EXTRA SAVE SAVES THE DAY
Here’s a handy ‘cheat’ I used to work around the single slot save system, but this only works if you have more than one storage device on your 360. Since my 360 has a small storage space built into the console and I ADDED a hard drive to the console later, whenever I saved during this game, the system would ask me WHERE I wanted to save because it detected the two different save locations!!! So instead of ONE save slot, I actually had TWO!!! This is a total life saver in this game. While in the middle of a timed case, if I desperately wanted to save, I’d alternate between save devices so I’d always have a backup plan if one save slot was cutting it too close to finish the case. This was also great for saving right before a fight in a psychopath scoop—if the scoop took too long and depleted my case time, I could just load the alternate save to focus only on the case and just ignore the scoop completely.
DEAD RISING…AND RISING…AND RISING. LET’S BEGIN PLAYING and REPLAYING.
So let’s begin by building our stats by replaying the early part of the game a bunch of times. I know it sounds boring, tedious, and time consuming, but once you’ve leveled up enough, the rest of the game moves along quickly. Also, you become so familiar with redoing the initial tasks that you don’t have to think about it. And the replay is cut down drastically by the fact that you can skip movies. Also, this is your opportunity to truly get comfortable with the controls, inventory system, combat system and terrible firearms system. In fact, the way I played the game, I predominantly avoided using guns at all because the aiming sucks so much (and you can’t MOVE while shooting, which means you’ll more often than not end up with a zombie attached to your neck). This also means you can avoid the scoop “Shadow of the North Plaza”, in which you battle Cletus, the owner of the Hunting Shack. People do this because once you defeat him, you have unlimited access to guns. However, the best way to defeat him? GUNS! Melee weapons will most likely get you killed in this battle, and guns are few and far between UNTIL you gain unlimited access to the Hunting Shack! So it’s kind of a catch 22. Now believe me, it might be tempting to try to accomplish this, but the shooting system is SO bad that it’s just not worth using guns…and once a gun runs out of ammo…it’s useless. You have to go get another gun. No ammo collecting in this game like in games like Resident Evil. If you are afraid to try to get through the game without guns, fear not. Once we get hooked up with the maxed out mini chainsaw, you’ll never look at a gun again.
Anyway, when the game begins, you can immediately begin building your “PP” (the blue level up bar on screen) as soon as you take control of Frank on the helicopter. See the walkthru for a complete guide to getting the most out of your photos here.
Once you’re in the mall entrance with all the others and some of the dudes are trying to barricade the front door, DO NOT run to the pile in the back right corner of the room yet to get them more supplies as they are asking. First run up to all the survivors standing around and take nice close-ups of their misery for some cherished PP. Take repeated photos if you have enough film. Also, capture some great shots of the numerous zombies right outside the front entrance doors for more PP. When you’re ready, go to that pile of crap in back to trigger the cut scene and your first daring escape from hoards of zombies.
Once the game lands you in the security room (where there’s a SAVE) grab two apple healths from the floor. Your health bar and items slots are a joke at this point, with only four blocks each, so these are the two MAIN things we want to build up in this early part of the game. Unfortunately, your level ups are random, so you never know if you’re going to get a health block, item slot or fighting skill. This is why you have to replay these early parts numerous times. Here are the key things you need to do to level up fast without having to do anything too dangerous or challenging over and over again.
I HAVE TO GO PP!!!
When you first leave the security room through the duct, there are TWO survivors right on the roof!!! Get the man by the elevator to the right, then get him to follow you around to the other side on the left, where you’ll find his wife. Score some nice PP for getting them both to join you—and note the door right here. This is another way into the warehouse that doesn’t require you using the elevator—and can score you a great early weapon in the sledgehammer if you jump across the shelf tops to get it. But don’t do that yet. Take the survivors back to the security room for escort completion bonus PP. See? This is why you want to replay this part of the game over and over. EASY PP. Of most importance is learning to use the escort guide markers. To do this, hold the right trigger when escorting and you will see a blue marker on screen. Aim it to a point ahead of you and press Y to mark the place you want the survivor or survivors to travel to. They are much more likely to stay on path this way as compared to just pressing the Y button to say “follow me!” Of course, you have to make sure to be ahead of them when possible to clear the path of zombies, and once they reach the marker, you have to set a new one, which takes some quick controller usage during more hectic times of the game, which is why it’s good to practice leaving markers now with these two and no zombies around.
