Dead Rising does have some issues. First, there’s the linearity of the game. You have to do certain things at certain times, and if you don’t, the only way you can try again is by replaying the game. Although the mall is a very expansive area and seems to give you a certain amount of free rein, the cases have time limits, and you have to do the cases in the order they give them to you.

Second, this guy’s camera uses batteries, which are replaced at the camera store, but for some reason, this “photojournalist’s” camera only has room for 30 pictures and isn’t upgradeable. I can buy the whole zombie thing, but having only 30 pictures? Come on.

Finally, there’s the save game issue. As mentioned earlier, you only have one save game slot. And it’s bizarre—when you die, you have the choice of playing the game from the last save point (as if everything after the save point didn’t happen); or you can restart the game from the beginning BUT keep all your experience and current level. You may think the developers were trying to increase the replayability of the game, however the manual specifically says, “there is only one save slot, but you can use a storage device or separate gamer account to create multiple saves.”

All I can say to that is WTF? They are encouraging me to go drop $40 on a memory card so I can have multiple saves? The hard drive I have purchased with my console can’t help me out with this? Are you kidding me? I guess not.

While this is one of a few games I can see myself playing well after it hits the Greatest Hits bin, the savegame is frustrating to the point that it does detract from the game. There’s also no multiplayer to speak of. There will be content download available as well as online leaderboards, but here’s a game that’s just screaming co-op survival mode. We can hope that downloadable content may include something like that, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

All that being said, if you’re a fan of action gaming, you need to buy this for the 360. It’s an exclusive game to the console and well worth the purchase, despite the save system – just buy a memory card and copy those saves!