Frank West is a photojournalist on the prowl for his next big story. Upon receiving a tip about suspicious military activity in the suburban town of Willamette, he charters a helicopter to fly in for a visit. It took just a few disturbing sightings for Frank to realize that what he initially thought was a simple case of civil unrest is actually a full-on zombie infestation. Deciding that this is one story that will make his career, he instructs the pilot to drop him off at the Willamette Shopping Mall and to return for him in three days. Dead Rising, the new zombie-branded action adventure game from Capcom, follows Frank as he races against time to get the scoop on why the deceased Willamette residents can't seem to stay dead.

Normally, news of Capcom releasing another zombie-themed game is about as earth-shattering as my daily bowel movement, but in this instance, I couldn't help but take notice. For starters, the name ‘Resident Evil' is nowhere to be found in the title, not even in anagram form – I checked. Then, there's the unconventional gameplay where you essentially have 72 in-game hours to wander around in Willamette mall to do as you please. We are also promised the freedom to off zombies using any instrument of death-dealing you can find in a mall, among them super water soakers and giant plush toys. Add to this hundreds upon hundreds of zombies on-screen at once, and a healthy splatter of not-so-subtle social commentary, and you have a game that even George A. Romero would be proud of (if he doesn't sue first, that is).

Marketing efforts for the game would have you believe that Dead Rising is all about killing endless droves of zombies in wacky fun ways. Fortunately, the game is that and more. As soon as the game begins, the clock starts ticking, and 72 hours is all you get to uncover the conspiracy behind the zombie outbreak. Sure, you are free to spend the next three days running down zombies with a lawnmower, but no one's ever won a Pulitzer Prize just doing that. In order to uncover the truth, Frank has to complete a linear series of missions, referred to as ‘cases'. Each case begins at a given time at a certain place in the mall, and it is up to you to get there before time runs out. The cases aren't terribly varied, most requiring you to defeat a boss character, retrieve some object or to escort characters from point A to B while beating back zombie hordes and striving to be punctual. Interestingly, in a case of delicious and fortifying irony, none of the ‘boss' characters you encounter in the game are zombies – their role is largely to trip you up as you attempt to get around.

If you happen to fail one of the cases, you will have the pleasure of watching all subsequent cases cruelly crossed out before your eyes. The good news is that you can keep playing the game and achieve one of several possible endings in the game, but you won't get to find out the truth – which is what you came here to do after all. Still, the game offers enough content that failing the story missions isn't the worst that could happen. In fact, you may wish to play through the game at least once without completing the plot-driven cases just so you can do more side-missions and get a different ending.

Speaking of side missions, these become available as time progresses. You will be asked to investigate survivor sightings and if possible, bring them back to the secure area that you and a few others have established. Once you meet up with survivors, it is a matter of convincing them to join you and escorting them back. Some of them will be able to carry weapons to defend themselves, while others demand more of your care. You can give your followers simple commands to either follow you, or to head for a specific place (that you can point to). A lot of the challenge of Dead Rising resides in trying to manage your time between story missions and these side missions, which come with their own expiry times. Do you rush to your 3pm meeting with a mysterious woman who could shed some light on what's happening, or do you have time to save a few ladies trapped in a clothing store with a homicidal (and grossly obsese) police officer?

A very nice touch with the side missions is that while not compulsory, completing them can lead to unexpected consequences down the track. For example, one of the folks you rescued may attempt to incite a riot later on, and you'll have to satisfy his demand in order to quell the uprising. In fact, the entire game is filled with this kind of loving attention to detail and personality, so much so that even though you will do the same types of missions over and over before the end of the third day, they never feel quite the same, and completing each mission affords you some additional insight to the whole incident.

Even though much of the game is a race against time, Dead Rising is generally very well-paced. If you manage to complete missions on time, you will find yourself having some time to kill – zombies, that is. As mentioned before, your arsenal for doing so comprises of whatever you manage to find in the mall, from obvious choices like baseball bats and hunting knives, to the more unconventional items like CD cases and water pistols. All the weapons will degrade and eventually break over time, so knowing what to carry and where to get more is crucial to survival. There is also an assortment of firearms you can commandeer from the gun store or from zombie security guards to take down your foes. Attacking is a simple case of pressing the X button, or by holding down RT, you enter a first person mode where you can fire your weapon or throw them at your enemies. The aiming in first-person mode feels sluggish and can take some getting used to, and some boss battles are made unnecessarily more difficult because of this. If you get hurt, you can replenish your health by consuming a variety of food and drinks in the stores. You can even find ovens and blenders to process your food for additional benefits.