Once you go back out into the mall after dropping off the first two survivors, make sure to remember where this door to the warehouse is (note it on your map), because this is your only entrance to the safety of the security room (after you pass the dozens of zombies that eventually fill the warehouse and elevator EVERY time you go through it). Anyway, just to the right of your character after entering the mall is the camera shop where you can reload your camera at any time. A little further on are steps. Look at your map for an S. That is the bathroom, which is down the halls behind the stairs. That’s a good emergency save when you need it. However, up those steps to the left you’ll find the Colombian Roastmasters. A few necessities make this a great place to stop frequently. On the counter are pizzas if you need a desperate health boost. But you’re better off running right past them to the orange juice at the end of the counter. It gives you more health, not to mention you can take TWO orange juice containers and stick them in the nearby blender to create a stronger health juice. Wahoo! Try to always have one of these on you. Finally, just to the right of where you got the OJ, you can jump OUT the window overlooking the mall to land on an orange awning—where you’ll find a Katana every time you reenter this section. This is another great early weapon to use until we get to the ultimate weapon…which I’ll tell you about in a little while. You can do a little exploring, but before long you’ll get the “Cut From the Same Clothe” scoop. You have time to do this one, at least the first part of it. It takes place right in Colombian Roastmasters, gives you practice taking photos, scores you PP, and lets you practice killing zombies without being swarmed by them. See the walkthru for details.
Soon you’ll be getting the first case, “Backup for Brad” in the Food Court, but while you’re waiting for that to happen, you’ll have time to do some other things that score you great PP very easily. For starters, any time you enter a place that serves food, see if there are any frying pans around. If so, take them, place them on a stove and let them heat up until they turn red. Sure, they make a ‘hot’ weapon, but they also score you PP!!! Awesome. You can also stick meat or pizza in microwaves for free PP. You’ll sometimes have some serious zombie problems, especially in Al Fresca Plaza, which is always overrun by them, but just remember, if you die, just save your stats and start over to go after more easy PP. Here are other PP bonuses to watch out for in this part of the game (and actually, at any point in the game, it’s just easier to do early on when there are less zombies and cases):
Back in the Entrance Plaza, if you enter Jason Wayne’s Sporting Goods and melee each clothes rack, you’ll eventually score PP points after a few hits on each. Melee all of the racks for bonus PP. Also, in Wonderland Plaza, as long as you aren’t about to face off against the chainsaw wielding clown (Eek! More below on that scoop.) you can go up on the platform for the Space Ride at any time, wait for a car to come to a stop, jump in, and then let it take you for a ride once around the plaza for some free PP.
Meanwhile, in the horrifying Al Fresca Plaza, if you go into “Flexin”, the gym, the zombies won’t follow you. Here, you can save in a corner and heal yourself with no distraction, but even better, you can score major free PP. First, grab a dumbbell and beat the hell out of the sandbags hanging in the back of the room. Each one will deflate after about 5 or 6 hits. You get PP for each one, plus bonus PP for destroying them all!! Next, go to the front of the room and run on each treadmill. I’m not kidding. Get on the treadmill and just push up on the left stick until you get a good flow going. Once rewarded with an onscreen PP bonus, move on to the next treadmill and do the same. If you run on all the treadmills until you get PP for each one, you get even more bonus PP for doing them all. Now, another thing that might happen in Al Fresca this early on is that you’ll get the “Barricade Pair A and B” scoop about some guys in a store right across the way. I tried, foolishly, to go save them, but the odds are stacked against you. First of all, the door is blocked, so you have to try to move everything out of the way while you’re being surrounded by zombies. Once you do get inside, if you don’t manage to drop something in front of the door to re-block it, zombies just start coming in before you can even talk to the two guys trapped inside. On top of that, you have to FIGHT one of the guys, who has gone a little crazy and begins beating you senseless!!! If you manage to take him down (I did it in a few tries with a metal shelf that had been barricading the door) you can grab some healing items in there, talk to the other guy, and get him to join you for PP points. Unfortunately, you have pretty much no chance of getting him out of Al Frecsa alive because of the amount of zombies. Save yourself , save the world! Let him die I tell you! At least you get PP for getting him to join you.
