Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop

The original Dead Rising from 2006 made the zombie-action genre famous with its open shopping mall Willamette, where the player, in the role of photojournalist Frank West, had to fight through hordes of the undead within a precisely measured time, complete side quests, and improvise weapons from whatever they found on store shelves - from a baseball bat to a lawn scythe. The game was praised at the time for its concept, humor, and atmosphere of a besieged America, but was also criticized for its harsh real-time save system, which forced players to plan every minute and, on a mistake, could easily cost them hours of progress, since the story's clock couldn't be paused or rewound.

Chop Till You Drop is a reworking of this concept for Wii that tries to ease exactly these pain points. Due to the console's weaker performance, there are noticeably fewer zombies on screen at once than in the original, missions were simplified, rearranged, and shortened, and the game offers checkpoint saving instead of the original's merciless real-time system, so dying no longer means losing hours of play. Melee combat also makes use of the Wii Remote's motion controls - by swinging the controller, the player hacks, bashes, and stabs, giving fights a different, more physical dynamic than the analog controls on Xbox 360, albeit at the cost of precision. Firearms, meanwhile, are aimed using the Wii Remote pointer aimed at the screen, similar to a light gun, which feels distinctly different from aiming with an analog stick in the original. The Wii version also leaves out the expanded endgame content from the end of the original game and focuses purely on the main story line without optional side challenges, making it overall a shorter, more straightforward, and less demanding experience than the Xbox 360 original. The result is a more accessible but also noticeably different game than the original - more of a fast-paced slaughterfest without the pressure of the clock than a carefully considered management of limited time.

Why play it: Chop Till You Drop suits players who want a taste of Dead Rising's core idea - hordes of zombies and crazy improvised weapons - without the frustration of the original's harsh time limit, and who'll appreciate the motion controls as a fresh way to enjoy zombie slaughter right on Wii.