As you progress through the adventure, Frank will gain levels that raise his abilities in several categories, such as running speed, attack power, inventory space or learning a new attack skill. What you receive on each level up is random too, which can be a little frustrating at times if you are counting on that extra inventory slot but keeps getting attack skills. The attack skills are a lot of fun to perform, allowing Frank to quickly mow down these undead obstacles even when he finds himself unarmed. The leveling system works well, and towards the end of the game you can expect Frank to become an ultimate zombie-killing machine, capable of disemboweling zombies with his bare fists while being able to run like an Olympic sprinter. You can further augment your abilities by carrying books you can locate in the mall. Occupying an inventory slot each, the books gives you bonuses that range from extra durability for certain types of weapons, to amplifying the effects of healing items. It's up to you to decide whether to carry a book that improves your attacks or that extra katana blade into the fray.

There are several ways you can gain experience points (called PPs) in the game in order to level up. You can gain PP simply by defeating as many zombies as you can or by completing story missions. Rescuing survivors also nets you a big boost in PP, a far more efficient way to gain PP in my opinion – since rescuing a survivor or two can give you enough points to level up more than once! The most unconventional way to acquire PPs is by taking photos. As Fran is a photojournalist, he carries a camera with him at all times. Frank can take up to 30 photos between battery recharges (done in photo stores in the mall), and anything is far game. You can easily gain some points for snapping a photo of a crowd of zombies, but if you are creative, you can gain a whole lot of PPs by snapping shots that adhere to one of several genres: horror, drama, outtakes and even erotic. I will leave it to you to find out how to achieve these shots that can be whimsical or just downright disturbing. Frank can keep up to 30 photos in an album that, other than being useful in one of the quests, simply serve as bragging rights.

On completion of the 72 Hour Mode in the game, which can take upward of 12 hours easily, you can unlock the Overtime Mode (if you manage to complete all the cases in the game), which is a continuation of the story, and gives you an extra day to wrap up the plot for real. There are some real surprises in store in this latter portion of the game that I won't spoil – but rest assured that it isn't simply a rehash of what you've been doing for the first three game days. Once you complete the Overtime Mode, you will unlock the Infinity Mode, which removes the time limit from the game and challenges you to survive as long as you can in the mall – a feat made more difficult by your constantly depleting health. You can upload your results for the game and your best times in Infinity Mode to the online leaderboards to see how you fare against the rest of the world. The game further offers some creative dispensing of gamerscores so that you are always encouraged to try outrageous things while playing the game, such as falling from a high area, or walking on top of zombies for a certain distance.

The single biggest complaint players will have about Dead Rising is the fact that the game offers you exactly one save slot. For the entire game. You can circumvent this by buying extra memory cards for your Xbox360, but that's hardly ideal for most people. The idea that you have to overwrite your progress whenever you wish to save can be quite scary. It is restrictive, but I actually think the game benefits from this in many ways. Unlike in other games, I am not constantly loading and reloading save games just to ‘see what happens'. Therefore, I'm rarely taken out of the experience. Still, this feature may be seen as simply unacceptable to some, especially when they find that it is possible to save themselves into a tight spot, preventing them from completing a story mission – in which case, the only options are to start the game over, or to soldier on and complete the game without solving the mystery. As a compensation, if you do decide to start over, you'll keep all of your levels and stats, rendering you much more powerful in the beginning areas.

In terms of presentation, Dead Rising is one of those games that Xbox360 proponents will be showing off to potential converts so they can join the cult. Not only does the game cram many hundred distinctive looking characters on-screen at once, the amount of detail in the environments and on the characters is truly a sight to behold. Photo-realistic textures and top-notch animation also serve to make watching the many dozens of carefully crafted in-game cutscenes a near-cinematic experience. Some players with smaller TV screens on standard definition have complained of blurry and unreadable mission text. While I have not encountered this problem, the game would be almost unplayable if you can't read the onscreen text due the large amount of text information on screen at all times.

If the graphics in the game are praise-worthy, the sounds are nothing short of masterful. While most of the game is devoid of a soundtrack, every sound effect from the moans and groans of zombies to the delightful sound of a katana slicing through flesh and bone is a joy to listen to. And when the soundtrack does kick in, they're effective in pumping you up for the adventure ahead. The voice cast for the characters are also outstanding, with the main character Frank portrayed with just the right balance of cockyness and sincerity to carry the plot.