So, yeah, Al Fresca is tough to get through, but if you want to risk it, you can take that route to get to your “Brad” case. Otherwise, you can run through Leisure Park, where you can easily avoid all the zombies by running around them. As soon as you enter the Food Court, the first battle begins. I’d suggest you save somewhere nearby before going into the Food Court. Brad gives you a gun, and then you have to help him shoot down the gun toting loon up on a platform above. This is where you have to learn how to use this mess of a firearms system, and you might die on your first few tries. Avoiding the gun fire, bombs he throws (yep, bombs), and staying close to healing items scattered throughout the food court are your main priorities. Oh, and making sure Brad doesn’t die. Your next priority is to shoot the bastard trying to kill you! If you run out of ammo as you struggle with the aiming system, make your way over to Brad as quickly as possible and he’ll actually give you another gun!
Once the fight is over, it kind of sux, because you’re immediately escorting Brad, but you’re not told that. If he gets too far ahead of you (he’s leading you), he gets into major zombie fights and will eventually die so you must keep up with him, which doesn’t give you much time to do another freebie PP right in the Food Court, but you can do it later if not now. For this free PP, go into Cris’s Fine Foods. Look for a wall display of plates. Practice your aim with your gun while you still have one, and shoot out each of the upper plates. For the bottom row of plates, you can jump on the table and melee them to conserve ammo. You get PP for each plate, plus bonus PP for all of them. Of course, if Brad dies in the meantime, the case goes cold and you can’t officially complete the game even though you can keep running around the mall. Who cares? Save your new stats (hopefully you’ve leveled up) and start over. Really, you should NOT play much beyond the fight with Brad without starting over, because then you are getting too far into the game, and having to do it all over again would suck. So what you CAN do is either run around killing zombies to build PP and then save your stats when you get bored, or you can just let the zombies eat you and then save your stats.
IF YOU ONLY GET ONE SCOOP…MAKE IT THE BIG ONE WITH THE CHERRY CHAINSAW ON TOP
After Brad, your next big fight is with the chainsaw wielding clown in Wonderland Plaza (right next to the Food Court) for the “Out of Control” scoop. This scoop is a MUST and the key to you conquering this game without much fuss. I actually played this part several times as well because of the PP and because I really needed to figure out how to kill him. Actually, the solution is SO easy. So, when you are ready to take him on, you can move ahead with the game and be done with all the restarting nonsense.
FIRST, when you get a call about the “Out of Control” scoop, as long as you’re not in the middle of a case, head to Wonderland Plaza. But there are some crucial things to do before you go into Wonderland Plaza and up onto the Space Ride platform. You really MUST have firearms with you for this one, as well as some health, because melee is just not strong enough yet, and it’s too dangerous to get too close to him. First, definitely get some wine from the Food Court next door to Wonderland Plaza (you can also do the Cris’s Fine Foods plate task here if you have a gun, or you can at least throw items at most of the plates to destroy them—you might even level up before this battle). Also, if you have two SAVE slots like I did, locate the bathroom on the first floor of Wonderland Plaza and SAVE. Then go back upstairs.
If you’re looking at the steps of the Space Ride on the west side of the map, head to your character’s left. At the top of the stairs nearby, you will see at least FOUR cop zombies. If you beat them to death with a melee weapon, they drop HANDGUNS!!! I’d suggest getting at least two guns, although, once you learn the clown’s patterns, you really only need one gun with 30 bullets. Go back onto the Space Ride platform and operate the controls on the left. After the cut scene, you are in a battle with the clown. First thing to do? Fricking run!!! Get AWAY from him, off the Space Ride platform. Let him chase you up and down the second floor of the mall. Avoid his attacks and wait for the perfect opportunity to aim and fire (while avoiding zombies no less). The best time to strike is when he is blowing up his balloon and doing a little dance. If you get him right, you’ll pop the balloon, he’ll start coughing, and you’ll be able to deplete a fair amount of his life bar—if you don’t pop the balloon, you have to then stay away from it or shoot it when he lets it go, because it has some crap in it that hurts you when it pops. You can also get the clown when he’s winded after throwing knives at you, but be prepared to run after he regains his composure. Other than that, absolutely avoid his chainsaw spins and other evil moves. If you shoot at him when he’s not in one of the vulnerable moments I just described, he will block your bullets—meaning you are WASTING THEM. Be patient and take as long as necessary to shoot him at the right times.
Here are the two GREAT things about the clown—the two key ingredients to making this game a breeze from here on out. First, no matter where you kill the clown, when the cut scene is over, he will be dead on the platform of the Space Ride. Next to him will be the ultimate weapon in this game. The mini chainsaw. Actually, there should be two of them. Even better. EVERY time you leave Wonderland Plaza and reenter, a mini chainsaw will have respawned. Which means unlimited mini chainsaws, provided you can make it to them—and usually you can’t unless you still have a working chainsaw, because after this, the platform is always FILLED with zombies. But fear not. We have a way to make these things virtually invulnerable to breaking. As is, they will break after a bit of zombie slashing, so we want to build them up fast. But more on that below. First, we need to lock in the second crucial part of beating this game.
When you beat the clown and get his chainsaws (you can drop the guns at this point to make room for them), immediately go back to the Space Ride controls and operate them again. This is your first step in opening up the shortcut! See the walkthru in the “Out of Control” section in scoops for more details. In short, you save a guy who takes you to the bathroom downstairs to show you the short cut to Paradise Plaza, which is kind of through the mirror in the bathroom! This shortcut will be your friend for the rest of the game. It allows you to escort survivors closer to the security room MUCH easier and it is the ONLY safe route to get from one side of the mall to the other. As we know by now, Al Fresca Plaza is a place you pretty much never want to pass through because it is crammed with zombies so you’re just asking for defeat by heading through it. The other important thing is a problem you will have from here on out in Leisure Park, and believe me, you will NEVER want to cut through there again. There are respawning convicts in a jeep, with a machine gun attached to the back of their jeep. Unless you fancy yourself a true gamer, SKIP THIS CONFRONTATION. You will sacrifice some chick they are harassing, but who cares? Because you pretty much will NOT be able to defeat these guys. Guns take too long to aim and leave you open to tons of zombies that roam Leisure Park. Plus, by the time you get a sight on these guys, they will have already shot you numerous times AND run you over a few times. You will be dead, and you will have to start the game over again (or reload your last save). You don’t have time to even stop and eat food, because again, if they don’t get you (which they will) while you’re stopped for a snack, the zombies will. It is a NIGHTMARE. Just trust me. SKIP IT. Especially since these dudes magically return later even if you DO kill them. Pointless. Don’t be a hero. Be a survivor. Just use the Wonderland/Paradise short cut permanently.
Okay. Whether you can get shortcut dude to the security room or not, at least he’s opened up the shortcut for you. The other great thing is the shortcut being right next to SAVE points in each bathroom. Love it. You should actually leave shortcut dude in the safety of the bathroom while you go right back out into Wonderland Plaza and begin the chainsaw building process (I’d SAVE first).
WHO WROTE THE BOOK ON DEFEATING DEAD RISING?
Other than the mini chainsaw, the shortcut, PP, and health, your other best friends are books in this game. Annoying thing about books is that they take up slots in your inventory, however, they also make life SO easy. Books scattered throughout the mall have added effects on stuff in your inventory when you hold on to them. Most importantly, using three slots for books to beef up the mini chainsaw is the key to winning this game, even if you don’t get any other books. By now, you should have a larger number of slots in your inventory (hopefully at least six), so the three books should be doable. It’s nice to have a second mini chainsaw on hand, but if you have all three books, one mini chainsaw at a time will do—you just want to make sure that when it eventually begins blinking in your inventory, you get back to Wonderland Plaza soon to pick up a fresh one. You might only have to do this about 4 or 5 times throughout the remainder of the game if you have the three books (as compared to like, every FEW MINUTES without them). Having these three books in your inventory adds little purple symbols next to your chainsaw that give it a super longevity. You can use it to mow down gangs of zombies and psychopaths for numerous cases and scoops with no worries about it breaking. And it cuts everything like butter. Psychopaths can be taken down in 5 or 6 hits. Sure, they might have guns, but the amount of times they can shoot you when you run up to them and saw away is minimal. You most likely will NOT die or lose even more than two bars of health before they are dead. This is the key to defeating this game.
So let’s get back to getting these books. Conveniently, one of them is in a bookstore right near where you defeated the clown on the second floor of Wonderland Plaza. Find Sir-Book-A-Lot on your map and get to it. There will most likely be two men in the store because you probably already got a call for the “Japanese Tourists” scoop. IGNORE them until you locate the book “Criminology” amongst the shelves. Grab it and you have immediately built up your mini saw a bit. Just make sure to ward off any zombies who may follow you into the book store. Now, provided you have a slot to do so, pick up the Japanese language book so that you can talk to the two men in the store. It takes a lot of talking to convince them to join you, but it’s worth the PP—just keep an eye on the front door for zombie ambushes. Once they join you and you are…um…on the same page, you can drop the Japanese language book to free up space in your inventory. If you want, you can equip these two with weapons…for instance, you can go back to the zombie cops at the top of the stairs, saw them in half, grab a gun for each guy and hand it to them will fending off the zombies. Don’t worry if you don’t have enough slots to pick up the guns without dropping something else. Simply exchange the item for the gun (provided the area is free of zombies), hand the gun to the survivor, then pick the item back up. If you have time, get these two to the bathroom downstairs to join shortcut dude, and whisk them all to Paradise Plaza to escort them to the security room. It’s tricky getting them through the plaza and warehouse, and you may lose one or two on the way, but at least you tried. If you don’t want to save them, then screw it. Let them all die. But you also have to get the other two books for the chainsaw power-up. Those books are in Contemporary Reading right in Paradise Plaza, across from the door to the warehouse. You can either lead your survivors in there, or just get the survivors up to safety then come back down for the other two books, depending on how confident you are in your escorting skills. Either way, once you are in Contemporary Reading, grab “Entertainment” and “Engineering.” Your mini chainsaw is now maxed out with three purple symbols and should last you for a LONG time. SWEET. Like I said, as long as you have six slots, you should be good. Have at least one chainsaw, the three books, and at least one health with you at all times. You will very rarely need a gun from this point on, and I’ll point out below when you do. Eventually, when you really DO need guns much later in the game, the shop owner is gone from the Hunting Shack so you can raid the place.
If you have the slots free, there are some other books that are beneficial to have on you. I’m only going to cover the ones you can easily pick up without having to beat any psychopaths.
HEALTH BOOSTS: Also in Sir-Book-A-Lot in Wonderland Plaza is “Health 1”, which increases the healing effect of food items by 50% percent!!! The same goes for “Health 2” in Sinister Read in the Entrance Plaza.
INCREASE PP BONUSES: If you want to level up faster and have the item space to hold another book, some books will help with this. In Sinister Read is “World News”, which gives you more PP when you escort survivors. “Horror Novel 1” in Sinister Read gives you 25% more PP for killing zombies, as does “Horror Novel 2” in Bachman’s in Paradise Plaza. Finally, “Camera 1” in Contemporary Reading in Paradise Plaza gives you 25% more PP for photos. Personally, until I had significantly increased my inventory slots, I only carried the mini chainsaw boosts, then the health boost, and finally, held onto a PP boost book for a little while. Obviously, the zombie boost is most logical since you can easily kill plenty of them for PP points with your maxed out mini chainsaw. Since escorting is a bitch, the chances of using the book’s powers enough to make the slot sacrifice worth it are minimal. And photos—well, after a while, taking photos is really the last thing on your mind. There ARE a bunch of randomly placed items in the mall you can photograph for easy PP, but finding the time to do that is not easy.
WHAT THE WALKTHRU MAY WALK AROUND…
From this point on, with your maxed out mini chainsaws, you can pretty much zip through the cases in this game with a walkthru. However, here are some major tips for later in the game that aren’t mentioned in the walkthru I used. This is pretty much chronological and will save you some heartache during other Psychopath Scoops.
1. At some point in the game, you will walk right into trouble in Paradise Plaza involving a huge group of cult dudes in yellow raincoats. With your maxed mini saw, this is a BREEZE and will score you huge PP. After the movie, your goal is to simply kill them all! It takes like ten seconds with the chainsaws. SO easy. You then save some chick from a box and can escort her back to the security room. Great news. After this, every time you return to Paradise Plaza, there will be dozens of Raincoats standing motionless and praying amongst the zombies. Saw them all every time you pass through here for major PP. Just beware, if you don’t do it fast enough, one of them may blow up, and you’ll get damaged if you’re too close to him. Yeah, they’re like a suicide cult.
2. DO “MARK OF THE SNIPER” scoop!!! When you get this scoop, seriously try to find a way to squeeze it in because it scores you a sniper rifle to easily handle the scoop “A Strange Group” shortly after. In Mark of the Sniper, you have to avoid the gun fire of a father and his two sons on the upper lever of the Entrance Plaza. Try to have a health or two on you (but at this point, your life bar should be pretty large). Chainsaw in hand, just run right up to each on of them and slash away—4 or 5 hits will kill him. Yes, you will get fired on, from close range even, but the damage is going to be minimal. You can take out all three in like 30 seconds. Just try to heal if need be before chasing the next sniper down. Once they are all dead, you absolutely want to grab ONE of their sniper rifles.
3. “A STRANGE GROUP” scoop. This is the ultimate way to rack up HUGE PP, because when all is said and done, even if you don’t escort all the survivors you rescue back to the security room, you will have gotten PP bonuses for getting them to join you, along with slashing dozens of Raincoats for more PP. But there IS a catch to making this an easy battle, and it is the reason you need the sniper rifle. Also, make SURE you save in the Paradise Plaza bathroom right before going into the theater. When you follow the guide arrow to the movie theater, take your time once you’ve entered the theater (you’ll kill a bunch of Raincoats outside the theater, but this isn’t the challenging part). Down the hall of the theater there is an alcove on the right where a bunch of other Raincoats are standing. Thing is, and I learned this the hard way, if you brazenly run right in and start sawing away at them as you do out in Paradise Plaza, things don’t quite work out as you’d expect. Somehow, one of them manages to grab you and knock you out!!! When this happens, you wake up in a box in another room, wearing ONLY underwear and having had ALL your inventory stripped from you as well. You have to quickly grab one of the very few items in the area, because the other side of the room is FILLED with Raincoats!!! And you have to take them ALL on. Only when you kill them do you get a passcode to open the door out of the room. Unfortunately, you still don’t get all your items back—at least not immediately. I let myself die once I’d escaped and restarted from my save point in the Paradise Plaza bathroom right before entering the theater because I didn’t want to miss out on all the survivor PP, so I don’t know what becomes of you if you fail this scoop.
Here’s how you kill these guys so you can get into the room they are protecting to kill their leader and save the survivors. Very SLOWLY walk down the hall, hugging the LEFT wall, until you see the alcove coming up on the right. Walk just far enough to see maybe one or at most two of the praying Raincoats. Pull out your sniper rifle and try to aim for their green masks. Don’t waste precious bullets here. Usually two bullets take them down. It also wakes them up and they begin walking towards you. Blow them away quickly if this happens, because if not, they could pull a suicide bombing on you. Once you’ve taken down the first two, again, move slightly closer along the left wall until you see a couple more and repeat the procedure. Just keep doing this until ALL the Raincoats in the alcove have been defeated. As long as you do it swiftly and quietly, you’ll only have to take out two at a time because the others remain still in their praying positions.
Enter the theater for a cut scene with their leader. He’s supposed to be a bit of a challenge with his big sword. But do I even need to say it? 5-6 shots with the mini chainsaw. EASY. After that, Raincoats will stream into the theater down only ONE aisle. Take them out with your chainsaw as they approach you for the mere purpose of being slaughtered! It’s ridiculously simple. Once they are all gone, run to each of the chairs to untie the survivors and get some more PP. Now you can try to escort them all back to the security room for mega PP. The halls of the theater will now contain some zombies. Grab the dead leader’s sword off the floor and give it to one of the survivors. Then run out into the hall, where you will see several cop zombies. Saw them to pieces along with the other zombies to clear a path, grab the weapons as they drop them, then run back to the room and hand each survivor a weapon. You can usually equip everyone with a weapon and then have a better chance of getting more of them back to the security room in one piece.
4. BOMBCASE. This obligatory case can be a bitch—unless you have your mini chainsaw and a few strong healing items. Yes, you have to go into the parking tunnels that are absolutely FILLED with wall to wall zombies, and locate five trucks with bombs in them that you have to collect (they don’t take up inventory spots). Initially, there is a truck you can get in to drive quickly to each bomb truck. Unfortunately, the truck takes damage the more zombies you run over with it (but you do score plenty of PP by doing this), and eventually the truck dies, leaving you ON FOOT in the midst of all these zombies!!! And no, the trucks with the bombs are not useable. My truck only lasted me for TWO bombs!!! The bigger concern is that you are being chased by Carlito in his own truck! This isn’t so bad when you have a truck as well, but once you are on foot, it’s brutal. Carlito will run you over, back over you, and even throw bombs out his window at you…all while you are being swarmed by zombies!!! That’s why it amazes me that I had to learn the simple key to completing this case on my own without hints from the walkthru. Here’s how. First time you come foot to van with Carlito (usually it’s when he runs you over by coming up behind you) he’ll most likely crash into a wall as he tries to turn the truck around to run you over again. Circle the truck, being careful not to get backed over and that he doesn’t get you with one of his bombs (run away from any of those too). All you have to do is run up to the driver’s side of the truck and slash at Carlito in the window with your mini chainsaw. Yep. 5-6 times and he’s DEAD. After a cut scene, you can then do the rest of the case, still on foot, without worrying about being run over!!! Zombies are a piece of cake with your chainsaw in hand, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. Also, if you want, there are zombies pushing shopping carts if you want to hijack one of those and just mow the zombies out of your way with that. Either way, this case will be over before you know it. I did it in one try despite learning how to accomplish it WHILE I was doing it.
5. THE FINAL HOURS. The weirdest part of the game, here is your opportunity to just roam the mall, simply waiting for the helicopter to come rescue you with no missions to complete. Sure, it’s a great time to slash zombies for PP points, but not quite. The place has been infiltrated by special force soldiers whose job it is to make sure the secret of the zombie mall never gets out! They plan to kill every zombie and human in the place, which means you have to try to stay alive while killing time. You get sweet PP for each soldier you kill. Sure, they all have guns…but you have your chainsaw!!! I simply stayed in the ultimate spot to have all the bare necessities at my disposal. Wonderland Plaza has the bathroom with the SAVE plus an extra mini chainsaw on the Space Ride platform if I should need it, while right next door, the Food Court has all the food items I could need. I ran around taking on the special forces, scoring some PP, then saving on my secondary slot in the bathroom in Wonderland Plaza. Yeah, you’ll take some hits from these guys, but again, just suck it up, run right up to them, and slash them in two hits. They usually travel in packs of two, and there aren’t tons of them, so it’s not all that hard. Once you’ve cleared them all out, go right next door to the Food Court. There will be zombies and more soldiers in here, but you can easily sneak up to the bars on the left and grab healing items to rejuvenate. Then take down every soldier and zombie you see here and return to the freshly respawned Wonderland Plaza to start the whole cycle over again. Rinse and repeat until it’s time to move on to the next part of the game (keep an eye on your clock). When all is said and done with this part, you will have leveled up quite a few times, will have a fresh mini chainsaw in hand, and a couple of healing items as well, plus a fresh SAVE.
6. OVERTIME MODE. As long as you spoke to Isabela and made it to the helipad above the security room in time, you’ll get the ‘first ending’ of the game and unload Overtime Mode, which is the way you get the ‘true ending.’ Overtime mode is ANNOYING, and pretty much just filler so the game can be considered longer. For starters, you have to find a bunch of ingredients for Isabela to use in an experiment and bring them back to her. Follow the walkthru above to know the best order to get the items—and set the Guide Arrow!!! You have plenty of time to get each ingredient, it’s just an obnoxious cat and mouse game that turns into a repetitive fight/heal/fight/heal task. Save frequently in bathrooms. The items don’t take item slots, which is great, but you don’t want to have to keep starting over with this task.
After you bring all the items back to Isabela, the REALLY annoying part begins. Well, first, she needs you to go out into Leisure Park to get a generator from the clock tower. Not too hard—except for the Helicopter flying overhead shooting at you and dropping bombs. Just do this as quickly as possible. Once you’ve brought the generator back to her, she will now need you to go collect TEN queen bees. This means hunting down those zombies with the flailing arms. But here’s the catch. The queen bees DO take up inventory slots, and you won’t have many open. You really need your saw and all its books for zombies and soldiers, health, and at least one soldier’s machine gun at all times to take out the annoying toy helicopters that alert soldiers of your presence. You will make numerous trips to the hideout to hand Isabela the queen bees. I had to do it about 7 times. The good news is, you never really have to leave the North Plaza (where Isabela’s hideout is) to find the zombies, because every time you reenter it from the hideout, there will be new queen bee zombies in the vicinity, often as close as the hallway right outside or the alcove down the end of the hall where the gun shop is. Do expect to get into fights with some soldiers though and those pesky toy helicopters. And if desperate, you may have to go on food hunts to keep yourself alive.
After you’ve handed over all ten queen bees, you end up at the last part of the game, and thankfully, a SAVE. SAVE before moving forward. Now, remember that part in Hitchcock’s The Birds where they had to walk past all the birds really slowly so as not to get attacked? You now have to do that through a tunnel filled with zombies. Isabela has concocted a perfume that repels zombies (no joke) and as long as you hold her hand, the zombies kind of part for you, creating a path. Unfortunately, glitches tend to happen, and you sometimes separate hands. This isn’t really that big a deal. Whip out your saw and slice away. In reality you could take out ALL the zombies, but you risk losing health, and you can’t waste it at this point. Chances are you’ll also saw at Isabela a bit, but she won’t take that much damage and just has to deal with it. Plus, in the crowd of zombies there’s usually one that drops a queen bee!!! If you grab it quickly, you can just throw it ahead of you and immediately kill all the zombies in the vicinity to clear a path for yourself! Follow the walkthru above until you reach the ONE LAST CHANCE to SAVE before the final TWO battles!!! Follow the walkthru to complete the section. When you get outside, you’ll be faced with more zombies and a couple of soldiers!!!! Drop Isabela and kill as many as possible, especially the soldiers. You will find apples behind a cement block where the soldiers were, so heal up.
7. FINAL BOSS. Use the walkthru to learn how to defeat the army tank for the first battle. When accomplished, you are immediately thrust into the final battle. This boss is just a man, and he’s on top of the army tank, as are you—with NO weapons and NO healing items. Zombies are swarming either side of the tank, so whenever you fall off of it (and you will) smash that A button to jump your way back up on it as quickly as possible. As for the boss himself, you are supposed to use your melee skills to defeat him, but he’s easily defeated thanks to a glitch. SWEET! When the battle begins, he is on the top swiveling part of the cannon. You are on the lower level. STAY on the lower level, and quickly move to the edge of the tank (don’t fall off). Wait for the boss to come running at you. Press A to jump and quickly hit X in midair to perform a flying kick, and you will boot the boss right in the face! The wimp will run right back up where he started from!!! In essence, you just have to keep repeating this process to kill him, but timing is everything and you’re sure to screw up. You can do some hand-to-hand with him (aka: button mashing!). He’ll sometimes get in cheap shots, you’ll sometimes fall off the tank. Just do what you must to get yourself back into the flying kick groove as soon as possible. I even got in some cheap shots of my own a few times when he was on the top level and I was on the lower level. I think I busted the guy in the nuts with my fist!!! Either way, I was just persistent, cool and in control, and I defeated the guy without losing more than three of my life blocks—which had been leveled up to nine blocks by the end of the game.
And that’s it. That’s how I conquered Dead Rising. Can’t WAIT to start Dead Rising 2 when it’s released next month.
